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THE day before HERMAN left for America, he sent his mother 37 shirts - and they were all dirty! But Mrs. Noone did not mind. She is a proud mum. "I still do all Peter's washing," she sayd. "No matter where he is, he sends his shirts home. Mind you, he's a very lucky boy. He can afford to buy his shirts three dozen at a time. A shirt-maker in Glasgow has all his measurements. Herman just has to phone him up and order some more."
We were talking in the front room of their house in Chestnut Avenue, Huyton, where Herman still lives with his family. This cozy house is his retreat. The home he shares with his mother and father, baby sister SUZANNE, married sister DENISE, brother-in-law GORDON WEBB, and newly-born nephew KARL. Always the biggest day in the Noone calendar is November 5th. Not becausee it is the anniversary of GUY FAWKES' attempt to blow up the Houses of Parliament, but because it is Herman's birthday. At 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. "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 Denise, 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. Herman's own earliest memory is of his first day at school. It was the only time he had been away from home without his parents. "Mum took me along, but I cried all the way there - and really bawled when she left me. I was heart-broken. It seemed as if she had gone forever." Herman grinned cheerfully. He was wearing a pale blue shirt and constantly fingered a silver St. Christopher medal hanging round his neck. "I was a goody-goody until I was 13," Herman continued. "Always top of the form and that sort of thing. But then I started to get fed up and was dead cheeky." |
"I was a big hero to the rest of the kids because it was always me that played the pranks. I had one of those cheeky faces that attracted trouble. Always got the blame - even when I didn't deserve it!
"I remember once we balanced a bowl of water on the door ready for a teacher we called Fruity. He swept in - and the water missed him completely. He never even saw it. "I was 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.'" In childhood Herman was independent, inquisitive, eager to try new ideas - and confident that his own were right. He still is. Not so long ago, he found a new song. But no one else liked it. When he performed it on stage, his manager told him to drop the number from his act. His agent didn't like it either. And his recording manager MICKIE MOST refused to release the song as a single. RICK JOHNS, former road manager for the Hermits, was with Herman when he discovered the number. "I was D.J. at the Plaza ballroom, Manchester, then. One lunch time, Peter came along and 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 is was. So different. Sung by a young actor, TOM COURTENAY. It was this "Mrs. Brown" number. "Peter wanted to buy it, but hadn't enough money, so he dragged me along to the nearest shop. Between us, we had just enough for the record and our bus fares up to his place. "For the rest of the afternoon, he played it over again and again and again. At that time, Herman was about to join his first British theatre tour with American star DEL SHANNON. For special effect, he bought a flat cloth cap to wear on stage singing "Mrs. Brown." Audiences loved it - but none of the people who mattered did, and Herman was told to drop the number. In the end Mickie had to give in. M.G.M., who distribute Herman's records in the States had received 70,000 requests for a "Mrs. Brown" single. And when the record shot up to the top of the American, Australian and Canadian charts in only three weeks - beating a BEATLES single released at the same time - everyone had to agree, Herman had been right all along.
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