Latest / Booked On Rock with Eric Senich / "Peter Asher: A Life In Music"/David Jacks [Episode 134]

Transcript

"Peter Asher: A Life In Music"/David Jacks [Episode 134] · Booked On Rock with Eric Senich

0:00
Who We're totally booked. I mean I'll leave you do you're reading Little Hands?
0:06
Is its time to run and roll roll? We are totally booked.
0:15
Welcome back to Booked on Rock, the podcast for those are about to read
0:19
and rock. Make sure you subscribe and follow on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter,
0:23
Instagram and TikTok where you get videos weekly links to all the social media
0:28
sites at booked on rock dot com. David Jackson is our guest to talk
0:32
about his book, Peter Asher, A Life in Music. His book covers
0:36
the life and career of English guitarist, singer, manager, and record producer
0:40
Peter Asher, who was one half of the sixties pop duo Peter and Gordon
0:44
before going on to a successful career as a manager and a legendary career as
0:49
record producer. He's worked with a long list of artists including James Taylor,
0:54
Linda Ronstad, Bonnie Ray Steely, Dan's, Donald Fagan, Diana Ross,
0:58
Share, Neil Diamond, rain D Newman, Kenny Loggins, Morrissey, Ed
1:02
Shearon, and Steve Mark. David jack spoke with Peter himself for the book,
1:07
along with over one hundred artists, friends and colleagues to hear a playlist
1:11
of Peter Asher's work, head over to the show notes page. But first,
1:15
here is David Jacks. David, Welcome to the podcast. Great to
1:23
have you here, nice to be here. Thank you for inviting me.
1:26
You introduced the book by noting Peter being appointed Commander of the Order of the
1:30
British Empire in twenty fifteen for his services to the British music industry. You're
1:34
write quote, if anyone deserves such an honor for their contributions to music and
1:38
culture, it would be Peter Asher, a career spanning over sixty years.
1:42
Can you talk about your chance encounter with Peter and how you were the lucky
1:46
guy to help tell a story. Yes, I worked for many years in
1:51
Los Angeles in the entertainment industry. I was video editor and a music supervisor
1:59
and various things like that, and I was in between jobs, and I
2:02
was trying to think of what else maybe I could do to make some money.
2:06
And I thought, well, maybe I since I know about music to
2:09
a certain extent, I'll write some articles. Maybe I can get something published.
2:15
So that was kind of in my head when I happened to bump into
2:17
Peter. We were standing in line together to order some tacos at some fast
2:24
food joint in Santa Monica, and I thought it was Peter. You know,
2:30
he had his back to me and I'd never met him, but I
2:34
you know, with his voice and what he was talking about to this person
2:37
next to him. When he finished their conversation, I said, well you,
2:42
Peter Ashley said yes, I am. I said, well, I'd
2:45
like to interview you, and he said, well, here's my assistant.
2:47
She'll set it up. And it was that easy. So we did an
2:52
interview and it went really well. Peter seemed impressed. At the end of
2:55
it. He said, yo, you know your stuff. I thought,
2:58
yeah, I know my stuff. So I transcribed it and thought, well,
3:02
this will be a little Q and A. But the more I thought
3:05
about it, I thought, I can't believe nobody has written a book about
3:09
this guy. And so I asked him for a second interview, and when
3:15
I went back with some more questions at the end, I said, well,
3:19
are you going to write an autobiography? And he said no. He
3:22
said I have no interest in doing that. People have asked me and I'm
3:24
not going to do that. And I said, well, i'd like to,
3:28
you know, take a crack at writing a biography, and he looked
3:30
at me like I was nuts. He said, well, who's going to
3:32
want to read it? It's just me? And I said, well,
3:36
I think some people would be interested in a career reading about a career like
3:39
this. So he didn't, you know, say no, he didn't talk
3:43
me out of it. So I would just kept I kept going back,
3:46
you know, year after year with more questions, and I'd talk with a
3:50
group of people and I'd amass, you know, questions from what they told
3:53
me. I'd go back to Peter. Well they said, this is that
3:55
what you remember? So he he was always very gracious with his time,
4:01
and at one point he said, you know, I admire your persistence.
4:06
And I just kept going until finally, you know, we have this my
4:13
first book. I you know, I think it turned out okay. When
4:15
did you become a fan of his? Oh? Well, you know,
4:18
I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show when I was eight, and
4:23
you know, I was already interested in music. My father was an amateur
4:27
musician, and so we had kind of music. When I'd be driving with
4:32
him, we'd always have the radio on and we'd sing together. So I
4:36
saw the Beatles, and of course that lit a big fire. And of
4:43
course soon after the Beatles hit within him a couple of months, you know,
4:46
there was Peter and Gordon and I was buying their records, and then
4:51
I would, you know, later on started seeing his name listed as producer
4:57
on James Taylor and Linda Ronstad like that. You know, as I was
5:00
growing up, I'd see, you know, like George Martin's name on a
5:05
Beatle record as producer. Well, what does a producer do? What does
5:09
that mean? And I was interested in figuring those things out. How our
5:14
records made, how do you do this? So that was one of the
5:17
things I was hoping to do with the book was talk about Peter as a
5:21
producer and what he does in a studio, how he approaches things. Talk
5:27
about the difference between when Peter and Gordon recorded in the sixties in London,
5:30
they had like three hours they had to go in in three hours and basically
5:34
finished three records, whereas when he was a producer in the seventies he kind
5:39
of brought a whole new way of producing to things, where he would you
5:44
get good musicians together and give them the time to come up with an arrangement
5:49
with the groove. Sometimes you know, you may have gotten something done in
5:55
three hours, maybe not. You come back the next day, you try
5:58
it again. So part of what I wanted to do was talking not only
6:02
about Peter's career, but you know how records are made, and before we
6:08
get to his career in music and as a producer, when where is he
6:11
born? What was his life like growing up in London. He was the
6:15
first child of his parents. They had two daughters after him, but he
6:21
was the first out. And most people don't know that he started work in
6:30
the entertainment industry when he was like six or seven. He was a child
6:34
actor. He got a movie role right off the bat. He would played
6:39
Claudet Colbert's son in a movie in England. It was released over here.
