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In 1963, The Heartbeats were just like any other aspiring but uninspiring Manchester pub band, chugging their way through the standards and hoping one day to be like the Beatles. Their luck changed the night Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Silverman happened to see them. The two young entrepreneurs were looking for a vehicle for 16-year-old former child actor Peter Noone, and The Heartbeats looked to be just what they were after. The band, now with its fresh-faced lead singer installed, and renamed Herman's Hermits (allegedly because of Noone's uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character Sherman from Bullwinkle And Rocky), became an instant hit in the clubs of the Northwest and soon began to attract the attention of the London studios. In 1964 they were introduced to producer Mickie Most, who decided to sign the band to the Columbia label, largely on the strength of what he thought was Noone's uncanny resemblance to John F. Kennedy. That same year, "I'm Into Something Good", an unnervingly bouncy version of Earl Jean's US hit, shot straight to Number 1. There it might have ended, had it not been for an extraordinary surge of popularity in the USA, which saw them score 11 Top 10 hits in two years. This success was due largely to the band cashing in on America's love affair with anything British. With the heart-throb Noone up front, they evolved a quintessentially English cheeky-chappie act playing vaudevillian boots-and-braces songs such as "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am". Tellingly, these songs were never released in the UK. Instead, the Hermits turned to experienced writers like Graham Gouldman (later of 10cc) to provide them with more conventional songs such as "A Must To Avoid" and "No Milk Today". "We made very good records for teenage girls," Noone later admitted. "Herman's Hermits was a band for teenage girls. We made records about love and romance. We were all nice chaps and they knew it." Inevitably the infatuation quickly wore thin and the hits dried up. In 1970 Noone left the band to pursue a solo career, although the Hermits have since occasionally reunited for oldies tours.
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