The ECHO has taken a look at Peter Asher's life as a new documentary on his career arrived in UK cinemas

Peter Asher has lived one of the great showbiz stories. The child star turned pop star turned record producer was at the centre of pop culture through the latter half of the 20th century.

His remarkable life story has been told in a new documentary titled Peter Asher: Everywhere Man. Filmmakers Dan Geller and Dayna Goldfine brought the movie to Liverpool for a special screening at FACT Picturehouse on Sunday (November 1). The San Francisco couple insisted on a screening in Liverpool as Peter's contribution to the Beatles story means he is a vital part of the city's history.

Dan told the ECHO: "It's amazing to do this. There's such a connection because so much of Peter's earlier life and the propulsion behind his career comes out of the Beatles, Paul and Apple Corps." You can read the full feature interview with the directors here.

Peter was a close confidant to all the Fab Four as Paul McCartney lived in his family house after he first moved to London at the start of Beatlemania. Sir Paul was in a high profile relationship with Peter's sister, Jane Asher, and it was during this time when he broadened his artistic horizons in the counter cultural movement of the Swinging 60s.

Peter's bond with the band remained after the couple split as he was appointed the first head of A&R at Apple Corps. He also founded Indica Gallery in London, which was famous as the location where John Lennon met Yoko Ono.

However, a scene in the movie sees Peter hilariously reject the idea he was indirectly responsible for The Beatles breaking up. The 82-year-old remains as busy as ever touring his musical memoir and we have trawled our archives to find some great images from one of his showbiz's great lives.

Source: liverpoolecho.co.uk/Ryan Paton

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George Harrison never had any interest in reuniting the Beatles after the band’s breakup in 1970. While several members collaborated during their solo years — David Bowie even claimed he, John Lennon and Paul McCartney once discussed forming a group — the Fab Four never returned to the studio or stage together.

But Harrison hadn’t completely soured on his former bandmates. As he revealed in a 1974 press conference, he was open to forming a new band with one Beatle in particular.

The Beatles’ breakup came at an unfortunate time for Harrison. After years of being overshadowed by the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, he was flourishing as both a writer and guitarist. Songs like “Something,” “Here Comes the Sun” and “Old Brown Shoe” proved he could match his bandmates as a songwriter, while his increasingly distinctive guitar work established him as one of rock’s most original stylists.

The release of All Things Must Pass, his ambitious 1970 solo debut, vindicated years of frustration. Powered by the hits “My Sweet Lord” and “What Is Life,” it became the most commercially successful solo album by any former Beatle in the immediate aftermath of the split.

By 1974, Harrison was preparing to launch the tour behind Dark Horse with a band that included organist Billy Preston, bassist Willie Weeks, drummer Andy Newmark and a young Robben Ford. During a press conference promoting the tour, he made it clear that a Beatles reunion held little appeal — but revealed there was one former bandmate he’d happily work with again.

“It’s all a fantasy, the idea of putting the Beatles back together again,” he said, as recounted in the book George Harrison on George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters. “If we ever do that, the reason will be that we are all broke. I’d rather have Willie Weeks on bass than Paul McCartney. That’s the truth, with all respect to Paul.

“Paul is a fine bass player,” he admitted, “but he’s a bit overpowering at times.”

Source: guitarplayer.com/Phil Weller

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Phil McDonald, the record producer and recording engineer who worked on some of The Beatles' final records, has died at the age of 80.

His death was announced by Abbey Road Studios in a statement on its website. The studio paid tribute to a man who shared a Grammy for his work on the album Abbey Road. It read: "We’re saddened to announce the passing of the wonderful Phil McDonald.

“Phil was a highly skilled, deeply trusted, and much-loved engineer who started working here in 1964 at the age of 18. A man who went on to become one of the few credited on the back cover of Abbey Road, he started out in our tape library and worked in the cutting rooms before making the transition to tape op, and soon, balance engineer.”

The statement continued: “His first session with The Beatles is documented as 17 June 1965 for ‘Yesterday.’ The following years working on Revolver, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album, he would’ve been trained up by the likes of Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott before taking a central role in the recording of Abbey Road.

“Phil’s philosophy was always to get as close as possible to recording the true sound he heard in the studio.

“Transitioning to Apple Records around 1971 and through 1974, Phil worked with all four Beatles on their first solo projects, before lending his talents to some of the world’s biggest artists including Eric Clapton, Harry Nilsson, Deep Purple, Squeeze and Roy Orbison.