6:44
It didn't do very well, and he played Claude Colbert's son, and he
6:48
did other movies, a lot of radio work, television. He was on
6:54
stage in England. So he had a pretty significant career for a while until
7:00
he started at Westminster School, which was a very kind of private institution there
7:06
in London in the shadow of Westminster Abbey. That school had been around since
7:13
Elizabeth the First and you know, once you start going to a school like
7:17
that, you can't really take an awful lot of time for acting and things
7:21
like that. So he kind of let his career go, while of course
7:27
his sister Jane, she had a great career as an actress. Can you
7:31
talk about how his future Gordon and Peter partner Gordon Waller plays a role in
7:35
Peter's desire to turn music from a hobby into a career. Yeah, I
7:40
mean his mother. Peter's mother was a music a professor at the Royal Academy
7:47
of Music and she also was a tutor for students at other schools she taught.
7:53
She tutored George Martin when he was going to music school. He needed
7:57
some oboe lessons, so he was taught by Margaret Asher, and he talked
8:03
about coming over to the house where Margaret had a little music studio and he
8:09
would run into the Asher children running around. But so Peter was already had
8:16
music kind of in his DNA through his mom, and she taught him,
8:22
gave him some mobile lessons as well. He started singing in competitions as a
8:28
as a kid as a boy soprano and sang in choirs and then of course,
8:33
once skiffle music started up, he got a guitar and started playing in
8:39
a skiffle band with some friends, very an amateur kind of thing, and
8:48
I think he didn't necessarily know that music was going to be his career until
8:58
he started. He ran into Gordon at Westminster. He was another student at
9:01
the school, and they just ran into each other at one point and started,
9:07
Oh you play guitar too, Oh you sing too, And they started
9:09
kind of jamming together and realized that their voices really went well together. Gordon
9:16
had this nice, rich baritone and of course Peter had this nice tenor,
9:20
and Gordon said, he told me that Peter was the best harmony singer he'd
9:26
ever sang with. So they started kind of just going and playing at parties
9:33
and maybe playing at the pub someplace for you know, free beer and a
9:37
sandwich, and just kind of working on their on their act. Eventually they
9:43
found someone who got them a nice gig at a place called a Pickwick Club,
9:48
and it was there they ran into an A and R guy from EMI
9:54
who said, oh, why don't you come for an audition? And he
9:58
was thinking of them as being kind of his answer to like the Kingston trio
10:01
or Peter, Paul and Mary back when the folk boom was happening in the
10:07
United States. But of course because of Jane's boyfriend at the time was a
10:16
very good songwriter, Paul McCartney, they were able to get this song which
10:22
the Beatles had decided they weren't going to do, and had a number one
10:26
record right off the bat with A World Without Love and kind of still started
10:31
going down the pop end of things as opposed to the folk. Although there's
10:37
some great folk songs on those records that Peter and Gordon did. They did
10:41
a lot of interesting material everything from folk to jazz or on those albums,
10:46
so they had some wide ranging musical interests there. So yeah, they had,
10:54
you know, hit after hit after hit in the sixties, and so
10:56
that's kind of how Peter and Gordon happened. There are some great stories in
11:01
the book that Peter tells you regarding some of the early Beatles classics being written
11:05
right there in Peter's home in the basement music room. One of them was
11:09
I Want to Hold Your Hand. Yeah, Margaret had this basement music room
11:13
where she gave lessons which she was tutoring school students, and once Paul McCartney
11:20
moved into the house. You know, the Beatles all moved to London,
11:24
and like the spring of nineteen sixty three, because their career was really starting
11:28
to take off, they needed to be close to where it was all happening.
11:33
And they were sharing a an apartment somewhere, but because he was hanging
11:41
out at the Asher's household so much, there was a spare room upstairs next
11:46
to Peter's room, and Margaret just said, well, why don't you just
11:48
moving up there? So sometimes when it was time for Paul to write a
11:56
song with John Lennon, they would go down to the basement music room and
12:01
work on songs there. So at one point, and Peter tells this story
12:05
a lot, where John Lennon comes over, Paul goes downstairs with him.
12:09
They're working on a song for about an hour or so, and then Paul
12:13
calls upstairs to Peter said, why don't you come down and listen to what
12:16
we just wrote, see what you think. And so he comes down the
12:22
little cramped room. There's just really room enough for an upright piano and you
12:26
know, a chair and some bookcases. That's about it. So he sits
12:31
in the chair, and he says, Paul and John sat next to each
12:35
other as the piano and sing I want to hold your hand for the first
12:39
time. Wow, and says Okay, what do you think Peter said,
12:43
yeah, yeah, And of course Peter said, you know. The main
12:46
thing he said to them, which any songwriter wants to hear, is played
12:50
again. Yeah, he wanted immediately, Oh, that was a great played
12:54
again. So that happened, I think on numerous occasions at the Asher Household.
13:00
Of course, Paul tells a story a lot where he wrote yesterday up
13:03
in his room at one point when he woke up out of a dream.
