This episode originally aired June 20, 2023

First-time author David Jacks, a veteran video editor and music supervisor, ran into legendary music producer Peter Asher at a Santa Monica taco joint in 2003 and asked if he could interview him. Jacks, a long-time admirer of the man said to be the inspiration for Mike Myers’ “shagadelic” Austin Powers character, who first came to prominence as one-half of the hit-making British pop vocal duo Peter and Gordon and would go on to produce generation-defining albums for artists such as James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and Diana Ross, immediately asked Asher if he would sit for an interview. 

The aspiring journalist thought he might use the interview as the basis for an article in a music magazine, but the two-time Grammy-winning Producer of the Year didn’t think anyone would want to read it. Nevertheless, that first interview led to another… and another… and on and on. Over the next two decades, the two continued to talk, while Jacks lined up interviews with hundreds of musicians and record industry professionals who had worked with Asher over the years, eventually leading to the publication of Peter Asher: A Life in Music, the first book-length account of the producer’s life and career. 

Join us for a two-part conversation with author and subject, as Asher reflects on a book he never thought anyone would be interested in reading, and Jacks shares what it was like to tease out the story of a shape-shifting pioneer—“a fascinating music business anomaly,” according to The New York Times, who could never quite understand what all the fuss was about.  

Learn more about our guests: 

• Read The New York Times profile of Peter Asher, timed to coincide with the publication of the David Jacks book.
• Read Peter Asher: A Life in Music
• Read Peter Asher’s The Beatles from A to Zed, based on the author’s popular Sirius XM radio show on The Beatles Channel.
• Peter Asher on Instagram
• David Jacks website

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Daniel Paisner Daniel Paisner - author, collaborator, podcaster

Daniel Paisner is an author, collaborator and podcaster. He is the author or co-author of over 80 books, including four novels and numerous works of non-fiction, and he is the ghostwriter behind 17 NYT best-sellers, written in collaboration with such celebrated personalities as Whoopi Goldberg, Serena Williams and Denzel Washington. He is the host of the podcast “AS TOLD TO: The Ghostwriting Podcast,” a production of the Writers Bone Podcast Network, which features conversations with his fellow ghostwriters, as well as songwriters, speechwriters, screenwriters and other artists who work in service of someone else’s voice or vision.