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Most of the bands who were the prime cogs in the British Invasion of 1964-66 had roughly the same level of success (or, in the cases of The Hollies and The Who, more success) in Britain as they had in America. Two groups, though, had considerably more success in America than they had in the mother country. One was The Dave Clark Five, profiled previously in ANGLOFILE. The other was a band from Manchester that formed in 1963 as The Heartbeats but gained world wide fame as Herman's Hermits.
But their success in America was due to more than just record sales. Noone, as Herman, was a tailor made U.S. teen idol. His "little boy lost" look and bouncy, onstage demeanor endeared him to the same audience that had made Ringo Starr the original favorite of U.S. Beatlemaniacs and would later make Davy Jones, also of Manchester, The Monkees' fave-rave. Like Starr and Gerry Marsden, Herman was perfect for young girls who found matinee-idol-types like Paul McCartney and Dave Clark too intimidating or who found the |
likes of The Animals or The Rolling Stones too sexually threatening. And there was the music. Herman's Hermits records were expertly crafted quintessential Britpop. Unlike many of the other British bands, with their self-contained songwriting and instrumental prowess, the Hermits were rank amateurs, so producer Mickie Most played a major role in forging their sound. He gave them a unique assortment of old American pop rock and country tunes ("Jezebel," "Silhouettes," "The End of The World"), new songs by up-and-coming young songwriters like Graham Gouldman ("Listen People," "No Milk Today"), P.F. Sloan ("A Must To Avoid"), and Ray Davies ("Dandy"), and, in a master stroke, old British music-hall tunes unknown to the American audience ("Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter," "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am," "Leaning On A Lamp Post"). Once the hits began to come, Most also had session musicians provide most of the instrumentation on the records. Most of the guitar work was done by Big Jim Sullivan and popular young guitarist Jimmy Page, who had played on records as diverse as The Who's "I Can't Explain" and Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual." The bass playing and the arrangements on many Hermits records were provided by John Paul Jones, which means that half of the 1970's most popular British band, Led Zeppelin, can be heard on many recordings by Herman's Hermits. Noone was then, and still is, in his role as a VH-1 host, a total charmer, but the other hermits may as well have been four pieces of cardboard, a point hammered home in the group's two feature films, "Hold On" and "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter." Produced by MGM, the parent company of the Hermits' U.S. record label, and filmed in America, they were both closer in quality to mid '60s Elvis films than to the likes of "Help!", "Ferry 'Cross The Mersey" or "Having a Wild Weekend." The hit-making formula worked until 1967, when the rapidly-changing musical times began to catch up with Herman's Hermits. "There's A Kind of Hush" was their last U.S. Top 10 single but, like The Dave Clark Five, Herman's Hermits enjoyed a resurgence in popularity in Britain once their American hit career was over, with six U.K. Top 15 singles (four reached the Top 10) between the beginning of 1968 and early 1970. By this time, the group had all but broken up, but Noone kept at it. In the spring of 1971, Noone had a British Top 15 solo hit with "Oh You Pretty Thing," written by a young singer-songwriter called David Bowie. In 1980, Noone re-emerged with a new wave-power pop band called The Tremblers. In the '80s, the former Hermits headed out onto the oldies show circuit without Noone, so Noone had to reluctantly do the same for a time. More recently, though, Noone has found his own niche as the popular host of a video show on VH-1, with the same mischievous choirboy demeanor that he had as a leader of the group that, for a time, in 1965, was second only to The Beatles in U.S. popularity among the British Invasion bands. |