13:07
He kind of dreamed it. But yeah, Paul worked in a lot of
13:11
songs there at the Asher Household. And I think that piano that I mentioned
13:16
is now at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yeah, Peter donated
13:20
it to them. You mentioned The worlds Without Love, which hit number one
13:24
both in the UK and the US. Can you share this story? This
13:28
is in the book. Also in the book is a picture of a piece
13:31
of notebook paper with some of the lyrics to what would become that song,
13:35
The World Without Love. This was an unfinished song that Paul got stuck on
13:39
right. Yeah, Peter was nice enough to let me use that piece of
13:43
paper as an illustration. But because they got this, they did the audition
13:50
at Emi Peter and Gordon and signed a contract, which Peter of course says
13:56
was a terrible contract. So they didn't make a lot of money on those
14:01
records they you know, like A World Without Love. They probably made five
14:05
thousand dollars from that. Even there it was a worldwide hit that you know,
14:09
they weren't being paid a lot, and neither were the Beatles really,
14:11
But so they had their audition, they got the contract, and their producer
14:20
at the time, Norman Newell, said well, okay, you know,
14:26
if you guys come up with any original material that you think we should do,
14:31
you know, let me know, because he was again still thinking of
14:35
them in terms of like a folk act and was thinking of using the old
14:39
folk song five hundred Miles as maybe the first single. But Peter of course,
14:46
sometimes would play a song to I mean, Paul would sometimes play a
14:50
song for Peter that he was working on, and at one point Peter heard
14:58
A World Without Love, which at that point was just basically a verse.
15:01
There was no bridge to it. It was unfinished Paul had brought it up
15:09
to John's attention numerous times, and John hated it and he thought the first
15:13
line was stupid, so Paul just decided, well, that's never going anywhere.
15:18
But Peter liked it and said, well, you know, can we
15:22
can we record this? And Paul said sure. But it got up to
15:28
like a week or two just before the first recording session and it still wasn't
15:33
finished. So they said, please, you know, we need this,
15:37
please finished this song. So Gordon told me that. Paul said all right,
15:43
and he walked up to his room and just a few minutes later came
15:46
down and said, okay, what do you think of this? And played
15:48
them the bridge, which was you know, so I wait and in a
15:52
while that part and they said, great, that's it. So they went
15:56
into the recording studio just a couple of weeks later and that was what they
16:00
recorded, and that was the hit, and a number one hit is born.
16:03
When I started to listen to the music on Spotify and I was looking
16:07
at the pictures of the album covers, I thought, you know this,
16:11
this guy looks a lot like Austin Powers, and it's actually more like Austin
16:15
Powers looks like Peter Asher. Is it true that Mike Myers patterned his look
16:18
after Peter. That's true. It says in the book that Peter told me
16:23
that Mike Myers confessed to him that it was those promotional shots of Peter from
16:32
the sixties that he based that look on, with the glasses and the bad
16:37
teeth. And there's even some pictures of There was a CD that came out
16:42
call I Think what the Best of Peter and Gordon or something like that in
16:45
the early two thousands, and Peter's on the cover wearing this very flowery kind
16:52
of shirt. I mean, it's exactly yes, sacket and the shirt and
16:56
the glasses and the hair, and it looks just like Austin Power, and
17:00
that's that is what he based the look on. Although Peter, you know,
17:04
told me when we were talking about it, he said, well,
17:07
of course I could never compete with Austin Powers on the shaggedelic scale, but
17:12
yes, the look was based on Peter. So Peter and Gordon split up
17:15
around nineteen sixty seven. They did record another album to fulfill their contract with
17:19
the EMI. Gordon wanted to be a solo artist, but Peter told you
17:23
had no interest in going solo. Actually ran his own bookstore for a short
17:26
time, but that wasn't ultimately for him. It's while he's in charge of
17:30
the A and R department at the Beatles Apple Records label where he signs it
17:33
then unknown James Taylor and agrees to produce his nineteen sixty eight debut solo album
17:38
Can you talk about how Peter enters his life? For actually more the other
17:42
way around. James went to Peter's house unannounced and knocked down the door,
17:45
knocked on the door. So, just to back up a couple of years,
17:51
Peter and Gordon of course toured the United States various times, and they
17:55
didn't they weren't a band. It was just the two of them. So
17:57
every time they toured they had to find a acting band for them to accompany
18:02
them. And at one point there was a group from New York called the
18:06
king Bees, and the king Bees did a short tour with Peter and Gordon,
18:11
and one of the guys in the king Bees was a gentleman named Danny
18:15
korschmar guitar player and songwriter producer. So at one point the king Bees broke
18:23
up and Danny started another band with his childhood friend, James Taylor, called
18:29
the Flying Machine and then eventually the Flying Machine broke up, and James Taylor
18:33
told me that he was just decided that he would go to Europe and just
18:38
bust around, take his guitar get by however he could play in the street
18:44
whatever. And Danny, his old friend, gave him Peters contact info and
18:51
said, you know, you might want to contact this guy. He can
18:53
probably help you. So James came to London. He spent a few weeks
18:59
with some friends. He recorded a demo of his songs that he had at
19:03
the time, and then remembered, you know, Danny giving him Peters info,
19:08
and so he came to his house with his demo and said, Danny's
19:12
friend and I brought you this tape to listen to, and Peter put it
19:18
on his reel to reel, and I spoke with Peter's then wife Betsy,
19:23
and Betsy told me that before the first song was over, they just looked
19:26
at each other with their mouths open. They couldn't believe how good this guy
19:30
was. And Peter said, well, you know, I just got signed
19:37
to be head of A and R for this new record label. I'd like
19:40
to sign you So that's how James Taylor got his first record deal. He
19:45
was the first person that Apple Records signed, and they made an album.
