DICK: I'm fascinated by what's happening in the whole teenage world ... so I wanted to meet an exponent of those things. Next, I'm slightly ape over your records, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter" and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am." (Peter gives a small, gratified chuckle and Dick laughs amiably, too, before going on.) I know you act as spokesman for your group and I'd like to ask you something ... When I watched Herman's Hermits on The Danny Kaye Show, I thought that what makes you all so much fun is that you seem to be having so much fun yourselves ...

PETER: We are! The image of us Hermits is the complete opposite of The Rolling Stones'. They never smile and they've got long hair and rebel against the world and against parents. Our image is to go onstage and enjoy ourselves. It has always been like that - because we do enjoy ourselves.

DICK: "Image"? What amazes me about you fellows is that you know - at 17 - what your image is.

PETER: You mean you didn't?

DICK: At 17? I? There was nothing I knew at 17 except that I was uncomfortable! I didn't fit. I didn't have anything to do ... anything I liked to do. I hated school. I didn't like home. I didn't like being away. I didn't get along with people very well. I was switched off. I was a blob at 17, where you fellows seem so formed ... the whole English lot of you - The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, you Hermits! How did you know, so young, just what you wanted to do?

PETER: I think it was because music was dying.

DICK: What did you say? That music was dying?

PETER: I'll say it was! When I was 5 or 6, it was the big thing with parents that you should learn the piano - you know, the classics. I thought that was very old-fashioned. When I didn't do too well, my parents wanted me to try the violin. I did, but I thought, This isn't for me. Such instruments aren't instruments of our time. They don't represent what teenagers think is good - you know, guitars and pop singers and handsome boys. This is a good image for music today, not that old misery! No matter how you look at it, today's music is still music. The guitar is the symbol of our generation.

DICK: You may be right, Peter - but you yourself didn't start with the guitar, did you?

PETER: No, I started by accident! I was just sitting in what we call a "youth club" in Manchester, England - which is my home - listening to a group I thought were very good. Their singer hadn't shown up. I was humming along with their playing and they called me up onstage to fill in. I couldn't resist. It was a great feeling, to be onstage, performing. I was just 13 then, still in school.

DICK: It's wild how different we are! I was out of college and something like 24 when Kildare started - and let's not do any more adding right now, shall we? It changed my life 100 percent to be in a solid hit ... but I wasn't enjoying life as I imagine you did when you were 13 ... I didn't really loosen up and enjoy it for over a year.

PETER: Why ever not? With our group, after that first night, we got together all the time to rehearse. We got murderous looks from the neighbors as we practiced! All I had to bring to our meetings was my five-dollar microphone, while the other chaps had to lug drums and guitars. So I rehearsed at their homes - which my parents highly approved of.

DICK: You boys could afford guitars and drums?

PETER: No. But we got them. You can always get things if you really want them. Our first guitars cost about $18 in your money ... though now we all have three apiece that cost nearly $1,000 each. After a bit, we began getting little jobs for about $18 a night, and we split that five ways. But as we began getting more work at better pay, we began buying better equipment and records to study from. Then we purchased new suits and things that would make our act better. Still ... it was months before I could afford a ten-dollar microphone ...

DICK: And now I hear you sell more records than anyone in the world ...

PETER: So I've been told - but I've not seen the bookkeeper's statement on that yet!

DICK: You're so precocious now, is it safe to assume that the girls began coming up out of the pavement even when you were only 13?

PETER: I was just about to ask you some questions on that subject! With us, it was the same as with The Beatles. They started with four girls, who were really friends of Paul McCartney's. We started with our own five little girls coming along to our shows - and they were the only ones clappin' in the audience. Then it got to be fifteen girls. Then we played outside Manchester and it got to be thirty girls ... but you know how it is.

DICK: Not the way you do! You have music going for you, and I'm seldom with a "live" audience. When it was all new to you, four years ago, didn't you find it rather frightening? I know I did, when Kildare began to click. The responsibility!

