Peter Asher remembers -- behind-the-scenes stories of Peter & Gordon's songs

(Peter Asher began a mini-concert tour Friday night at the Iridium in New York. The show, which we will have a review of with pictures, included his memories of Peter & Gordon's records and his career, plus some stories of some Paul McCartney/Beatles connections. These comments about Peter & Gordon's records come from recent our sit-down interview with him.)

"I GO TO PIECES":  "We were touring Australia with the Searchers and Del Shannon. We overheard Del Shannon singing the song to the Searchers in the dressing room next door. He thought it would be a good song for them. And they turned it down. We kind of said to him later, 'Look, can we hear that song you were playing? It sounded really good to us.' And he played it. We were clearly a second choice. But in a way that's part of our history because 'World Without Love' had been rejected a couple of people first, too, so we've done well picking up leftovers. I think that's the one that came out most right. I'm very happy with the way that arrangement, those vocals and that production came out."

"TO KNOW YOU IS TO LOVE YOU": "I don't remember who suggested that. Of course, the original is 'To Know Him Is to Love Him.' I loved the song and collectively, I can't take sole credit for it. We did come up with the idea of making it. Oddly enough, it's a Phil Spector song. We actually made it into more of a Phil Spector record than he did by putting a big orchestra on it and making the bridge a big crescendo that isn't on the original. So it's much less thoughtful and more of a definitive and general aggressive love song directed at somebody, which is why we changed it to 'You Know You Is to Love You.' And we had great fun doing that. I'm pleased with the way it came out. We just tried to make it as huge as possible. The drummer on that was a guy called Kenny Clare, a big band drummer in England at the time. Every day, Kenny Dankworth and other people did these cool drum fills and big orchestration and stuff. We were going for that vibe. Very different from the original. (Asher says they never got a reaction to their arrangement from Spector.)

 

SPECIAL: THE ILLUSTRATED STORY OF "WORLD WITHOUT LOVE"

SONGS PAUL McCARTNEY WROTE FOR PETER & GORDON AFTER "WORLD WITHOUT LOVE": "Nobody I Know": He (Paul McCartney) wrote it very clearly as the follow-up (to 'World Without Love'). That was in the songwriter tradition of 'if I"ve got a hit, I've got the follow-up as well.' So that was, 'Here's another song, what do you think and we loved it. 'I Don't Want to See You Again' was a little while later. He just popped up and said, 'Here's a song. I think he'd written it for us.' And then 'Woman,' of course, was the last one."

"WOMAN," WRITTEN BY PAUL McCARTNEY: "I think people just kept saying anything with his name on it would automatically be a hit. It didn't have to be any good. The Bernard Webb myth lasted long enough for him to make his point. Because people really didn't know who it was, initially. It only lasted a week or two. But it already jumped all over the radio. People loved it. And so it was a hit record with somebody else's name on it. That's all he wanted to prove and he did."

 

"TRUE LOVE WAYS": Yeah, that was a good record. I think that may have been Gordon's idea to do the song. It might have come from our producer, John Burgess. In fact, I think it did. But Gordon was immediately up for it because he was a big Buddy Holly fan. And again, we applied the same kind of philosophy. For Buddy Holly, it was this thoughtful song and we made it more intense and gave it a big production. And that was me trying to begin my foray into the world of record production by interfering in the production of Peter & Gordon records when I was officially the producer."

 

"LADY GODIVA": "I think that was brought to us by a producer, John Burgess, written by Mike Leander. I was against it. I thought it was kind of stupid, and did we really want to make novelty records? In the sense, it was Gordon kind of going, 'It'll be funny and shut up.' So it was a big hit and once it was a big hit, I decided it was a fine piece of art and I was proud to participate. Not my favorite record that we did, but better than 'Knight in Rusty Amour.' 

"KNIGHT IN RUSTY ARMOR": "You see that was really an attempt to write a follow-up. It was even stupider. But the good part of that record is that I only sang on less than half of it, so I got off easy. It was mostly Gordon. But we didn't do it live very much. We actually added it into the show during what we loosely referred to as 'the comeback.' We did do it in Canada or somewhere because it was a huge hit. Turned out when we did a bit of research and putting a live show together on what were our big hits on CHUM-FM. Turned out 'Knight in Rusty Armor' was absolutely huge and everywhere else it was a modest subset of 'Lady Godiva's' success. So we learned it and did it, and poor Gordon had to sing the whole damn song with the stupid lyrics. I only sang bits of harmony in the chorus." 

• In his words, Peter Asher reveals story of Paul McCartney's 'World Without Love'

• Peter Asher goes on the road with his music and his memories