19:49
It didn't do that well. And then when Apple started to kind of fall
19:55
apart within a year and Alan Klein came in, the whole atmosphere kind of
20:02
changed, and Peter decided, well, he didn't really feel like having Alan
20:04
Klein for a boss, and he just took James Taylor came to the United
20:08
States and within about a year signed a new deal with Warner Brothers and they
20:14
made Sweet Baby Janes, which of course was a huge hit. What was
20:18
it about Apple they were unhappy with and how were they able to eventually free
20:22
James from Apple and make the move to Warner Brothers. Well, you know,
20:26
it's one thing when your friends the Beatles are running things. But the
20:33
Beatles started, you know, there was a lot of business bickering going on,
20:37
and it was a little chaotic, to say the least. Alan Klein
20:42
was hired to come in and kind of take over. And actually Betsy,
20:48
Peter's first wife, had worked for Alan Klein in New York for his company
20:53
and had told Peter some stories. Peter didn't think he could be trusted real
21:00
business wise, and the atmosphere has kind of changed. He started, you
21:07
know, he got rid of Zapple Records. He shuddered that, he started
21:11
firing a lot of people, and I think Peter just thought, you know,
21:15
this is you know, the whole atmosphere has changed. This isn't my
21:18
scene anymore, and decided to pick up and try to go elsewhere and see
21:26
what he could do. He got hired actually first who to be ahead of
21:30
A and R for MGM Records right off the bat. But then that also
21:37
the whole business changed at MGM and everyone got fired before he could really do
21:44
much of anything. And then they moved to Los Angeles and signed the deal
21:48
to do to make a Sweet Baby James. But yeah, he just thought
21:52
that, you know. And also James Taylor had a meeting with Alan Klein
21:56
and Peter told me that that eating didn't go very well either. And as
22:02
far as getting out of the contract, they just kind of left. And
22:07
when Peter made the deal with Warner Brothers for Sweet Baby James, he told
22:11
him, he said, you know, we don't have you know, a
22:15
torn up contract or permission to leave or anything. So he had Warner Brothers
22:19
and it's in the book write the deal so that it would indemnify Peter and
22:25
James if if Alan and Apple decided to soothe them, that they wouldn't be
22:30
on the hook for it. And a gentleman named nat Weiss, who was
22:37
a business associate of Brian Epstein and had been kind of a confidant to the
22:44
Beatles, actually partnered up with Peter when he came over and started up his
22:51
management company and helped him a lot. But nat Weiss actually told me that
22:57
he spoke to George Harry person and tried to, you know, convince him
23:03
that, you know, just let let James go. And he said,
23:07
he said, he said, I'll never forget it. He said. George
23:11
said, well, I don't want to be a Twitter or twat, meaning
23:15
that you know, there are two ways to look at it. You know,
23:18
I don't want to be I don't want to stand in the way of
23:19
another artist. But at the same time, I don't want to be,
23:22
you know, a jerk business wise and let a good artist go. So
23:27
you know, he kind of had to eventually. I think they also spoke
23:33
with Paul McCartney, and McCartney eventually, you know, went to Klein and
23:36
said, you know, let's just let the guy go, don't you know?
23:38
Yeah? For that second album, both Peter and James have by now
23:42
made the move to Los Angeles and they're with Warner Brothers. Sweet Baby James
23:47
is the name of the album, recorded in December of nineteen sixty nine,
23:49
released in early seventy. The title track, Fire and Rain, Country Road
23:53
and Sunny Skies are the singles. The songs were worked out in Peter's living
23:59
room and then we recorded at Sunset Sound Studios with a band of Stellar musicians
24:03
including Danny Korchmar on guitar, Randy Meisner of The Eagles on bass, Carol
24:07
King on piano and backing vocals, Ross Kunkel on drums, and Lease Sklar
24:14
on bass. Actually Lee's not on the album. They did end up recording
24:18
Country Roads again for the single release, and on the single release, Lee
24:23
Sclars piece on that one. Okay, talk about Peter's contributions and a method
24:27
he would use for the next decade and beyond. Korchmar told you about Peter's
24:33
approach and something called the ensemble. Well, that's what I was saying earlier
24:37
when when Peter was starting his career as a producer really, especially with that
24:42
album. He would hire, you know, perceptive musicians. They would rehearse.
24:48
They like you said, they rehearsed in Peter's living room. They would
24:52
rehearse, they'd get the songs down, and then Peter would pretty much cut
24:56
them live. But yeah, hire you know, perceptive musicians going through the
25:03
songs um and you know Peter, I think James Taylor told me that,
25:11
you know, a producer is something like a director in movies. So you're
25:15
hiring the cast, you're bringing the right people to play them, to play
25:21
the music. And but that's something that Peter is really good at is is
25:25
finding really good musicians that were really would would fit, would would would work
25:32
on James's song, come up with a really good part that wouldn't get in
25:37
the way of James or whoever it is that we're talking about that Peter's producing,
25:41
would come up with a good part and not get in the way,
25:44
do what they need to do, run through it a few times, figure
25:48
out, oh, who's going to sing the high part, who's going to
25:51
sing the low part, kind of do a head arrangement. I mean,
25:56
on all those James Taylor records, that Peter produced. There nothing was written
26:00
down, so those musicians, you know, had to be good enough to
26:06
James would run through the song. They'd figure out a good bass part or
26:10
whatever. Kunkle was a great drummer, very much in the ringo star mode.
