Featured Artist: Peter Noone
“I always wanted to be an entertainer,” says Peter Noone. “My idols outside of the music business were musical like Danny Kaye and Dean Martin, who could just stand up there and do 20 minutes without the band.”
Peter’s journey into entertainment began at the Manchester School of Music, where he was approached by a talent scout from Granada Television about acting on the series “Knight Errant.” That gig led to others and, eventually, a role on “Coronation Street” (which, at 53 years and counting, is still on the air).
Apart from studying and acting, Peter put his impressive collection of American records to good use as a club deejay in Manchester. One night, while checking out a local band, he was asked to stand in for the absent lead singer. In time, he was fronting his own band, Herman and The Hermits.
As the first wave of the British Invasion swept across the Atlantic in early 1964, the name-shortened Herman’s Hermits solidified into the classic lineup of Peter Noone (lead singer), Karl Green (bass), Keith Hopwood (rhythm guitar), Derek Leckenby (lead guitar), and Barry Whitwam (drums). A live performance at the Beachcomber in Bolton was good enough to impress record producer Mickie Most, who offered them a record deal.
To Peter, Mickie was more like the director of a movie than a music man — one who could hear hits in his head and then tell others how to get to what he envisioned. The first hit that Mickie “heard” for the Hermits was “I’m Into Something Good,” a song recorded by Earl-Jean McCrea of the female trio called The Cookies; it was making some modest noise in America during the summer of 1964. Mickie told Peter and the guys to learn it, and a week later they trekked into Kingsway Studios in London and quickly knocked out “Good” and its B-side.
As Peter recalled for Reelin’ In the Years’ “Listen People” DVD, Mickie seemed underwhelmed by the result. And, in fact, Mickie wasn’t going to release it until his wife insisted that it was a No. 1 record, and bet Mickie 100 pounds as proof of her certainty.
Fortunately, Mickie called her bet and on Sept. 24 “I’m Into Something Good” replaced The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me” as the most popular single in England. “Something Good” then debuted on Billboard magazine’s Hot 100 in October and rose to No. 13.
“‘I’m Into Something Good,’” says Peter today, “is a great record because it captured that teenage boy thing. I was 16, I think Karl Green was 16, and Keith and Barry were 17. We made that record with that teenage energy.”
The Hermits’ second U.S. single — “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat” — followed in quick order. According to Peter, “Heartbeat” was written specifically for Herman’s Hermits, yet the manager of girl group Goldie and The Gingerbreads found the song in Mickie’s office and had his act record it. Peter and band rush-released their rendition in America (but not in England) and were rewarded with a No. 2 smash.
Next up were two revivals of hits from the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll that bookended an original penned by a future noted television and stage actor. The first — “Silhouettes” — had been a massive hit for The Rays in 1957. Herman’s Hermits’ version had begun its race to No. 5 in April of 1965 when radio airplay of a cut on the band’s “Introducing” album forced that track’s release.
Recorded by the band in just two takes, “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” —- penned by the aforementioned acting-star-to-be Trevor Edward Peacock — entered the Hot 100 two weeks after “Silhouettes.” “Mrs. Brown” debuted at No. 12, ahead of “Silhouettes” at 19 that week, and by mid-May the Hermits had two singles in the Top 5 and their first No. 1 with “Mrs. Brown.”
On May 29, a third Herman’s Hermits record hit the chart at No. 50. “Wonderful World” — a No. 12 hit for Sam Cooke in 1960 —- had been done as a tribute to Sam in the wake of his murder on Dec. 11, 1964. (Also recorded at that session, according to Peter, was another tip of the hat to Sam, “Bring It On Home To Me” by The Animals.) The week that “Wonderful World” entered the Top 10, on its way to a No. 4 peak, Herman’s Hermits accounted for three of the Top 20 U.S. singles.
And the hits just kept on comin’! In the middle of July, another Hermits’ 45 joined “Wonderful World” in the Top 15: “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” a rousing music hall tune from 1910. Says Peter, “A lot of British musicians’ dads were in big bands, so we all knew this do-wacka-do-wacka-do thing. ‘Second verse, same as the first’ was a mistake. First of all, it’s a chorus. I threw that in thinking that we were going to recut it sometime in the future, and it was put out as it was. It was brilliant. That [phrase] became like a password.”
