Peter Asher: Catching Up with An Icon

Having recently worked on Barbra Streisand’s  The Secret of Life: Partners, Volume Two (a record with a roster of impressive singers), producer Peter Asher continues to make his mark in the world of music. He started as one half of “Peter and Gordon,” before journeying into producing and managing. We recently got to check in on his many projects, past and present.

CS: One of the most impressive Peter and Gordon songs is the delightful “I Go To Pieces”, written by Del Shannon. How did you come across this song?

We [Peter and Gordon] were in Australia on tour with Del Shannon, and we were big fans of his. We’d never met him before, and he was quite charming. And it turned out he’d written this song before leaving for the tour: It was a tour of us, The Searchers,  Eden Kane, and Del… And it turns out he’d actually tried to find a home for the song which he’d written and didn’t think was right for himself before he left America that had been unsuccessful.  And actually, when we were on tour with him, he thought that it would be right for The Searchers, and he tried to sell them the song, as it were.  I think he was, by the way, correct: I think they would have done a very cool version of it with all their jangly electric 12-string that became their trademark. But, incredibly, they turned it down, and we overheard this transaction. And I said to Del, “I like that song a lot, and can we have a go at it?” “Don’t give it to someone else,” I said, “as soon as we are back in London, we are going to cut it.” It’s one of my favorites; I think it came out pretty well.

CS: You recently worked with Barbra Streisand on a duet with Paul McCartney [“My Valentine”]; were they trepidatious about singing together?

Not really. I mean, during the session, Paul owned up to the fact that he was somewhat intimidated to look across, because we did do them together. It was part of an album of duets, and I think Paul was slightly intimidated: “Yikes, that’s Barbra Streisand.” It would be a nerve-wracking experience.

CS: Normally, artists are nervous working with him.

Exactly! And it is kind of unique. I mean, what was interesting to me is we did it.  You know, we had them sing it live with the orchestra as well. We had a few takes with the orchestra. So, we had this huge 70-piece or whatever orchestra out on the soundstage. And the orchestra didn’t know whose session it was: it wasn’t written on the top of the music or anything, as it usually isn’t, just on general security grounds. And I’ve never seen a reaction quite like when I told them both, they should walk out and say hello to the orchestra. A lot of people are reaching for their cell phones…takes a lot to impress a giant Hollywood orchestra used to doing big movie scores!

CS: You have experience working with McCartney, thanks to “A World Without Love.”

I didn’t! I mean, I didn’t work with him on that song. He just gave us the song; he didn’t produce it and wasn’t at the session. We were delighted to have the song.

CS: The harmonies blend well together.

Thanks. That was us, not him, which isn’t to say Paul isn’t a genius, because he is. And we’d have welcomed any advice and harmonies he chose to give us.

CS: I watched your duet with Linda Ronstadt. You covered Lennon’s “All I’ve Got to Do.”

Well, we did that once, obviously, on this tribute to John Lennon; Yoko organized it somewhere in Japan. But I did so much more than that with Linda. I produced many of her records. She was brilliant to work with.  I mean, she’s one of the most remarkable women I’ve ever known. She’s an incredible singer and an incredibly tough critic of herself.

CS: Is she a performer who likes to do as few takes as possible, or is she one of those singers who warms up over many attempts?

Somewhere in between, you know. She usually does her homework and knows what she’s going to sing.  And we know in some cases, I mean, some of the versions on her albums are just live, you know, one take with the band kind of things.  So it varied case by case. So, she could be a demanding perfectionist. And sometimes I was the one telling her, ” No, you know, take three was very good. Don’t worry about it.”

CS: How did you discover James Taylor?

You probably know the story. Back in the 1960s, we were given a backup band by the local promoter.  You know, as if we were playing the Southwest or whatever, that promoter would put a band together and tell them to learn our songs, which wasn’t that demanding, because, of course, the set that we were doing was only about 20 minutes anyway. But sometimes the bands were good; sometimes they weren’t. But one such band was the King Bees. And with the King Bees, I made friends with the guitar player, Danny Kortchmar.  And we remained friends after the Peter and Gordon era was over and stayed in touch. He was subsequently in a band called The Flying Machine with his childhood friend, James Taylor.  And they’d grown up together on Martha’s Vineyard…Eventually, James decided to go to London, and Danny Kortchmar gave him my phone number. James called me up, played a couple of songs, and I went crazy. That’s how it started.

CS: The drum effects on “Golden Blunders” are superb. Were they done by Ringo, and was it influenced by the Hugh Padgham sound?

Oh, good. Yeah, I love that song. Ringo played drums, and I liked the [Hugh Padgham] sound. I wasn’t inspired by it in the sense that I wasn’t compelled to copy it, but I liked it. I’ve never worked with Hugh Padgham.

CS: You transitioned from singer to producer. Was that a tricky change?

That was an ambition I already had. Once I figured out there was a job of a record producer and what it entailed, and I thought: “That looks like fun, and I think I could do that.” When you get to have ideas about the nature of the arrangement and what things should sound like and stuff like that, I kind of went: “Well, that’s a great job.” You get to hire great musicians much better than yourself and tell them what to do. I think that’s amazing. So, yes, unlike being a manager, which was kind of circumstantial, the desire to be a producer was an active one in that I set out to be a record producer.