26:17
Where's he's musical. You know, you're kind of you're telling a story
26:21
musically, so you know when to emphasize this, when to lay back,
26:26
when to be quiet. You know, being quiet as just as important as
26:30
you know, playing something. Don't fill a hole where there's a hole just
26:34
to fill the hole, and all that sort of thing. So Peter would
26:37
give them, like I said, the room to find the groove U and
26:42
then they would cut it live. And that's pretty much the way he worked
26:45
for all those Linda Ronstat records. I mean things like That'll be the Day,
26:52
which was a big hit for Linda, the Buddy Holly song, and
26:56
that was live. She was singing live. They were playing live, even
27:00
the background vocals. They're live, and you got to have good people to
27:04
do that. Booked on Rod podcast will return after this. David Jackson is
27:11
our guest to talk about his book Peter Asher, A Life in Music,
27:14
which is out now I want to go back to that first album under Apple
27:18
because there is a familiar song title, but the song itself is different from
27:21
the one that most know Carolina in my mind, the version included on James
27:26
Taylor's Best Self from nineteen seventy six is very different. The story behind that
27:30
new recording is in your book. Warner Brothers asked Peter if James would re
27:36
record that song and something in the way she moves from the Apple Records album,
27:41
but that didn't happen. Can you explain why that was? Yes,
27:44
Well, if you recall in the late seventies early eighties, for a while,
27:52
Apple was and you know, there were a lot of lawsuits going on
27:57
between the Beatles, between Apple and Capitol. I mean it's like, you
28:02
know, just law your heaven for a while. And so those tapes,
28:10
those sessions were kind of in this limbo where you couldn't just license them,
28:17
which you know would have been the easy thing to do. And so because
28:22
they weren't available, and Warner Brothers one of those two songs on that Greatest
28:26
Hits album, they needed to rerecord them, and Peter was always and even
28:34
James Taylor told me that though that first album was a little overproduced. Peter
28:41
was so enamored of James and the talent and the songs that he wanted to
28:47
make them stand out from the folk world. So he, uh, you
28:52
know, there's some string quartet on it. They're fuller production. I mean
28:56
even you know, Carolina in my mind the first time I heard it on
29:00
the radio, it's a great production. But by the time James Taylor became
29:06
a hit with Fire and Rain and those Warner Brothers records, he was doing
29:12
things much more low key and acoustic. And so since they had been doing
29:18
Carolina in my mind in that way for a few years now live, it
29:25
was like, whoa, let's just do it in that way, not try
29:26
to recreate that original version. So it's much more like I said, to
29:32
ACOUSTICI and so a little slower. So that's the way those two songs were
29:37
done for the for the greatest hits. But I still tell you the truth,
29:42
I prefer the Apple. Do you really wow? Interesting? It's a
29:47
great record. Yeah, great record, And of course Paul McCartney plays a
29:49
great bass line on it too. You got this great bass player on it,
29:53
and nothing against the least Clarry. He's a great bass player too,
29:56
But I don't know, I just I just prefer the poppier, yeah,
30:00
faster version, but that's just me. Peter also managed Linda Ronstat produced several
30:06
of her albums, starting with nineteen seventy threes Don't Cry Now, her first
30:10
to go gold, reached number forty five. The next is nineteen seventy four's
30:14
Heart Like a Wheel. This is the Big One, a number one album,
30:17
two times platinum, A number one single, You're No Good a number
30:19
two single when Will I Be Loved. Peter had a chance to work with
30:23
Linda earlier, but that did not happen. The second opportunity he had to
30:27
work with her he jumped on. At this time, Linda wanted him to
30:32
manage her earlier, but he didn't. Why was that, well, I
30:34
mean, this was at the beginning of his forming Peter Asher Management. Once
30:40
they came to Los Angeles and he had James Taylor, of course, and
30:45
then he had also taken up James's sister, Kate Taylor. He started managing
30:51
her and he produced an album for her and I Think for even though at
30:57
first when Linda Ronstad asked him to produce her he said yes, but then
31:03
when he thought about it. It was like, well, you know,
31:06
I'm going to have my hands full with James. And also, you know,
31:10
James was ascending very quickly, and he was also trying to get Kate
31:15
Taylor's career going. And then I think he thought taking up Linda Ron said
31:19
at that time that somebody was going to get short changed. And you know,
31:23
he's a very very fair minded guy, and at that time, I
31:27
mean, it was just him. He didn't have like a lot of assistants
31:30
and stuff that maybe could take over for this person or that person. So
31:36
he just said, well, you know, I think I'd better just stick
31:37
with these two clients right now. And so he didn't. He didn't take
31:41
up Linda Ron said as a client as a manager. But then a couple
31:47
of years later he did say yes because Kate Taylor was going to kind of
31:55
retire for a while. She had decided that, you know, the music
31:57
career was taking her away from from home. Basically, she just wanted to
32:06
spend more time at home. And so because she was gonna kind of back
32:10
off, she told Linda, well, why don't you ask Peter again,
32:14
because I'm not going to be doing this for much longer. So Peter said,
32:16
yeah, so he signed her up to represent her. Well, I
32:22
say signed her up. They never signed a contract. I mean I was
32:27
amazed. I mean the Peter and Linda what they achieved over the next you
32:32
know, fifteen years or so. I'm a massive success both him managing her
32:39
and producing these great records. But they she never signed a contract with like
32:45
a handshake. So it's just like, well, if we want to work
32:49
together, we'll keep working together, and when we decide not to, then
32:52
that'll dissolve the partnership. But yeah, I mean, these days, you
32:58
know, somebody like Linda Ronstadt or and a manager, a top manager like
33:01
Peter Ashley, you know, there'd be a one hundred page document that you'd
33:06
have to go through, lawyers involved. Yeah, you know, it's just
33:09
amazing that they could just kind of just agree like, Okay, let's do
33:14
this and have this great, successful string of records and a great career.
33:19
Um. I just I just found that amazing. And they had a great
33:22
relationship. Peter told you that he did something with Linda that not everyone did
33:27
back then, especially to women. He actually listened to her ideas. Yeah,
33:30
exactly. She found this song heart like a Wheel and wanted to do
33:35
it, and she would play it. She told me she would play for
33:37
various people that were you know, either producers or you know, A and
33:42
R people or whatever, and they just go, what are you crazy,
33:44
that's not a hit, you know, and she go, oh, it
33:46
doesn't matter, it's not a hit. It's a great song, you know.
