Music fans of a certain mature vintage may remember Peter and Gordon, a British singing duo that had a No. 1 hit in 1964 with “A World Without Love,” an infectiously melodic pop song written by a soon-to-be-famous Paul McCartney.
But you don’t have to be familiar with the song or the singer to be fascinated by the incredible career of one Peter Asher, a nerdy-looking, bespectacled, red-haired singer and guitarist who was half of this short-lived musical pair.
While his partner, Gordon Waller, would fade away in a cliché of rock star dissipation — he died in 2009 at 64 — Asher, who turned 82 this week, went on to become one of the most influential and respected behind-the-scenes machers in the music business in the 1970s and ’80s.
After a stint as the first head of A&R (artists and repertoire) for the Beatles’ Apple Records, he came to America and helped define a generation of Los Angeles singer-songwriters, managing and producing James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Carole King and a host of other bold-faced names from that golden age of Southern California rock and pop.
It’s an extraordinary story that Emmy-award-winning San Francisco directors and producers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine tell in their thoroughly enjoyable new documentary, “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man,” which opens Friday nationally and at the Smith Rafael Film Center for an open-ended run. After Saturday’s 7 p.m. screening, the directors will sit down with music writer Joel Selvin for a Q&A about the film. For showtimes, go to rafaelfilm.cafilm.org.
Rotten Tomatoes gives “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man” a 92% on its Tomatometer. Variety calls it “an engaging look at a fabled figure,” labeling it, with a slight sneer, “boomer-centric.” That demographic may be the target market, and it did hit me right in my sweet spot, but neither Geller nor Goldfine, young boomers at 65 and 67, respectively, knew who Asher was in 2019 when Ronstadt, an acquaintance through a mutual friend, invited them to join her at Bimbo’s 365 Club in San Francisco to see him in his cabaret show, “A Musical Memoir of the ’60s and Beyond.”
They may not have known anything about him beforehand, but they knew enough afterward that they were hungry to know more and bet other people would be, too.
“I said, oh, my God, who is this guy?” Goldfine recalled in an interview last week. “Someone should do a documentary about him.”
Why not them? Partners in business and in life — they’ve been married 40 years — their previous film, “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song,” was released by Sony Pictures in 2021 and is currently streaming on Hulu. After another filmmaker stepped away from making an Asher doc, they eagerly jumped in, starting filming after the pandemic in January 2023.
Using the man himself on stage telling his own story as a kind of anchor for the film, they flesh it out with archival material and interviews with Ronstadt, Taylor and King along with, among others, Lyle Lovett, Natalie Merchant, Marianne Faithfull, Paul McCartney (in voiceover), Edie Brickell, Robin Williams, Kate Taylor (James’ sister) and Steve Martin, who describes Asher as “a ghostly legendary figure you’ve heard about. I didn’t even know what he did.”
Everyone was more than happy to talk about a man who seems genuinely beloved. It’s a trip to see interviews with ’60s icons like the doe-eyed model Twiggy, who’s 76 now, and the rock star wife Pattie Boyd, who was married to George Harrison and Eric Clapton, looking good at 82.
“They really capture the camaraderie, humor and rapport of people who share an unbelievable moment in history,” Goldfine said. “And that’s London in the Swingin’ ’60s.”
An amiable, elfin Brit with horn-rimmed glasses and a fringe of dyed red hair, Asher has been described as a Zelig-like character, always being in the right place at the right time. For example: A former child actor, he got to know McCartney, who gave him “A World Without Love” (because John Lennon hated it), when the Beatle was dating his sister, actress Jane Asher. McCartney was so close to the Asher family that he moved into a room in their house, living with them during the early days of the Beatles.
“There was always a gaggle of young women outside the Asher household waiting for Paul McCartney to come out,” Goldfine said with a chuckle.
There’s no question the man has lived a charmed life. But it wasn’t all just good luck.
“Obviously, a great deal of everything is luck,” Asher said. “The skill is taking advantage of what does come your way.”
He would sometimes have to be more than just a manager and producer. He discovered Taylor when he was at Apple, signing him as the label’s first artist. And he stood by him when the singer was going through multiple rehabs for heroin addiction. Otherwise, we might never have heard “Fire and Rain,” “Sweet Baby James,” “Carolina in My Mind” and other now-classic Taylor songs.
“Sometimes he’s a musical prodigy, sometimes he’s a therapist,” Taylor says of Asher in the film. “Peter stuck with me through some dodgy times. That’s no small thing to make that happen.”
Contact Paul Liberatore at [email protected]
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