Peter Asher on being music’s incredible ‘Everywhere Man’: ‘The secret is simple’

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As the musician and producer reaches 82, a new documentary reveals his life working with everyone from James Taylor to Carole King to Paul McCartney Peter Asher didn’t want to do this interview. He had the same reaction several years ago when directors Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller approached him about making a documentary about his life and career. “I don’t think so,” he recalled telling them in our interview, which wound up taking place only after several entreaties from the film’s publicist that he do this one sit-down. “My life has been startlingly devoid of the standard rock’n’roll drug-and-sex dramas,” Asher said. “So I thought a documentary about me isn’t something people will want to see. It sounds boring.” On the contrary, Asher’s story stands among the most dramatic and consequential in music history, spurred by achievements that shifted the course of pop more than once. Through Asher’s pivotal role in the lives of stars like James Taylor and Carole King, he played a key role...
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‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

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In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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