"Across his career, Phil contributed to some of the most influential albums of all time: All Things Must Pass, Imagine, McCartney I, The Madcap Laughs, Plastic Ono Band, Deep Purple In Rock, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Living In The Material World, A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, Traveling Wilburys Vol.1, Mystery Girl and so many more.”

Source: the-independent.com/Greg Evans

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We’re rewriting history again today as we revisit a year when one band completely took over and overshadowed many classic songs that deserved better. Today we put those songs where they belong at #1. Including The Drifters Under the Boardwalk, a song that was recorded just a day after an iconic band’s lead singer passed away. Their singer was gone, but they still had a session planned, so an outsider walked in and sang a perfect vocal that gave them their most famous hit. Plus the Innocent Classic by the Zombies, She’s Not There, that got banned nationwide 37 years after it peaked on the charts for offensive lyrics, but everyone’s still trying to figure out what was offensive about it, including the band who’s here to comment. Plus the creepy song Last Kiss that was inspired by a fatal car crash, but it got even creepier after the song became a hit, and life imitated art when the band got into a fan carwreck that would destroy their group. Plus, I tracked down the mysterious girl behind the classic Beach Boys car song Fun Fun Fun, who got in trouble for driving her dad’s T-Bird. And lastly the biggest band in the world The Beatles took over the charts for one fateful week they made up 7 of the top 10 spots on the countdown but their best song, that was ruled by their singer’s sick as a dog vocal missed #1…Let’s do it.

Source: 1057thepoint.com/

Thirty years after Sir Paul McCartney helped open the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts (LIPA) in a former Liverpool school, the institution has reached a milestone that blends history with a new beginning. At its 2026 graduation ceremony, LIPA conferred its first LIPA degrees and celebrated more than 400 graduating students from 28 countries. The event, held on 21 July at the Liverpool Experience Campus, also honoured leading figures from film, theatre, music and arts management, with McCartney present as the institute’s Founding Patron. Read more details about it, as per LIPA's website, here:

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TOI World Desk / TIMESOFINDIA.COM

Both men agreed that John wrote just one line of “I Saw Her Standing There”, changing Paul’s “she’d never been a beauty queen” to “you know what I mean”, but contentious disputes over some of The Beatles’ biggest hits have been highlighted in several post-split interviews. These include “Help!” (John claimed full authorship, Paul countered it was “70-30”), “Ticket To Ride” (John said Paul only contributed “the way Ringo played the drums,” Paul said “give him 60 per cent of it”), “In My Life” (John said Paul composed the middle-eight, Paul said he did the entire melody), “Eleanor Rigby” (John claimed 70 per cent of the lyrics, Paul said it was more like “half a line.”)

Paul takes over (1967)
Brian Epstein’s unexpected death saw Paul attempt to wrest control of the group’s managerial affairs, starting by conceiving and directing the Magical Mystery Tour film. At the time, John remained passive and happy to play along, but later, when it had been savaged by critics, he expressed mixed feelings, describing the project as “chaotic and unfocussed.” In his 1983 book The Love You Make, group confidante Peter Brown claimed John wanted to “junk it, rather than be embarrassed by it.” If the film gave the impression of Paul installing himself as the unofficial leader of the band, their next album did little to contradict it.

The White Album fractures (1968)
“You could cut the atmosphere with a knife,” studio engineer Ken Scott said of the sessions for the sprawling double album, from the moment when John brought in a bed for Yoko Ono on the very first day. It sparked a breakdown in communication between the two chief writers, now working almost entirely separately, but with Paul increasingly driving the direction of the record, or at least trying to. Biographer Philip Norman wrote that John thought Paul’s songs were “cloyingly sweet and bland,” while Paul thought John’s were “harsh, unmelodious and deliberately provocative.” Lennon later suggested “the breakup of The Beatles can be heard on that album.”

“How Do You Sleep?” begins… (1969)
As viewers saw in the film Let It Be and the subsequent Get Back three-parter, the studio continued to be a war zone. At one point Paul rails against John for not learning the lyrics to “Two Of Us” (ironically one of their most positive and uplifting shared lead vocal), as he struggles to get the rest of the group to match his intense work ethic. In a quieter moment he tells cameras he’s taken on the “captain of the ship” mantle reluctantly. “I’m scared of me being the boss, and I have been for, like, a couple of years. And I never get any support or anything. So, I just say, ‘Hell, well, fuck it.’ We can’t carry on like this indefinitely. We seem to, but we can’t.”

Source: uncut.co.uk/Terry Staunton

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