CS: I believe you introduced arranger Richard Hewson to Paul McCartney, which resulted in the Thrillington album.

I guess that’s right. I introduced him because I had used Richard to do the arrangements for the James Taylor album. That was the first album he worked with me on, on the James Taylor album we did for Apple. And so, when Paul wanted an arranger for Mary Hopkin, “Those Were the Days”, I suggested Richard, and that was, I think, the first time they worked together.

CS: Do you find that there’s a difference between playing live and performing in the studio? Are there different philosophies?

Oh, yes. I mean, the intentions are quite different, you know, and live is in the moment and whatever you play, it’s been, it’s there, it’s gone, you know. But when you’re recording in the studio, you are aware that you’re making something for keeps, you know, you want to make it perfect and not just capture the spirit of the moment. Although ideally, you try to do both.

CS: In 2019, you wrote a book entitled The Beatles from A to Zed. Did you enjoy that experience?

It was based on the radio show that I do for SiriusXM. And, you know, I didn’t particularly enjoy [writing] it. It was a question of really kind of translating something that I’d done on the radio into a book. Foolishly, I thought it would be easy, transcribing the show. But you transcribe what you say, it doesn’t work. It all has to be rewritten to be in a book. A bit laborious…It enabled me to say some things that I hoped would be interesting about The Beatles and about how they worked, and some of their songs. So, I enjoyed doing it, but easy? No.

CS: Do you have a favorite Beatles album?

I don’t answer that one. That’s a frequently asked question, and I guess the answer is: “It changes all the time.” If I picked Sgt.Pepper, then someone would defend The White Album, and you’d go, “Shit, this is genius.” You just can’t compare them, so I avoid that question.

CS: Going back to the Streisand album, how long did it take?

About a year, but it wasn’t continuous. A lot of it was organizing schedules.

CS: Did you select singers based on their compatibility with her voice?

Yes, but we didn’t really think it would fit badly with anybody. So I mean, I can’t imagine who wouldn’t sound good with her.  And then the singers we got to work with, obviously, are so good, whether it’s Hozier, or Sam Smith, or Laufey, or Paul. Extraordinary singers in their own right.

CS: Hozier is an astonishing singer.

Very Celtic, and more Celtic than people realise. Extremely Irish in a good way.

CS: How did you get in touch with Jeremy Clyde from Chad and Jeremy?

We’ve known each other for years, many years. We knew each other back in the day, in the 1960s. So getting in touch with him was simply a question of phoning him up. Well, it was so kind of obvious. I mean, the strange coincidence that I mean, if you think about it, you know, the fact that Jeremy sang the low part… His name was second in the billing, which is so strange…We started off life as Gordon and Peter, by the way. The record people told us “Peter and Gordon sounds better”, so who am I to complain. But the fact that it, you know, it was so weird that the appropriate one died at the appropriate time, do you know what I mean? In other words, suddenly we looked around and who was left, but Peter and Jeremy. [Editor’s note: Gordon Waller and Chad Stuart died in 2009 and 2020, respectively.] So, Jeremy and I did some shows together as Peter and Jeremy.

CS:  Did either of you play an instrument on the Peter and Gordon standard “Woman”?

Neither Gordon nor I played, no. There are two versions of that. There’s the version Paul favored that he played drums on, I think.  And then there’s the version that our producer John Burgess did, which is a BIG version. And in that last Beatles documentary, Paul actually talks about that, that he wonders whether I have the small version, which I do have both. The one that came out was the big one, where Gordon was doing his big voice, his big baritone. But no, neither Gordon nor I played on that one.

CS: You worked with Steve Martin; what was it like working with a comedian?

Well, that’s completely different. I mean, the Steve Martin album, I did had nothing to do with comedy. It was a bluegrass album [Love Has Come for You with Edie Brickell]. It was a coincidence that he’s a banjo player and songwriter; secondly, a comedian. Now, if I have done comedy albums, I won the Grammy for “Comedy Album of the Year” at some point because I did an album with Robin Williams, which was a comedy album.

CS: On the subject of comedians, is it true that Mike Myers based Austin Powers on you?

I believe that some of the look of it was.  People say, “Oh, is Austin Powers supposed to be you?” The answer is “No, not at all.” I would never presume that, but I believe there were some photos of me back in the day with the glasses and the bad teeth and the red hair and all that. I had some influence pictorially on the look of Austin Powers.

CS: Having lived in England and the United States, do you think American musicians have a differing methodology to music as opposed to British ones?

No. I think the differences between individual producers and individual musicians is far greater than any national difference overall. Every producer and musician is different, and you hire them based on what you consider their virtues to be. I don’t think there is an overall national difference.

CS: Am I right in saying you received a CBE a few years ago?

Yes. It was great fun. It’s all a bit silly [chuckles], but touching and exciting all the same. Thrilled to get the phone call and thrilled to get through the gates of Buckingham Palace. It was great!

-Eoghan Lyng

Photo: Peter Asher (Keith Putney Productions)