PETER: Yes, that's it. That's the only thing that brings things down on you, the times when you think, "I just can't go out and face all of that today." You say to yourself, "I'm too tired. I'm just in the wrong mood to do a show." But then you think how many people are connected with the show - the manager, all the boys in the group. You know, they feel tired too, but there is that responsibility ...

DICK: How well I know! I look at some of the early Kildares and I see a very tired guy dragging himself about. But you do learn to stay with it ... and, presently, you get better.

PETER: Yes - you learn a lot of things. Like the first day I ever had a car, and it got torn up. It was my pride and joy and they completely wrecked it.

DICK: (shocked) Your car? Your fans destroyed it?

PETER: Yes. I'd left it parked out in front of the theater - showin' off, of course. When I came out, I saw that they had torn off all the aerials and all the windshield wipers ... and they'd written with lipstick all over it ... and things like that. I was never so mad. I wanted to kill anyone who had come near it - I saw no sense in what they had done. I just stood there staring ... and then I realized that except for those people who had wrecked it, I wouldn't have had the car in the first place! I suppose you've gone through the same thing?

DICK: Well, never anything that violent. They react a little differently to the "doctor" kind of person. There's - well more distance. I've been jammed in crowds, but there were only a couple of times when they acted as though they wanted to rip my clothes off!

PETER: That's the worst thing, though.

DICK: It certainly is - they seem to literally go mad. Once, in Baltimore, I was on a reviewing stand for a parade. The crowd kept getting closer and closer to me, so the studio people tried to get me off the stand. That made the crowd close in all the more, and it became really rather terrifying. We literally had to ram our way through them. (He laughs) It was kind of fun, though.

PETER: (laughing) Yes it is that. When we Hermits first played your Rose Bowl here, they brought us up in an armored car and let us right out on the stage. But there was one girl who had managed to get up there - and that's all you need. After that it gets like rugby ...

DICK: I hear you all moved into the same house The Beatles had while they were here. Doesn't that give you even more girl problems?

PETER: Yes. I've heard about that hideaway you had, when you first hit it big - we should have been that smart! Instead, we just got a big dog who was supposed to scare the girls away. But he's more scared of them than they are of him ... so then we got a guard to help the dog ... and the next thing we heard was that he was taking bribes to let the girls in! Now if I'd been getting the money, fine. But no.
    Sometimes I think, if I could only go out tonight, just clubbing about. But before I can start feeling sorry for myself, I realize that all jobs make you do things you don't want to, in exhange for getting a lot of things you do want. Then I think how fantastic it is, having people admire you ... and I get out on the stage and smile with my whole heart. It feels wonderful.

DICK: You dumbfound me. That strange, witty talk of yours ... I don't know where you get it! You teenagers are so wise about so many things, it is extraordinary. Your records are like those of an old music-hall entertainer - except that you have that up-to-date beat and the flavor is wonderful. To me, your songs have lyrics I can recognize and tunes I can follow. I can't with most of The Beatles' songs.

PETER: Oh, maybe you don't listen hard enough. If you really want to, you can find their tunes.

DICK: Personally, I sang a ballad kind of thing, right from the beginning, and that's the kind I'm still doing. I never did rock 'n' roll - which I guess Elvis did the most for, at the start.

PETER: I don't believe anything like that. I'd say The Ink Spots or Frank Sinatra began that beat originally. Blame it on the war - rock 'n' roll, that is. It was the war and everything so depressing, coming home after a hard day's work in all the traffic. You coldn't ask people to go out again to listen to Mozart's "Requiem" or something like that.
    Right now, it's depressing again, with horrible things going on. Imagine me coming down that freeway after a day at the studio ... coming into all that traffic, smelling all that horrible smog ... and then going out and playing Bach and Brahms! I think I'd commit suicide if I did.
    I think today's teenage music is a way of getting rid of all that worry. What do you call Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra, Dick?

DICK: Just the greatest! That's what I call "popular" ... and your great record, "Mrs. Brown" - that's music hall but great, great ....

