New documentary explores Peter Asher's remarkable journey from Beatles insider to music industry powerhouse.
Making a documentary about Beatles adjunct Peter Asher — Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, opening June 19 in theaters — provided “one gob-smacking revelation after another†for filmmakers Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller. And that's as it should be.
Dayna Goldfine
Dan Geller
The British-born Asher — now 81 and residing in Los Angeles — is a kind of Forrest Gump or Zelig in the music and arts worlds, attached to a legion of superstar performers and with a great many achievements of his own. One of three children whose father, Richard Asher, was a prominent physician, he became a child actor who became a performer, hitting with the John Lennon-Paul McCartney written “A World Without Love†in 1964 as part of the duo Peter and Gordon.
McCartney spent time living at the Asher house on Wimpole Street during 1964-66, while the Beatle was dating his sister Jane, also an actress.
Asher — whose paternal grandmother was Jewish, though the family did not practice the faith — went on to work as a music, film and TV producer, an artist manager, author and radio personality. His collaborators over the years have included James Taylor (who he signed to the Beatles' Apple Records in 1968), Linda Ronstadt, Carole King, Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, Cher, 10,000 Maniacs, Ringo Starr, Morrissey, Steve Martin, Barbra Steisand, the Go-Go's Jane Wiedlin, Pamela Anderson — and that's a rough sampling.
He's won Grammy Awards as Producer of the Year twice, and a third for Robin Williams' comedy album Live 2002. He also received a Commander of the British Empire appointment from Queen Elizabeth II during 2015. He's authored a book, The Beatles From A to Zed: An Alphabetical Mystery Tour and hosts the Peter Asher: From Me to You program on SiriusXM's The Beatles Channel.
“It's just a tremendous story,†Goldfine, who with husband, Geller, also directed the lauded 2022 documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, A Song, says via Zoom from the couple's home in San Francisco. “He touched so many careers and was part of so much important work, especially music. And so many people don't know who he is, generally.â€
Goldfine and Geller weren't particularly familiar with Asher either, until 2012, when a friend took her to see Asher's biographical A Musical Memoir of the Sixties and Beyond!, multimedia show at Bimbo's 365 in San Francisco.
“I really didn't know anything about Peter Asher and wasn't looking to do anything about him,†she recalls. “Then the show started and I'm like, “Oh, man, this is a documentary waiting to be made …'†She took Geller to see the Asher show when it returned to Bimbo's in 2019, and the two began conversations with the impresario about a film.
“The first thing he said when we approached him was why would we want to make a movie about him?†Geller recalls. “We were making one about Leonard Cohen; he said, ‘I'm not Leonard Cohen.' That was an interesting way to put it; it suggests a level of humility in the midst of all that accomplishment, and that ultimately proved to be true in the movie, that he can be that talented and aware of his own talent but not be consumed by it.â€
Geller and Goldfine had an early advocate for the project in Linda Ronstadt, who, even though she'd stopped doing interviews due to her battle with Parkinson's disease, promised she'd be the first to go on camera. The COVID-19 pandemic intervened however, although as things settled, the filmmakers began traveling to Asher's home for socially distanced visits on his deck.
“Finally, after, gosh, it must've been a year and a half of that, Asher said, “OK, COVID's winding down. Are you going to keep continuing to have these lovely lunches outdoors or are you going to do something?'†Goldfine recalls with a laugh. Asher made his archives readily available to them, while Ronstadt's participation “opened a lot of doors†for the filmmakers that led to interview-averse subjects such as Taylor and King — the latter of whom even Asher doubted would be willing to talk.
EAGER TO TALK ABOUT ASHER
“These people we were able to interview, who generally don't want to talk about themselves much anymore, were so quick to want to talk about Peter, and their interaction with Peter,†Geller says. “That was because of their debt of gratitude to him for everything he did to make their lives so much more interesting and richer — not just financially. His true loyalty and warmth and acumen were there consistently for these different artists, through ups and downs.
“James put it nicely in the movie, that ‘Peter stuck by me through a lot of dodgy times,' and not a lot of people could make that happen.â€
The who's-who list of interview subjects includes Asher's sisters Jane and Clare, a radio actress; his spouses; Monty Python's Eric Idle; Steve Martin; 10,000 Maniacs Natalie Merchant; Twiggy; British writer Barry Miles and artist John Dunbar, who were Asher's partners in London's counterculture Indica Gallery and book shop; George Harrison and Eric Clapton's ex-wife Pattie Boyd; “Weird Al†Yankovic; Paul Shaffer; Marianne Faithfull; and musicians such as Danny Kortchmar, Leland Sklar and Waddy Wachtel, and many more.
Goldfine and Geller also found archival interviews with others, including Asher's late musical partner Gordon Waller and Paul McCartney, who dated Asher's actor sister Jane and for a time lived at the Asher family's house.
Many of the latter's reminiscences, in fact, come from tapes of an interview he did with Miles for his 1997 authorized McCartney biography Many Years From Now, which Geller says may have been even better than having their own conversation with the Beatle.
“In some ways, the impressions were fresher back then in the mid-'90s,†he says. “We knew from reading the book that there were beautiful passages about Paul's take on the Asher house, and Peter. It was very unguarded because Paul and Miles are such good friends … That allows things to flow in a slightly different way.â€
The filmmakers also took Asher back to London for some footage, including one outside the old Indica site on Mason's Yard when a London music tour group — whose bus had a flat tire — was also visiting the site. “We hadn't seen the van,†Goldfine recalls. “The first thing I heard was someone say, ‘Peter Asher?' and there was this whole crowd swarming around. That was maybe the moment — if you're lucky, it happens every film you make — that tells you we're supposed to be making this film.â€
Nevertheless, Geller adds with a laugh, “At one point, I shouted, ‘Could everyone please just tell the camera we didn't set this up?'â€
Another highlight for the filmmakers was an offhanded mention of Boris Karloff during one of their lunch sessions with Asher. “He said, ‘Oh, by the way, I'm gonna sit for this new documentary that's being made about Boris Karloff (2021's The Man Behind the Monster),†Goldfine says. “We're like, ‘What the heck do you have to do with Boris Karloff?' ‘Oh, I forgot to tell you — I'm the last surviving person who acted with him (Colonel March of Scotland Yard: The Talking Head, 1956).' And we were like, ‘Wow.' But that's Peter, you know?â€
Prior to its wide release, Peter Asher: Everywhere Man has been featured at the Telluride Film Festival, the Big Sky Film Festival, the Mill Valley Film Festival and others, as well as an April screening at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as part of the Cleveland International Film Festival's 50th anniversary.
Greenwich Entertainment, which is distributing the film, is planning a Blu-ray release of the documentary at some point, which Goldfine and Geller hope will include extras — such as unused interviews with artists such as Graham Nash and Pink Floyd's Nick Mason.
Meanwhile, the couple is on to the next project, about an unsolved murder in Hollywood during the 1920s. “It's the cold case murder of a very important film director and a profile of Hollywood emerging at that moment, and its desperate need to suppress something like that,†Geller says. Goldfine adds that, “We're trying to construct this one solely from archival materials, which is … a challenge. After that, who knows — there might be another music documentary.â€
DETAILS
Peter Asher: Everywhere Man screens July 10-12 at the Detroit Film Theatre in the Detroit Institute of Arts, 5200 Woodward Ave., Detroit. 313-833-7900 or dia.org.
