There's a worried look on Herm's face. And it's no wonder! If what happened to him, happened to you . . . well . . . you'll see!

HAVE YOU ever been, as they say, "in the dark" about something? Completely and utterly "out of it" . . . not knowing what was going to happen . . . or why . . . or when? Sure, we all have mysterious moments. But not all of us have a mysterious month - August of 1964, to be exact! And you're going to find out all about it!
      "We'd recorded a song," Herman told us. "Our first, actually. And our futures were hanging in the balance . . . they'd go however that record went. If it was a hit, we'd be on our way. If it flopped . . . well, you'd never have heard of Herman's Hermits - because there wouldn't have been any!"
      No Herman's Hermits? No Herman's Hermits. Could it have been possible? Well, it was more than possible. During that month of August 1964 it was almost a reality!
      Karl confided, "During that time, we were in pretty bad shape. We'd had break after bad break and then no breaks at all! We were almost ready to give up the whole idea of being a singing group. Our whole fate waited for the fate of that record!"
      Barry added, "We wanted to know how the record was doing that whole month of August. But we were too scared to find out. I think if the record had gone nowhere right in the beginning, we'd have killed ourselves. At least, we'd have done something drastic!"
      The boys, to put it mildly, were on pins and needles. They didn't turn on the radio - for fear that they wouldn't hear their song. They didn't watch the local pop newspapers - for fear that their record wouldn't be listed in the top one-hundred. They didn't even talk about music - for fear that one of them would mention the record and make everyone else very depressed! In fact, they barely breathed!
      Barry told us, "This one record meant so much to us. We'd worked so hard to get the chance to record it. For almost a year, we'd played in little clubs around home for almost no money at all. And in every second of spare time, we practiced and practiced until our hands practically fell off and our ears were numb from hearing ourselves!"

      Despite all their hard work, the boys had received nothing but closed doors in the face and unsympathetic shakes of the head from record producers and big club owners. In fact, one London producer went so far as to tell the boys to go back home and find jobs for themselves! They definitely weren't being accepted at all!
      "Then," Lek confided, "our manager, Harvey Lisberg, arranged for us to meet Mickie Most, an independant record producer. We were all so excited, we thought we'd go all to pieces on the way to the studio! But do you know what we were told? Believe it or not, he wanted us to go back home and practice some more!"
      And they did. They had enough faith in themselves to keep trying. Then they went back to Mickie Most again.
      Keith said, "This time, he agreed to record us - but on a condition! If the record we made didn't do well, we weren't under contract to make another one! In other words, we had to rely on that one record to make or break us!
      The boys recorded the song they'd decided on . . . "I'm Into Something Good." They did the best they could on it. And then they sat back and waited for something - either good or bad - to happen to it.
      Herman said, "It seemed like forever, but it was just about a month of waiting. The song was released, sent around to disc jokeys and record stores and so on. We didn't know what was going on . . . the mechanics of getting a record into the charts, of course. And to tell the truth, we didn't care! It would have upset us even more to know all the people who passed judgement on our record . . . all the things that could stop us from getting a hit. We just sat back and waited - and hoped!
      To make the waiting even worse, preliminary reports on the record started coming in. One record store would report good sales. . . another would ship back all the records he'd gotten. One disc jockey would play the song and comment favorably about it . . . others wouldn't mention it at all.
      "And then," Herman said, "the record made the charts. There was no doubt about it . . . it was a hit! Let me tell you, I was excited! I was more than that, actually . . . I was stunned but very happy!"