33:49
But they didn't want her to record it. But she played it for
33:52
Peter. Of course, by the time they got around to putting songs together
33:57
for like a Wheel, and you know, he loved it and he was
34:00
like, yeah, we got to do that. So she said, you
34:02
know, that was the difference between Peter and a lot of other people in
34:07
the recording industry there is that he had a much, you know, finer
34:12
sense of you know, great songs. You know, you're not just looking
34:17
for a hit, you're just looking for great songs. I mean, even
34:21
with the Heart with Sweet Baby James, he said, you know, we
34:24
had no idea what was going to be hit on that album. We didn't
34:28
record the album to have hits on it. We just wanted to make a
34:30
great album. And then we had to figure out, well, what did
34:34
we put out as a single. And I think I mean Peter certainly knows
34:38
when he hears a song that it's going to be a hit, but he
34:40
also understands that, you know, a great song is a great song.
34:45
You know, don't have to record it just because you want to hit.
34:49
You record it because it's a great song. And Linda of course has you
34:53
know, she knows what she should sing. I mean, I think Danny
34:58
Kortchmar told me that, you know, the great thing about Linda is not
35:01
just that you have a great voice, but you know what you should use
35:06
that voice on, what you should be singing. And so they approached music
35:12
that way, and I think that's the right way to do it. And
35:15
speaking of that song hard like a Wheel, there's a picture in the book
35:17
of Peter recording the song at the Sound Factory in Los Angeles, by the
35:21
way, and a great story behind how Linda was introduced to this song by
35:24
singer songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker. They were up partying in New York one time,
35:30
and it was you know, they had spent all night at someone's house
35:32
singing songs and this and that, and so then she and Jerry Jeff Walker
35:37
jump in a cab, you know, and the sun's coming up at this
35:39
point, and she said that that Jerry Jeff Walker said, oh, do
35:45
you know about the McGarrigle sisters, these Canadian sisters who sing and play right
35:52
songs? And he said, oh, I just you know, was at
35:55
some folk festival with them and they sang this song. And so he sings
36:00
her, you know, the first few lines of art like a wheel in
36:04
the back of the cab, and she goes, you know, she said
36:07
she thought it was the greatest songs you'd ever heard, and so she was
36:13
able, you know, she said, can you can they get me a
36:15
tape of that song? And so they sent her a tape of it,
36:19
and uh, and that's that's how that. Now, this is just a
36:22
side note. When I was first writing this book, I had interviewed both
36:30
Chris Darrow, who was a guy who backed Linda Ronstat for a few years,
36:37
and also Maria Muldar, who was an old friend of Linda's, and
36:44
they both told me a different story about how she heard the song. So
36:47
I wrote up that story. And then when I gave this book to Linda
36:52
Ronstat for her to look at and and let me know if I got anything
36:55
wrong, she uh, I was trying to get her to, you know,
37:00
write like a blurb on the back of the book, which she eventually
37:02
did. But I said, well, here, read the book. If
37:05
I'm trying to get you to write a nice blurb on it, you should
37:08
read it. So but she got back to me she said, well,
37:13
this story is completely wrong, but aren't like a wheel. But the book
37:15
had already been set in type by the publisher, and I said, well,
37:22
I need to change this page because the whole opening page of that chapter
37:25
talked about the song. And they said, well, they said, oh,
37:30
okay, we'll let you change this page. But the way you have
37:35
to do it is you have to have the same number of lines and it
37:39
has to end end the last sentence on the page, so that goes into
37:45
the next page. That was an interesting, you know, a little thing
37:49
I had to go through, but it worked out. I was glad that,
37:52
you know. I tried not to have anything in there that wasn't really
37:55
correct, and I did the same thing with when I was finished with the
38:00
book. It's the first time I interviewed him, or the second time,
38:04
I think. Once I had thought that I'm going to do this as a
38:07
book, I said, if I do this. You know, I certainly
38:10
don't want to get anything wrong. So if I do get a publisher,
38:15
I'm going to give you the book and you have to tell me if I
38:17
got something wrong. And I said fine. So when I was done with
38:22
a book, I gave it to him and I said, okay, here
38:23
you go tell me if I got something wrong. And he said, well,
38:28
you know, if accuracy is the goal, we should do this together.
38:31
So he had me come over to his house and for six hours we
38:36
sat there and he just scammed through the book. Scary. He'd stop and
38:38
he go, oh, you know, i'd use a different word here,
38:43
this isn't quite right, or no, this story isn't right. It actually
38:46
it was more like this. So he correct a couple of things as we
38:50
went through it. But I thought, who who else would sit here for
38:54
six hours and go through this book, you know, with the the writer
39:01
and correct things. I mean I was. I was amazed. I mean
39:06
for six hours, yeah, you know, And then he brought in some
39:08
food. It was time for you know. We started like nine or ten
39:13
o'clock in the morning and Lance he brought up a couple of sandwiches and we
39:15
kept going and I was impressed, you know, and Peter made the cover
39:20
of Rolling Stone in late December nineteen seventy seven. What a thrill that was
39:23
for him. He told you the story behind this and how he had to
39:27
get James Taylor and Linda Ronstat to be part of it. Otherwise he wasn't
39:30
going to be on the cover, right, Yeah, he didn't have to.
