Article by Marcus Siu
Which one of the following facts about Peter Asher are true? 1.) He was a child actor at eight years old working in film and theater. 2.) His sister, Jane was Paul McCartney’s girlfriend and lived with her at the Asher townhouse for five years during 1963-1966. 3.) His mother Margaret taught Beatles producer George Martin oboe lessons in the 1940’s. 4.) He was responsible for the hookup of John and Yoko. 5.) He was the first producer ever on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. 6.) Austin Powers was modeled after him.
If you only guessed one or two of these as true, then you have a lot to learn about this “Everywhere Man”, especially, if you consider yourself a knowledgeable music lover. As a filmmaker, it becomes especially rewarding when audiences discover something new about the subjects that they never knew from their documentaries. This is certainly the case here, at least for me.
Peter Asher’s story is simply a non-fiction fairy tale. It seems so pre-fabricated that only Hollywood could write about. Many people have heard of his name in some kind of musical context, but do not know much about his incredible life. Those who lived through the British Invasion in the early 60’s will know him from the duo, Peter and Gordon, but most people just know him as a renowned music producer and manager.
The new documentary “Peter Asher: Everywhere Man” directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine should change all that. Over the decades, they have had a solid track record of directing and producing highly acclaimed award-winning documentaries such as “Ballet Russes (2005)”, “The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden (2013)”, and “Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song (2022)”…and they continue their journey with yet fascinating musical subject with their latest documentary about the legendary true-life Zelig.
It’s a crowd-pleasing and entertaining musical documentary that combines Peter Asher’s Memoir show as the framework for transporting audiences on the same time capsule magical ride the directors had taken at his shows, blending comedy with the likes of Eric Idle as the emcee introducing the iconic figure, while enhancing the narrative with first-person interviews, extensive archival materials and an phenomenal immersive soundtrack featuring recordings by the Beatles, James Taylor, Carole King, Linda Ronstadt and much more that make you feel like you are reliving the moment.
If you liked their last film about Leonard Cohen, then you will absolutely love their latest about Peter Asher.
THE McCARTNEY YEARS
It was December 1963 when Paul McCartney moved into the Asher family’s Wimpole Street townhouse in central London living there for about three years with his then-girlfriend, actress Jane Asher along with her family. By that time, the first Beatles album had already come out and the world had discovered “Beatlemania” just a few months earlier.
McCartney roomed with Peter on the sixth floor, composing music and gifting a few unfinished songs to him for Peter and Gordon upon his request. The songs included “Nobody I Know,” “I Don’t Want To See You Again,” “Woman,” and their biggest hit in 1964, “A World Without Love”, which McCartney wrote when he was just sixteen.
Ironically, McCartney didn’t think the song was good enough for The Beatles at the time. He described John Lennon’s reaction to the song: “The funny first line always used to please John. ‘Please lock me away –’ ‘Yes, okay.’ End of song.”
The song eventually became Peter and Gordon’s biggest hit and became one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.
Asher’s connections with McCartney, the British Invasion, and being co-owner at the Indica Gallery gallery made him seem like a “Zelig” figure during the Swinging London scene during that time. He was responsible to the relationships between Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull and John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Talk about great unbelievable stories…
WHAT’S IN THE OLD DRY CLEANING BAG?
One of the greatest challenges for any documentarian for their film is finding compelling source material. Luckily, this wasn’t the case for the directors, at least for photographs, as they discovered that Asher’s mother, Margaret had tons of photos of their three kids of them growing up.
“As far as photos go, the first unbelievable find when we went to England with Peter to tour the haunts and bring his daughter into the picture a bit.” Geller explained. “He has a flat in England, in London, as well as the House of Malibu. I asked Asher if there any old family photos or something like that and Asher replied ‘Yeah, my mother made these leather-bound scrapbooks for all three kids starting at birth’.”
“In addition to teaching George Martin and playing professional oboe, every single year of those three children’s lives, she did a whole scrapbook for each one for each year”, Goldfine added. “We’re talking…200-page scrapbooks. Really unbelievable! I don’t know how that woman did it.”
“The first day we were there and we opened one of the early scrapbooks, and there was this old dry cleaning bag. ‘Why would Margaret put an old dry cleaning bag from the 60s in the scrapbook?’ and Peter kind of opened it up, and it was actually Paul’s handwritten lyrics to “Nobody I Know” and the only way that Peter ever found that out was because we were doing the film and they happened to open the 1964 scrapbook.”
THE LEGENDARY MUSIC PRODUCER
Peter Asher was so integral to the music scene after he joined A&R Department at Apple Records. He introduced James Taylor to Carole King and even helped convince her to perform as a solo artist from being a songwriter.
