Herman's Hermits Magazine Articles

Up from childhood with the fab new star whose legion of fans have
a song in their hearts that sounds suspiciously like, Mrs. Noone,
You've Got A Lovely Son!

HERMAN (Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone, that is) had found a new song, but no one else liked it. When he performed it on stage, his manager cringed and told him to drop the number from his act. His booking agent didn't like it, either. And his recording manager, Mickie Most, absolutely refused to release the song as a single record.
It's title? Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter. Rick Johns, former road manager for the Hermits, was with Herman when he discovered the number.
"I was deejay at the Plaza ballroom in Manchester, then," he recalls. "One lunch time,Peter (I still call him that) came along. I could see he wanted to speak to me, so I put an LP on the record player and went down to him.
"He was raving about a new disc. Fabulous, he said it was. So different. Sung by the young actor, Tom Courtenay. It was this Mrs. Brown number. Peter wanted to buy the record, but hadn't enough money, so he dragged me along to the nearest record shop to hear it. Between us, we had just enough money for the record and our bus fares back up to his house. For the rest of the afternoon, he played the disc again and again and again.
"Finally,Peter jumped up out of his chair and said he had made up his mind. The number would have to be included in his stage routine. He took the record round to Keith's, so that they could work out a backing for it together."
At that time, Herman was about to join his first British theatre tour with American star, Del Shannon. And, for special effect, he bought a flat cloth cap to wear on stage while singing the Mrs. Brown number.
Though audiences loved it, none of the people who mattered did, and Herman was told to drop it from the act.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter was released on Herman's first MGM LP in the States. American deejays singled the band out for special air play. American fans immediately went crazy for the song.
For a long time he refused to release the record as a single, but in the end, Mickie Most-who also records the Animals and Nashville Teens-had to give in. MGM had received 70,000 requests for Mrs. Brown singles three days after it was aired here!
And when the record shot up to the top of the American charts in only three weeks (beating a Beatle single released at the same time), everyone finally had to agree:
Herman had been right all along!
But just who is this Herman? This 17 year-old pop idol who has earned seven gold discs in less than a year? What was he like as a child? What kind of home life did he have? Has his fantastic success changed him? What are he and his buddies, the Hermits, really like?
To answer these questions, 16 went all the way across the ocean, up to Liverpool, and got all the answers from Herman's family, close friends - and from Herman himself.
Our story starts one cold, clear November night in 1947. All over England, bonfires were being lit and fire works let off It was November 5, the anniversary of Guy Fawkes' attempt to blow up the British Houses of Parliament-a day all English children celebrate with parties and bonfires, burning dummy "Guy Fawkes" in effigy.
On the grounds of a Manchester hospital, the doctors and nurses gaily exploded rockets.
At exactly 9:30 P.M., in the maternity ward, another voice added to the general noise.
Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone had arrived.
"We chose Peter because my wife has a brother with that name," said Herman's father, sitting in the lounge of their home at Roby on the outskirts of Liverpool. "Blair was my wife's maiden name. Denis is mine, and Bernard is another of my wife's brothers."
The Noone family already had one child, a daughter named Denise, who is two years older than Peter. But the age gap seemed to narrow as he grew up. He was a determined little boy. Anything his sister could do, Peter wanted to do as well.
"I remember when he was only about 12 months old," said Mr. Noone. "You could see he desperately wanted to walk. He would grab hold of the back of Denise's tricycle and walk round. Hour after hour. Day after day. But it worked. He taught himself to walk.
But what about Herman's own earliest memories?
"About the first thing I can remember," Herman

recalls, "is my first day at school. It was the only time I had been away from home without my parents. Mom took me along, but I cried all the way there - and I really bawled when she left me. I was heartbroken. It seemed as if she had gone forever."
Herman grinned cheerfully. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and constantly fingered a St. Christopher medal hanging round his neck.
"I was a goody-goody at school until I was 13," he continued. "Always top of the form and that sort of thing, but then I started to get fed up and was dead cheeky to all the masters.
"I was a big hero to the rest of the kids because it was always me that played the pranks. And I had one of those cheeky faces that attracted trouble. Always got the blame sometimes when I didn't deserve it! We did all the usual things, like sticking desk lids down with glue and nailing hats to the floor.
"Reckon I hold the school record tor the number of times I got belted. There was rarely a day that one of the masters didn't whack me with a gym shoe - and if I had done something really bad, they would use a cane.
"I remember once we balanced a bowl of water on the door ready for a teacher we called 'Fruity' to come in. He swept in - and the water missed him completely. He never even saw it!
"But I was very unlucky, really. Masters seemed to sense that I was a trouble-maker. We drove our form master into a nervous wreck. He used to plead with me. "Noone", he would say, 'if you must be naughty-please don't get caught!"
Right from an early age, Herman had been an independent boy. "When he was only about nine or ten, Peter used to go off maybe 200 miles either alone or with a friend," recalls Mr. Noone. "He was a keen train spotter, and would get up early on Saturday mornings and go off to some big station, taking photographs of the engines."
Herman remembers those Saturdays very well-and one in particular that didn't have such a happy ending.
"It was when I was ten," he said. "One Saturday, I decided to go to the London stations. So on the Friday night, I waited till my parents had gone to bed and then crept downstairs and caught the midnight train to London. I had a marvelous time in London; went round Waterloo, Paddington and the rest. It was all so wonderful that I kept putting off going home, and in the end caught a train that got me back to Manchester at 1:30 A.M. Sunday morning.
"By then, of course, there were no buses running, so I had to walk home. Seven miles. It was 4 A.M. when I walked into the house. Mom and Dad were going spare (our expression for crazy). They nearly had the police out looking for me. But when I walked in, they were so glad to see me that they forgot to get angry! So we ended up just hugging and kissing each other."
Peter and Denise were given plenty of freedom as children. Every summer, they spent several weeks at their grandparents' bungalow in Wales. At other times, their parents would take them cycling.
Mrs. Noone always remembers Peter as a cheerful, happy-go-lucky boy. He was never one to get down-hearted. And he was in love with the theatre even in those early days.
"We used to take Peter and Denise to all the shows in Manchester. Once, when he was five, we went to see Cinderella, and one of the performers, 'Buttons', asked for some children to join him on stage. Herman (Mrs. Noone often calls her son by his stage name now, even when talking about him at home) sang a song, and then 'Buttons' offered him a bag of sweets. But he refused to take them. 'Buttons' looked a bit surprised, and asked why.
"Peter told him that I had said he was never to accept sweets off a stranger! We all burst out laughing, but Peter stood there solemnly and said he just couldn't take the sweets-so 'Buttons' gave him a box of tea instead! But his troubles weren't over yet.
"Denise had been watching all this, and burst into tears when Herman was given his tea. She wanted some, too - and she wouldn't stop crying until 'Buttons' came down off the stage and gave her a box as well!"
This is the first in a series of articles on the story of Herman's life. Be sure to get the next issue of 16. Find out about Herman's accident-proneness," his boyhood secrets and how he got his first TV break. The December issue of 16 goes on sale October 21.

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