39:32
But they said, well, if you want to want to do a
39:35
story on you, and we're thinking of putting you on the cover, but
39:42
we will probably definitely put you on the cover if you have James Taylor and
39:47
Thenda Ronstat standing next to you, which were at the time, you know,
39:52
his two big clients. And he told me, he said, you
39:54
know, usually as a manager, I talked to a a client and you
40:00
know, if there's an offer, you know, we weighed the pros and
40:04
the cons. And he said, but in this case, you know,
40:07
do I want to be on the cover of Rolling Rolling Stone? You know
40:09
fs so, so he said, he kind of like browbeated both Linda and
40:15
James to be there for Annie Liebovitz to uh to take the picture that ended
40:22
up on the cover, because that was the first time in Rolling Stones' history
40:29
I think they don't. I think Rolling Stone began in like nineteen sixty seven,
40:31
if I'm not correct, So this is like nineteen seventy seven, and
40:36
by now they're you know, they're now like culturally a big deal. And
40:43
and this was the first time they put a manager slash producer you know,
40:47
on the cover is like the main story. So that for him, you
40:52
know, it was a big kind of a feather in the cap for him,
40:55
showing how far he had come in ten years since Peter and Gordon stopped
41:04
that. Now he's you know, like one of the biggest manager and producer
41:08
pretty much at the time in Los Angeles. Yeah, and he knew how
41:12
to handle artists too, which was not an easy task. But from the
41:15
people you spoke with, Peter Asher could handle that job. Drummer Rick Marata
41:21
and Linda Runstat talked about this, talked about how Peter handled talent. He
41:23
was a nice guy, but he wasn't afraid to call them out if he
41:27
felt their egos were getting out of control. Yeah. Yeah, uh,
41:32
you know, there are a lot of artists that are you know, troubled,
41:37
troubled people in one way or another, and you know, in those
41:43
days, as the record industry continued to kind of explode and get more and
41:47
more culturally important. Sometimes your ego can get away from you and you start
41:54
taking drugs, or you're acting like a jerk and eating people bad, or
42:00
you know whatever. With all this money and drugs and fame, you know,
42:05
it can do something to your head. And Peter was very level headed
42:09
and honest with people, and I think Linda Ronsett was saying that, you
42:15
know, the most, a lot of people didn't have someone next to them
42:17
like Peter who would say, do you know you're acting badly? Do you
42:22
know that this isn't right? Do you know that you know you're you're this
42:27
or you're that? I mean, he would he didn't scream at people,
42:30
he didn't, but he would he would be honest and straightforward with them and
42:35
try to although Linda's you know, Linda said, you know, it's doesn't
42:39
mean that you know, we didn't do inappropriate stuff. We were doing it
42:43
all the time, but at least we had somebody there that would be honest
42:47
and straightforward with us and kind of, you know, not not talk down
42:52
to you, but talk to you like a friend, talk like you know,
42:57
a brother and say you know, this isn't right. You know,
43:00
you really should, you know, get your act together a little bit here,
43:04
because you're going you're going off the rails. There's a story in there
43:08
about how you know this was he was producing someone and it was like the
43:13
first it was just like their big break, you know, to make this
43:16
album and Peter was producing it and things got a little too overwhelming, you
43:21
know, and they started kind of breaking down and crying and you know,
43:23
with the pressure and Peter, could you know, just stop everything and take
43:30
them to another room and sit with them and talk to them and and kind
43:34
of make sure they understood that, you know that you know they were they
43:37
were good, they were they were on the right path. You know.
43:40
I know things are a little crazy right now, but just take your time,
43:45
get yourself back together and we'll continue. But but you're great, you
43:50
know, we're getting some good stuff here. You know, don't worry.
43:52
You're in good hands. And and someone that's sensitive enough to you know,
43:59
to treat someone like a human being, which sometimes doesn't happen well. Among
44:05
Peter's many talents is writing wonderfully horrible letters. This is according to his wife
44:09
Wendy. What did she have to say about that. Well, yeah,
44:14
I talk a little bit about how I guess there was some mix up.
44:19
He was doing a record with Diana Ross. He's done a couple of records
44:22
with Diana Ross, and in the process of making the record, they would
44:29
stop, you know, at least once a week and make a cassette at
44:35
those days, an audio cassette of like rough mixes of where they were all
44:39
right, now we've added you know, the lead guitar, or now we've
44:42
added some of the vocals, and they would send it on to the record
44:46
company, and then they were getting ready to do the final step, which
44:51
was fly to London and put the do the strings session. And at that
44:57
point someone and the higher up picked up one of the cassettes and listened to
45:04
it, and they listened to like the first one when they had hardly done
45:07
anything. Basically, they weren't really paying attention to all this work that they
45:12
were doing and giving them, and now they suddenly went, oh, you're
45:15
not ready to go to London, and they halted the whole thing. And
45:19
Peter of course, was very obset that they weren't really following along with all
45:24
the cassettes that they had been giving them showing them the progress. And now
45:29
they had canceled this session, they were on their way to London to do
45:31
so. He wrote them a letter which basically, you know, just dressed
45:35
them down massively. But Peter, being the very educated, very smart and
45:45
English, very English person that he is, when you're reading this letter,
45:50
obviously he's tearing you a new one, but he's doing it in the most
45:53
polite and intelligent way. That he writes these great letters which are like awful
46:00
as far as the person who's reading it, but he does it so nicely
46:06
that Wendy said, his wife, that she takes advantage of that sometimes when
46:10
she wants to tell someone what she really thinks of whatever, you know,
46:15
thing that has just happened, someone doing something wrong, and she'll get Peter
46:20
to write the letter, because he writes such great, you know, awful
46:23
letters to someone. She'll take advantage of that. And I think in the
46:28
book, I say she said that, you know, Peter, well,
46:30
wait, have I gone too far? Here? It say no, no,
46:32
no, no, you haven't gone too far. Keep going. That's
46:36
great, hey, Bonnie Rate, that's another famous artist that Peter works with.
46:40
He's worked with so many. One of the greatest voices in music history.
46:44
Peter told you he admires her immensely, no surprise there. He ran
46:47
into her occasionally at parties and gigs, but in nineteen seventy nine he was
46:52
brought in to work with Bonnie on her album The Glow. Peter and Bonnie
46:54
were determined to get her that breakthrough album she deserved, but it didn't happen.
