Peter Asher: Everything Man – The Lives and Times of Peter Asher (A PopEntertainment.com Movie Review)

PopEntertainment
4 days ago
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Updated: 12 minutes ago

PETER ASHER: EVERYTHING MAN – THE LIVES AND TIMES OF PETER ASHER (2025)

Featuring Peter Asher, Paul McCartney, Carole King, James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Steve Martin, Eric Idle, Jane Asher, Lyle Lovett, Danny Kortchmar, Twiggy, Betsy Asher, Pattie Boyd, John Dunbar, Barry Miles, Yoko Ono, Paul Jones, Chris O'Dell, John Boylan, Leland Sklar, Kate Taylor, Waddy Wachtel, Victoria Asher, Rufus Wainwright, Wendy Asher, Clare Gillies, Ben Fong Torres, Beverly D’Angelo, Natalie Merchant, Cathy Shaffer, Paul Shaffer, ‘'Weird Al” Yankovic and archival footage of John Lennon, George Martin, Andrew Gold, Robin Williams, Marianne Faithfull and Gordon Waller.

Directed by Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine.

Distributed by Greenwich Entertainment. 118 minutes. Not Rated.

“Obviously a great deal of everything is luck – except there is no such thing. The skill is in taking advantage of what does come your way.” Peter Asher

This quote begins the documentary Everything Man, and it pretty much defines Peter Asher. Asher, who is a name that most people who are not relatively in the know may have never heard, has worn many hats in his life. He was a child actor. He was a smash British Invasion singer. He was a hip bookstore and art gallery owner. He was head A&R guy for the Beatles Apple records. Asher was also one of the widely-rumored (if never officially confirmed) inspirations for the look of Mike Myers' Austin Powers character.

He became a superstar music producer and manager (who is best known for guiding James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt’s careers, but who also worked with a who’s who of 20th Century superstars). Now Asher is a mostly retired man periodically touring with a concert/play looking back on his fascinating life.

The dude took advantage of what came his way. And we’re lucky he did.

Everything Man allows for Asher and famous friends, collaborators and fans to tell the amazing story of his life. In fact, much of the documentary revolves around a performance of his one-man show (well, he has an entire band, so it’s not exactly one-man, but he’s the one telling the stories) at San Francisco’s famous Bimbo’s 365 Club.

Much like a real-life Zelig or Forrest Gump, Asher is known as much if not more for his proximity to genius and fame as his own work, although thinking that he is simply a hanger on or lucky is definitely selling the guy short. Still, he realizes that sometimes he was at the right place at the right time.

Take for example his early career as a singer. He and school friend Gordon Waller had a running gig at The Pickwick Club, one of the chicest joints in swinging London at the time – celebs like Michael Caine, Johnny Cash, Terence Stamp, Frank Sinatra, Christopher Plummer and Sammy Davis Jr. frequented the joint. But Peter and Gordon weren’t songwriters, they did all covers.

When an A&R guy approached them about recording some of their songs from their show, he asked if they had any other songs. Asher’s sister Jane – who was a popular actress – also just happened to be dating this singer named Paul McCartney whose band The Beatles were just taking off. In fact, Paul was staying with the Ashers and living in the room next to Peter, and they had become good friends.

Peter often saw Paul and his bandmate John Lennon working on new songs. They had an unfinished song called “A World Without Love” which was not likely to make it onto a Beatles album – apparently Lennon kind of hated the song. So Peter asked Paul if Peter and Gordon could give the song a try. McCartney wrote a new bridge for the song, and Peter and Gordon recorded it in the style of The Everly Brothers – and it became a huge international hit.

While the group had a few more hits, Asher never really saw himself as a headliner. He felt more like a behind the scenes guy – and he eventually settled into becoming a record producer (the only one ever to make the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, although he had to bring along his artists James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt to get the cover shot.)

Both Taylor and Ronstadt are here discussing working with Asher – as well as such artists that he has worked with over the years as Carole King, Lyle Lovett, Steve Martin and Natalie Merchant. The film also shows how Asher revolutionized the world of musical sidemen – like Danny Kortchmar, Waddy Wachtel and Leland Sklar.

It’s an endlessly fascinating story, charting the history of popular music over the period of decades.

If there is one possible complaint about this labor-of-love documentary is that it is just that. Directors Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine are obviously such fans of Asher as an artist and a man that the doc tends to dwell on the sunny parts while downplaying some of the real down moments in Asher’s story; the drug usage, the inadvertent breaking up of a good friend’s marriage, the mental health issues of his first wife, the suicide of his father, the long-time and somewhat bitter split with his original singing partner Gordon Waller.

Which makes Everything Man a bit of catnip for pop culture fans, but far from a complete look at the man’s life. All of the things listed above were discussed in passing, but perhaps not with the detail that such life-altering events may deserve.

Still, even with those slight issues, Peter Asher – Everything Man tells such a fascinating story, and Asher is such a charming, shy, and slightly self-deprecating host that the two hours just fly by. Hopefully after this film, more people will know the name Peter Asher.

Jay S. Jacobs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIpHwQ94WvY