Video Mondays: Peter Asher: Everywhere Man

This documentary is almost like a real-life Forest Gump story, in that Peter Asher seems to have been in every part of the British pop music scene of the 1960s. And as the pop-musician career seemed to fade he moved to becoming a producer and then manager, being one of the first A&R guys for the new Apple Corp (music), helping produce and promote James Taylor’s first album and career.

Unlike all of the musician bio-pics that I’ve seen over the years, no boogie man is blamed for whatever challenges our hero faced or in the end, over came. And they didn’t ignore that he was every bit as participant in the vices of the era, particularly the recreational usage of marijuana. But it was always about the music and enabling musicians like James Taylor or Linda Ronstadt to have the stellar careers that they have had.

Funny thing is given the interesting details of this very singular life, one of the things that I came away with was the notion that if something is important to you, you need to be about doing it every day or live in a way where it’s obvious that this is ones daily routine. This comes from the story that when Paul was living in Peter Asher’s parents home (Paul was dating Peter’s sister, the actress Jane Asher), there was a piano in Pauls upstairs room and a piano in the basement where John and he would work on their music together. And it just got in my head that they set their priority to have a musical instrument at the ready just as a part of daily life. So, I decided that I need to set up my midi-keyboard as well as my guitars, as a part of my daily routines (I got as far as pulling out the piano stand parts from storage… before taking a previously scheduled journey across the ocean, where these words are being written). As the trailer to the movie note, Music has been such an important part of people’s lives, I should make so that I can practice without the need to “set stuff up.” That’s the thing that I came away realizing. Enjoy.