MusicRadar

Peter Asher in 1965, during the height of his fame as part of Peter And Gordon.© Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS

By any measure, Peter Asher has led one heck of a pop life. By 19, as half of the duo Peter And Gordon, he'd already had a No. 1 hit on both side of the Atlantic with the song A World Without Love. (Of course, it didn't hurt that the infectious number was penned by Paul McCartney - the famous Beatle was dating Asher's actress sister, Jane.)

After a few years of singing stardom, Asher grew enamored with record production. He assumed greater control over Peter And Gordon recordings, produced a couple of albums that drew favorable notices, and so, when The Beatles set up Apple Records in early 1968, Asher was picked to head the A&R (Artist & Repertoire) department.

"Right time, right place," Asher says in a somewhat self-deprecating style, before adding, "But you do have to have an idea of what you're doing. Even though those days were a bit crazy and things were moving and changing so quickly, we did have a pretty clear vision for what we wanted to do with Apple, which was to create an environment where we could find and promote talent that otherwise might not get a fair shake elsewhere. We took it very seriously."

On 26 October, Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music will release 15 key albums - remastered, available digitally as well as physically, with many containing bonus cuts - from the Apple Records catalogue by artists such as Badfinger, Jackie Lomax, Billy Preston, Mary Hopkin, and a little-known singer-songwriter and guitarist named James Taylor, whom Asher personally signed and produced.

Taylor's debut album for Apple was not a chart smash, but Asher was so convinced of the artist's talent that he left Apple in 1970 and followed the American-born Taylor back to the States. It was a bold but wise move: Taylor signed to Warner Brothers, and Asher became his manager and producer. The two turned out an unbroken string of hit albums during the '70s and '80s. (Asher would also become crucial to shaping Linda Ronstadt's career; in addition, he produced albums by Bonnie Raitt, Cher and 10,000 Maniacs, among many others.)

Now a partner in Strategic Artist Management, Asher recently reunited with James Taylor to produce the artist's Live At The Troubadour album, with Carole King and Taylor's original backing band. During a bright and early morning in Malibu, California, Asher sat down with MusicRadar to discuss his short-lived heyday at Apple and what it was like to work for The Beatles.

It's interesting: Paul McCartney wrote your first hit, A World Without Love, and he went out with your sister Jane. And yet, after he and Jane broke up, there must have been no hard feelings on his part - he made you head of Apple's A&R department.

"No, there were no hard feelings or anything like that. Paul and I had become good friends. Actually, when The Beatles weren't on the road, he used to stay at our house on Wimpole Street. He pretty much moved into the top floor, really.

"When he moved into his own house on Cavendish Avenue in St John's Wood, our friendship continued. We always got along very well. I'm very bad at dates and the chronology of how everything happened, but when Paul and Jane split up, he and I were fine. I can't remember what stage Apple was at that the time, of course."

So you were a pop star in your own right as part of Peter And Gordon. How did you come to be part of the Apple organization?

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