PETER: We call them "top pops." When we see old movies and we hear the parents saying scornfully, "rock 'n' roll," and then sometimes our music is called "rock 'n' roll," we get a bit put down ...

DICK: Here in America, I think we didn't distinguish ourselves from our parents as obviously as you seem to have done. I know I didn't.

PETER: A loss of respect - that's what the war did to us. Our generation didn't want to have to respect anyone just because they were older. When rock 'n' roll came out, I used to go to all those shows about it. The parents used to make me wear a school uniform at that time because - even after I got in our own group - I was still going to school. We all were. But when we began getting better earnings, I took all my money and bought a long jacket and a pair of very tight trousers and a pink shirt ...

DICK: Ouch!

PETER: (laughing) I hid it all in the garage until I could change into it and walk out dressed that way.

DICK: You kids today accept so few of the hand-me-down values. I think your long hair is a marvelous thing ... one of the few ways that young people today can say, "We are going to make our own rules."

PETER: Yes. We are in a different world now. I've always worn my hair down on my forehead, to try and hide it, because I've got a long, funny face! Ever since I was five years old, I've had it long in the front - but now I keep it rather short in the back. It's just a fashion.

DICK: Your father and mother don't mind it? Mine would have!

PETER: Mine hated it. But now the parents are getting so used to seeing it, they don't go mad. Now everybody you see has long hair, so the newest fashion in England is for short hair again - just as you Americans are beginning to wear it long.
    It's the first time the Americans have copied the English. I know when I was young, I used to copy everything American. I had a Western gun and a Western hat and a cowboy shirt. Now the Americans are all buying Beatle hats, Beatle wigs. I think it is very good for England, and also good for the teenagers to be fashion-conscious.

DICK: It's all marvelous - because it proves you aren't being ruled by traditions. When I was your age, I was in high school having a terrible time. I couldn't wait to grow up and get to college! Now the high school kids I'm in contact with are having a terrific time. And while they're having a lot of fun, they're also very serious about learning - the boys, especially, because they are thinking in terms of the draft ... but you don't have a draft in England, do you?

PETER: No. They had a draft lately, for six months - but they got less people than before because everybody was trying to get out of it. As soon as they were told they had to go, our fellows said, "We are not going." They shot toes off and became psychiatric cases, until it was dropped.

DICK: That's the disturbing element today. In World War II, it was all so clear. Now - in Vietnam, for instance - there is no easy answer. But, Peter ... despite all your so-called "protest" ... I notice that you still live at home.

PETER: Uh-huh. We all do. We aren't revolting against our parents. For myself, I revolt against uniforms and uniformity. Being teenaged in England is quite different from over here. Your disrespect, that is, it's fierce.

DICK: I'm not sure I know what you mean.

PETER: Well, there's things that happen here that couldn't happen in England, like riots and violence. Kids in England have a lot more respect for law than you have here. Americans always seem to be fighting cops and things like that. We played in Baltimore once and I couldn't believe the things that went on. While we were there, a policeman got killed right near where we were. I'd never heard a gun go off before that, except one I shot on a fair grounds! I couldn't believe all that violence.
    What do you plan to do, Dick, when Kildare is over?

DICK: Oh, I don't know. I'd like to get into good feature pictures or do some plays. I have a new home and it's like being with the world again, because my other place was so isolated - there were no people anywhere near me.

PETER: That must be good.

DICK: Yes, it was. Now, though, I think it's high time I put isolation behind me. I have a very different set of values from those I had when I began. The change in me has been much more gradual than in you, I'm sure ... but - well - there's marriage ahead of me, I hope and parenthood. What about you?

PETER: You mean girlfriends? I don't think I'm ready for that - I don't want to settle down to any bird yet.

DICK: (laughing) There goes that crazy talk of yours again!

PETER: Well, at least I didn't say "chick"! Bird's all right - you say "broad," we say "bird." Wherever we play, in England or here we see some girls at every show who have followed us from place to place. I don't think that, by now, we'd any of us recognize those first five girls who applauded us, or remember their names, if they should turn up. We should, though. I should. But I don't want to settle down with any one bird yet!