It also became their second No. 1, displacing The Rolling Stones and “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Oddly, in their native England, neither “Mrs. Brown” nor “I’m Henry VIII” were released as singles.
The group finished out the year with “Just A Little Bit Better” and “A Must To Avoid” (the latter written by P.F. Sloan of “Eve Of Destruction” fame). When the year’s sales were tallied, Herman’s Hermits was the No. 1 singles act in America, besting even The Beatles.
The year 1965 also marked the Hermits’ debut on the big screen: as the lead actors in “Hold On!” and as themselves in “When the Boys Meet the Girls,” a teen exploitation quickie starring Connie Francis. The two films spun off three Top 10 records: “A Must To Avoid,” “Listen People,” and “Leaning On the Lamp Post.”
“Listen People” was notable for a couple of reasons. In contrast to previous Hermits singles, it was a heartfelt ballad, and it was written by Graham Gouldman, the man who also penned “Bus Stop” (The Hollies) and “For Your Love” (The Yardbirds), both of which were first recorded by Herman's Hermits as album tracks.
They were the biggest-selling singles band in the world, and everybody wanted to get a song recorded by Herman’s Hermits, even Ray Davies of The Kinks. “He had two very similar songs with almost identical chord structures,” says Peter, “‘Dandy’ and ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion,’ and I think he was tossing up which one he was going to do. He sent them to Mickie and Mickie chose ‘Dandy’ as being more Hermanesque.”
At the “Dandy” session, they also did “No Milk Today” and “There’s a Kind of Hush.” Unreleased in England, “Dandy” became a No. 5 U.S. hit while “Hush” went Top 10 in both countries. As for “No Milk Today,” the No. 35 B-side to “Hush” in America and another delightful Gouldman composition, it peaked at No. 7 overseas. All three featured arrangements courtesy of future Led Zeppelin member John Paul Jones.
“There are quite a few of those great, perfect records from the period,” says Peter, “and ‘No Milk Today’ is a perfect record, you know.”
Herman’s Hermits had a few more hit records up their sleeve before — as all good things must — their run ended. Looking back, Peter states simply, “We just made records and, amazingly enough, loads of them were hits. They were hits until they stopped being hits.”
By the time the hits stopped, Herman’s Hermits had racked up 20 UK Top 40 sides, half of which reached the Top 10. Stateside, the band landed a total of 22 tracks on the Hot 100, including 16 in the Top 20 in under three years with a run of 12 straight Top 15 tunes.
Asked about Herman’s Hermits’ legacy, Peter says, “There’s ‘I’m Into Something Good’ and ‘There’s a Kind of Hush’ and ‘No Milk Today’ and people buy them every day. That’s the legacy.”
Peter also notes that — until the increasing time demands of touring and appearances, coupled with the ongoing need for new music, forced them (as with other bands of that era) to streamline the recording process — the Hermits played on most of their records.
As he told popcultureaddict.com and this author, “I look back at my past with nothing but pleasure and memories of great people. Lek was a great bloke, and sadly I didn’t get to tell him how much I respected him before he passed away. Keith and Karl should be remembered as wonderful background singers who delivered the right parts in exactly the right way: in tune and with a laugh when it was tense. Barry was our friend; he was a good guy. We laughed, we sang, and we made recordings without ever asking how much. That was the very essence of the sixties.”
About still performing after 50-plus years in show business, he says, “My choice has been to put all my energy into touring with Herman’s Hermits, because it’s fun. When I’m given a choice of what my favorite things are, my number one choice is always singing ‘I’m Into Something Good’ through ‘There’s a Kind of Hush.’ I’ve done that hundreds and hundreds of times, and I’m still trying to get it right. I never get tired of singing [all] those songs.”
“They’re important to me because they obviously mean something to somebody else. I’m a big fan of music and musicians, and I respect people who are fans of me and treat them with the same respect that Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley and The Everly Brothers gave me. I feel that connection with my audience.”
“I discovered when I was young that the audience wants you to be good. They want you to impress them; they want a good time. We constantly work hard at getting what we do on stage to be the best. Our best show is the last one we did.”
“Herman’s Hermits was always unfashionable except with the people who liked us, which is the true basis of a following. We’re not trying to impress other musicians. We’re just trying to play as good as those 15-year-old boys on that record,” he says, adding, “I’m very grateful to have this.”
- Ed Osborne © 2013