He is a two-time Grammy “Producer of the Year” recipient and has produced the “who’s who” of the record industry: James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Cher, Bonnie Raitt, Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, 10,000 Maniacs, Billy Joel, Ringo Starr, Morrissey, Steve Martin, Kenny Loggins, JD Souther, and many more.
Unfortunately, if you include interviews with these additional musicians, you will have a three or four hour documentary. With so many artists that he produced over the decades, Asher could easily of had a comprehensive four-hour mini-series.
Here is the impressive lineup interviews in the film in order of appearance that added depth to Asher’s already amazing story from his early days in London to his music producing days in Los Angeles.
Peter Asher * Steve Martin * Eric Idle * Jane Asher * Clare Gillies * Gordon Waller * Lyle Lovett * Paul McCartney * Victoria Asher * Twiggy * Danny Kortchmar * Betsy Asher * Marianne Faithfull * Pattie Boyd * John Dunbar * Barry Miles * Yoko Ono * John Lennon * Paul Jones * Chris O’Dell * James Taylor * John Boylan * Carole King * Leland Sklar * Kate Taylor * Linda Ronstadt * Andrew +Gold * Waddy Wachtel * Ben Fong-Torres * Wendy Asher * Beverly D’Angelo * Natalie Merchant * Robin Williams * Paul Shaffer * Cathy Shaffer * Rufus Wainwright * “Weird Al” Yankovic
HOW IT ALL BEGAN WITH DIRECTORS DAN GELLER AND DAYNA GOLDFINE
It was approximately twelve years ago when Goldfine’s ex-boyfriend from high school invited her to see Asher’s one-man show one night. Linda Ronstadt herself had given him the ticket personally, as she was a close friend of his. Goldfine accepted the invitation not knowing anything about the performer, except that he was Ronstadt’s long time manager.
The 2011 show that Goldfine experienced was Peter Asher’s multimedia retrospective titled, “A Musical Memoir of the ’60s and Beyond”, that happened at the Rrazz Room at the Hotel Nikko in downtown San Francisco. The show heavily revolved around Asher’s deep connections to the British Invasion and the global rock scene.
The core names and acts that feature prominently in the show’s narrative and archival footage included The Beatles, Peter & Gordon, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Mick Jagger, John Lennon, and of course, Paul McCartney, who dated Peter’s sister Jane Asher from 1963 to 1968. It was a two-hour cabaret-style event that featured insider stories, photos, and music from his storied career, and notably included a surprise appearance by close friend and collaborator Linda Ronstadt, herself.
“I went, not because I wanted to see the show with Peter. I just wanted to meet Linda. So I went not knowing anything.”, Goldfine recalled. “Anyway, I came home and I said, ‘Dan, if there’s ever any way to do a documentary about this guy who I didn’t know about until tonight, we should try to do a film about him’.”
Unfortunately, she quickly discovered through Ronstadt that C.C. Goldwater was already in the process of shooting an Asher documentary. “I told Cece I was jealous of her. I said, ‘Are you making a documentary by any chance?’ And she said, ‘Yes, I am’.”, Goldfine recalled.
As both co-directors over the years became friends with Ronstadt, they would go over for some Sunday brunches that she would often have and they would continually ask about the progress of Goldwater’s Asher project. Then in 2018, much to their delight, Ronstadt confirmed the project was dropped and Asher would return to San Francisco to perform another show the following year.
“Linda said that Peter was coming to town to Bimbo’s to perform his show in November or so of 2019, which is the first time I got to go,” Geller explained. “We both went. Linda kind of was the “Yenta”, the matchmaker at that show, brought Peter over and before Dana and I could meet Peter, of course, we had just one moment of power. I said, ‘man, let’s see’.”
Goldfine added, “I think our thought was, ‘What would it be like to do a show’? A film for the first time where you do use a spine, which is this musical memoir show, which we’d never done before. So it felt like that was going to be a fun and a slightly scary challenge. ‘What would it be like to do that?'”, she questioned. “But then to actually get to go a little bit behind the scenes and go and interview the real people that he’s talking about so you can hear their perspective on it and then look and see what kind of archival materials you might come up with so you could actually illustrate the stories that Peter was telling.”
“God, I mean, it’s incredible”, Geller declared. “Both that his story sweeps through so many periods of rapid change in our culture that reverberate to this day…and also that he’s just this charming storyteller. And he’s out there, clearly he has an ego, but he’s also charmingly self-deprecating and so that makes for combination that we thought would allow us to try this experiment, which was to try to build the movie off that backbone, the spine of his show, but also divert into these other corridors and these other people that he worked with.”
Ironically, at the very same event, Ben Fong-Torres was on assignment writing an article for the San Francisco Chronicle about Asher. In the film, you can see him stalking Robin Williams for an interview after the show.
Just a cautionary warning…if you do see this film, I guarantee you won’t be able to get the song “A World Without Love” out of your head, even if you when you are trying to sleep at night.
“Please lock me away.”
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