47:00
Did good number thirty spot on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, but you're
47:02
listening to the albums should have gone higher. I think a song like standing
47:06
by the same old Love is a great track for radio. Sleeps Dark and
47:09
Silent Gait another great radio track. You say it was just bad timing,
47:15
Yeah, because if you listen to the album, like you said, there's
47:17
one great track after another, and she's singing great, she's playing great,
47:21
the musicians, the song choices. But you know, you got to have
47:30
good promotion behind you, especially in those days. And I think Warner Brothers
47:37
at the time the same week that album came out, I think Tusk by
47:44
Fleetwood Mac, and they were coming off that their gigantic success with Rumors,
47:49
and so I think they were placing all their promotional eggs in the tusk basket
47:54
and really didn't push Bonnie all that well. So yeah, it kind of
48:00
got lost in the shuffle. And sometimes it happens. There's a lot of
48:05
I talk in the in the book about other albums that really didn't get their
48:08
due that Peter produced, and a lot of it usually has to do with,
48:13
you know, how the record label treats it when they're when they're putting
48:17
it out, And I think in this case that was that was the case.
48:22
Um, they just didn't promote it all that well. Um, but
48:25
it's a great album. There's a great quote in the book and I have
48:29
to read Peter worked with Neil Diamond, and he gave you a great quote.
48:31
He compared Neil Diamond to Bob Dylan, saying, quote, they absolutely
48:37
are in the exact same role in life. I wrote these songs, people
48:40
like them, I go out and sing them. They have different approaches.
48:44
Neil is a very serious crowd pleaser and Dylan is very seriously a crowd confuser.
48:50
But the essence of what they do their job is exactly the same.
48:53
A great quote. Yeah, that's that's a good one. But yeah,
48:58
he worked with Neil Diamond on a few albums. I think the first few
49:02
albums that the projects that they did, he was just producing a handful of
49:07
songs. But on a number of occasions they did do an entire album together.
49:12
And but yeah, he's a he's a big Neil Diamond fan, certainly
49:16
Peter is. And he told me this fun story about they were doing a
49:21
Christmas album together, the first Christmas album that Neil did. He's done a
49:25
bunch since then, but the very first one that Peter Peter produced it.
49:30
And he said, he said that they were listening back. It was a
49:36
playback to one song, and and Neil said, doesn't this seem strange?
49:44
And you know, I may not be quoting it right, but you know,
49:47
and Peter said, well, what he said? You know, a
49:51
jew being produced by an atheist doing a Christmas song. He said, yeah,
49:59
yes, Neil is a little strange. But yeah, he said that
50:02
Neil has a great sense of humor and he loved working with him. Yeah,
50:07
and at seventy eight, about to turn seventy nine on June twenty second,
50:10
and early happy birthday to Peter Asher, he has no plans to retire.
50:14
What's he working on these days? Yeah? There was a new album
50:16
that he produced. It just came out a couple of weeks ago. For
50:19
Susannah Hoffs, the lead singer of the Bengals, is what she's known as.
50:23
I think she's about to be more well known as a as a best
50:28
selling author. She has a book out, and she's writing the screenplay for
50:31
the movie. I think she's already sold the rights. She's writing the screenplay
50:36
for it. So she is, I mean, a very smart woman as
50:42
well as talented and pretty. But he just produced her new album, like
50:47
I said, just came out. He is certainly well. I ended the
50:52
book by talking about I was interviewing Peter and he said, you know,
50:58
it is that thing where you have to keep her minding people that you're not
51:00
either dead or deaf. Yeah, that is that he is available for work.
51:06
And the greatest thing happened just a couple of months ago. Someone contacted
51:13
me and they said, oh, I read this book. You're Peter Asher
51:15
book. I loved it. I'd like to talk with you a little bit
51:17
about it. And I wasn't quite sure who this guy was, but it
51:22
turned out that he is a very somewhat well known producer and record executive and
51:31
He told me that after reading Peter's book and getting to the end of it
51:36
there where Peter was going, yeah, I'm available for work, and he
51:38
said, oh, you know, and I realized I had this artist and
51:42
I won't name them because the deal has been done, but he said,
51:46
I'd love to put Peter together with this person and see if I could get
51:51
them to do an album. And I said, well, great, yeah,
51:53
here's Peter's contact info. But you know, that's one of the things
51:58
I was hoping what happened with the book was that people realize how talented this
52:02
guy is he still is, and that he does want to keep working,
52:07
and so yeah, I was thrilled to be the midwife. Hopefully if this
52:13
happens to go, yeah, here's here's his info. And they have gotten
52:15
together and spoken about it, so hopefully it will happen. But the other
52:22
thing I was hoping to do, I mean, I do go into a
52:23
lot of detail here and there about records that Peter has done. And Peter
52:29
actually told me, he said, you know, maybe the book would be
52:31
better if you left out some of these projects that weren't that successful. But
52:37
some of the stuff that ended up not being successful, I think were great,
52:43
and I wanted to. I mean, my hope is that people will
52:45
be reading the book and we'll have you know, Spotify or YouTube, you
52:51
know, on nearby, so that when they get to something that they haven't
52:53
heard before, they'll listen to it. He's rarely, you know, made
52:58
what you would call a clunker, you know. I mean, I can't
53:00
think of one. Some obviously are more successful than others. But anything that
53:06
Peter puts his head in his hands too has something to offer you, and
53:15
hopefully you will listen to them. There are a lot of people that are
53:19
successful as being a performer, and there are some people that are successful at
53:22
being record producers, and then there's a few people that are successful at being
53:28
managers. To have somebody who has been successful at all those things and in
53:34
such a broad way. I mean, he's produced not just rock and pop
53:37
and country, but Latin and comedy album. He did a Robin Williams comedy
53:42
album. He's done all kinds of stuff and he's done he's done them all
53:45
incredibly well. So I just wanted to make sure people knew it. David
53:52
Jack's book is called Peter Asher, A Life in Music. It is out
53:55
now through Backbeat Books available wherever books are sold, and where can people find
54:00
you online? David oh I did put a site together for the book.
54:05
It's called It's Very Easy Peter asherbook dot com and there's an extensive discography online
54:13
as well. Great, so y'all put a link to your website in the
54:15
show notes page. Yes, thanks for being on the podcast, David,
54:19
I appreciate it. Thank you. Eric. That's it. It's in the books.