I just finished watching a new documentary about charming music producer/manager/60s pop star Peter Asher and I could watch it all over again right now.
Anyone who loves music from the 60s, 70s, and 80s will see immediately that “Everywhere Man” (a play on “Nowhere Man”) is a missing piece of the rock and pop jigsaw puzzle. Placed in its proper spot, “Everything Man” makes the whole history much clearer.
It’s also a lot of fun because Peter — who Mike Myers maybe based Austin Powers’s look on — is an irascible rascal who knows how to tell his remarkable story.
It begins in London in the early 60s as two things happened: he and Gordon Waller begin singing together as Peter and Gordon, and Paul McCartney dates Peter’s actress sister, Jane. Paul moves into the Asher house, where he and John Lennon use the downstairs music room to write songs like “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” Paul writes a hit for Peter and Gordon called “A World Without Love,” and we are off to the races.
By the late 60s, Peter is running the Beatles’ new Apple Records and discovers James Taylor, who makes his first album. (Asher’s also responsible for the early hits by Badfinger and Mary Hopkin, among others). Peter and James move to Los Angeles, come upon Carole King and Linda Ronstadt on the west coast music scene, and gold records fall out of the sky like stars from heaven.
Before I was lucky enough to meet Peter around 1990, he was one of my music heroes like Richard Perry and Phil Ramone. They were the Mt. Rushmore of pop producing during the wild heyday circa 1970-77. Nothing stopped them. Their taste was impeccable, as were their music chops. So much of our attributive musical soundtrack is because of them.
More recently, Peter launched a popular touring show (including a later Badfinger drummer, Jeff Alan Ross) in which he tells his story with a live band, audio, and video clips. It’s not to be missed. (Peter also hosts a chatty and fun show on Sirius XM 18 called “From Me to You.”) The doc’s directors, Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine, smartly use the show as the foundation of the film, with Peter telling his own story live on stage and in narration.
The directors very cleverly lay out Peter’s history against the buzz of the Beatles and the British invasion, then tie it all together to Peter being instrumental in the West Coast music scene that gave us Linda Ronstadt, JD Souther, Andrew Gold, and so many others. There are very detailed interviews with Paul McCartney, Ronstadt and Taylor, as well as early pals like Steve Martin and Eric Idle, so that the picture gets clearer and clearer of how so many lasting icons were hatched. It’s because it seemed like Peter was everywhere, man.
The doc fits a lot in considering how much material there is, and they even left a few things out. But nothing vital is missing, and by the time Peter’s wife, Wendy, is talking about the dinners they used to have with Joni Mitchell every few days, your mind is blown. They don’t tell you that Peter won three Grammys. Two of them, for Producer of the Year, cover a wide range of time– 1978 and 1990. In 2003 came the third, for a Robin Williams comedy album. Earlier this year, Peter co-produced Barbra Streisand’s latest duets album.
“Everywhere Man” has a lot of music in it — I don’t know how they cleared all these songs. But we are the luckier for it. The doc rolls out across the country in theaters only starting today, and it’s gift. Go see it immediately.
