We All Together

In the early 1970s the Peruvian ensemble We All Together stood among the foremost practitioners of Beatles-derived pop and rock, even though recognition stayed confined to a tight circle of devotees. Fronted by vocalist and chief songwriter Carlos Guerrero—who, like several colleagues, had previously belonged to the Peruvian rock unit Laghonia—the band issued two English-language albums in the first half of the decade. Those records emulated the gentler facets of the Beatles’ late-1960s work, most clearly in their vocal blends, tuneful writing, and polished settings that wove keyboards together with acoustic and electric guitars in fluid balance. Echoes of John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison surface throughout the material, yet the group gravitated especially toward McCartney’s buoyant melodic gift, at times interpreting seldom-heard songs from his initial solo output. The second album introduced occasional British progressive-rock motifs, though the prevailing Beatles atmosphere remained intact. Apart from Badfinger, We All Together may well have been the era’s strongest act to embrace such an explicitly Beatles-rooted identity. Once nearly unobtainable north of the equator, the albums received U.S. reissues in the late 1990s.