By Ed Symkus

An exuberant documentary traces the British Invasion star’s serendipitous path from Peter and Gordon to producing James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.

Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. It’s available to stream on Apple TV, Amazon, and Fandango.

A young Peter Asher in Peter Asher: Everywhere Man

Mention the word “documentary,” and a chunk of the moviegoing audience replies, “No, thanks.” They’re the ones who want to be entertained, not shown something “important,” something that they “should” see.

Alas, they’re the ones who, upon hearing the word, have been conditioned to think of upsetting, depressing fare — Brother’s Keeper, Night and Fog, Grizzly Man, The Cove, The Times of Harvey Milk, and the like — as typical examples of documentaries.

Balderdash! I don’t have the energy or desire to offer up and defend the argument that plenty of feature-length documentaries are as enjoyable as they are compelling, provide insight into their chosen topic, and are fun to watch.

Off the top of my head: March of the Penguins, Hoop Dreams, Don’t Look Back, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, The Truffle Hunters, Crumb. Well, okay, calling Crumb enjoyable is probably a bit of a stretch.

But now, for your delectation — and entertainment — we’ve got Peter Asher: Everywhere Man, an upbeat, clever, perceptive look at a music icon with a fascinating career résumé: pop star, producer, manager, raconteur. He has been in many right places at the right times and has been captured on film to tell all about it.

Longtime co-directing team Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine (Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song; The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden; Ballets Ruses) present Asher onstage in a San Francisco nightclub, surrounded by a band, singing songs and chatting with his audience. He explains that he is going to answer the question, “How did all this happen?”

That “all this” refers, in part, to his musical relationship with Gordon Waller in the British Invasion duo Peter and Gordon, which scored eight Top 20 hits, including the chart-topping “A World Without Love,” and to his subsequent work as the manager and producer of James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.

This sprawling but laid-back film also goes back to Asher’s less-than-successful days as a child actor in London, though clips prove that he was indeed in a few films. It traces his meeting with Waller in high school, their progression through the London club scene, their invitation to make a recording at EMI, and the way their approach to harmony was inspired by the Everly Brothers. Of the Everlys, Asher says, “You try to copy people who you greatly admire and, in failing, you come up with something kind of interesting and different.”

Geller and Goldfine construct the film around Asher’s stage presentation, which he refers to as his memoir, returning to him as he tells his story. Archival film and photographs play out that story. There are concert and TV appearances by Peter and Gordon, as well as mentions of other British Invasion notables, including Herman’s Hermits, the Animals, the Dave Clark Five, and the Beatles. There are also enlightening new and archival chats with Asher’s sisters Jane and Clare; Gordon Waller, who died in 2009; Paul McCartney; James Taylor; Linda Ronstadt; Steve Martin; Eric Idle; and many others.

There are a lot of moving parts to this film. Disparate elements keep bumping into each other, random people come together, and the result is Asher’s ascent up the pop-culture ladder.

Peter Asher today in Peter Asher: Everywhere Man.

When his younger sister Jane was an up-and-coming actress and TV personality, she was asked to check out and report on the then-newly popular Beatles. She and McCartney became an item. McCartney moved into the Asher home in London, where he became friends with Peter and gave him a song that the Beatles did not intend to use: “A World Without Love.” When Peter and Gordon were touring the States with pickup bands in different cities, they met guitarist Danny Kortchmar, a childhood friend of James Taylor. When Taylor was about to relocate to London in the late 1960s, Kortchmar told him to look up Asher, who soon afterward produced Taylor’s first album for the Apple label.

Whether he is relating his story on that San Francisco stage, reliving it while talking with friends in various living rooms and kitchens, or walking through London and visiting old haunts with his daughter Victoria, Asher comes across as a shy man with a self-deprecating sense of humor. He is extremely proud of his accomplishments yet seems always to regard his success as a matter of good fortune.

A highlight of the film — no surprise — is the amount and quality of the music flowing through it, ranging from clips of Peter and Gordon singing “I Don’t Want to See You Again” to James Taylor performing “Something in the Way She Moves,” the Beatles doing “From Me to You,” and Linda Ronstadt singing “Blue Bayou.”

My only disappointment was that, amid all the questions, answers, and memories, no one mentioned that Austin Powers, the character played by Mike Myers, is a dead ringer for Peter Asher — or the rumor that Myers based Powers on him. Spoiler alert: That business is taken care of in the end credits.

Ed Symkus is a Boston native and Emerson College graduate. He went to Woodstock, edited the books Russ Meyer: Interviews and Guy Ritchie: Interviews, has interviewed Peter Asher, Eric Burdon, Donovan, and Brian Auger, and has visited the Outer Hebrides, the Lofoten Islands, Anglesey, Mykonos, Nantucket, the Azores, Catalina, Kangaroo Island, Capri, and the Isle of Wight with his wife Lisa.