PETER - ASHER HONOURS LATE BANDMATE WALLER

ASHER HONOURS LATE BANDMATE WALLER

PETER ASHER has hailed GORDON WALLER as the "heart and soul" of their singing duo PETER & GORDON in a touching tribute to his late bandmate.
Waller, 64, suffered a cardiac arrest and died in a hospital near his Connecticut home on Friday (17Jul09).
Asher, who co-founded the group with Waller after they met at school, is among the first people to honour the singer, insisting he will struggle to cope with life without his "best friend".
He says, "Gordon played such a significant role in my life that losing him is hard to comprehend - let alone to tolerate.
"Without Gordon I would never have begun my career in the music business in the first place. Our professional years together in the sixties constitute a major part of my life and I have always treasured them.
"We remained good friends (unusual for a duo!) even while we were pursuing entirely separate professional paths and I was so delighted that after a hiatus of almost forty years we ended up singing and performing together again more recently for the sheer exhilarating fun of it. We had a terrific time doing so.
"Gordon remains one of my very favourite singers of all time and I am still so proud of the work that we did together. I am just a harmony guy and Gordon was the heart and soul of our duo.
"I shall miss him in so many different ways. The idea that I shall never get to sing those songs with him again, that I shall never again be able to get annoyed when he interrupts me on stage or to laugh at his unpredictable sense of humour or even to admire his newest model train or his latest gardening effort is an unthinkable change in my life with which I have not even begun to come to terms."
Peter & Gordon rose to fame in the 1960s with the hit A World Without Love, which was written by Paul MCCartney, the then-boyfriend of Asher's little sister Jane.
The duo disbanded in 1968 before reuniting to play a tribute concert for Mike Smith of the Dave Clark Five in 2005.