Herman’s Unanticipated Invasion

Peter Noone, the lead singer of Herman’s Hermits for more than six decades, has sung “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am” and “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” way too many times to count, not to mention some of the British Invasion band’s astounding run of other hits in the mid-’60s that included “I’m into Something Good,” “Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat,” and “There’s a Kind of Hush.” Between March-August 1965 Herman’s Hermits spent 24 consecutive weeks in the Top Ten of Billboard’s Hot 100. 

The thing is, he’s very rarely sung them in Santa Barbara. 

Noone has shown up occasionally as one of the surprise acts at One805’s September shows, Unity’s Telethon and even an oldies tour at the Chumash. But a full set with the band in a regular concert hall? Not so much.

Until now. The Montecito resident whose time in town dates back 40 years fronts Herman’s Hermits for a January 9 show at the Lobero Theatre. It’s a benefit for Notes for Notes, the nonprofit co-founded 20 years ago by Noone’s daughter Natalie – a singer-songwriter in her own right – that provides youth with free access to music instruments, instruction, and recording studios environments, a cause near and dear to his heart. 

We caught up last week with Herman, err Peter, who still maintains his boyish charm and youthful energy at 78. 

Q. I have to admit I didn’t realize just how big Herman’s Hermits were in those first couple of years, even though I grew up on the hits. What was that like?

A. England is a very small country. So everybody in the British Invasion kind of knew each other. It was nothing for us to do a TV show with The Beatles or the Stones and hang out with them. When we all came to America on different airplanes, everybody had the same experience, really. It was a big rush of British music taking over the American charts.

[The key point] is that we were all music enthusiasts. It was a hobby that became our business. It wasn’t like in America where Fabian made a record because he was a good-looking guy who got spotted on the street in Philadelphia. That didn’t happen in England. Everybody in England was playing music. We were exposed to all different kinds of music all the time. If you walked along a street in England, you would hear people playing folk music, rhythm and blues music, country music out of every window. And you could hear other people playing live music anywhere. I even remember the date, August the 6th, 1963, when I was at my grandmother’s, and me and another guy were trying to tune up a guitar and we could hear someone in the distance also tuning a guitar who had an amplifier. So we went out and crossed the field and it was The Beatles tuning up to do a concert.

There was top 40 radio, which played everything from pop music to Oklahoma and Sound of Music. We were all part of the same package. But we all were inspired by America. 

Let’s back up: How did Herman’s Hermits get started and where did the name come from?

I’d taken some acting classes and understood playing a character. We were Pete Novak and the Heartbeats, with Pete being a rock star with a silver jacket who played Buddy Holly songs. Then somebody told me I was nothing like Buddy Holly, but I looked like Sherman from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. So I kept the glasses and became Sherman which got shortened to Herman. The Hermits was a more modern sounding name, like Jerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers, much more cool. Pretty soon we’d moved from being 14 years old playing in the daytime at the Cavern to the mainstage at night.

We realized that the only way we could compete with the other adult bands was to do different songs from everybody else because to tell you the truth, everybody else played those songs better than we did. So we created versions of songs like “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” and “The End of the World” when they came to us. We were getting paid the same 30 pounds a night that The Beatles made. Eventually we got a following, which got a label interested in us. We were so lucky. When those dates ran out, we came over to America. We didn’t know we were part of the British Invasion until we got to America.

You guys played the Rose Bowl back in 1965 headlining over a bunch of American bands including The Turtles and Lovin’ Spoonful, with “Henry” topping the charts and you a big teen idol that had the girls screaming. What was that whole experience like for you?

The first thing we did in America was in a high school in Eastern Pennsylvania and I remember that when we walked on the stage everybody in the audience, a couple thousand teenagers, tried to come on stage too because nobody thought about security. We couldn’t play. It was crazy. We were naive kids… It seems surreal now. That doesn’t happen to real people. 

You’ve had to sing “Henry” a billion times, which is more like two billion because it only has one verse. Plus “Mrs. Brown” and the others. What kept you excited about these songs? Has your relationship with these songs changed over time?

The reward is that the audience enjoys it. I keep going because the best time of every day is on stage. I have a very normal life otherwise, because I’m basically under the radar. I can walk up and down State Street, nobody knows who I am. But on stage, it’s a different story. 100 percent of the people know the words… They’re all in the room to see me and hear these songs, so I have to be much better than they expect. 

It’s a reward system. When I start a show with “The End of the World,” which was never a single, I look out and see a guy my age hold his wife’s hands because that means something to them. It’s entertainment. It’s show business. I’m not a musician. I’m an entertainer. I never mention anything to do with politics or governments or even sports. I deliver songs that I
think people will like. I have no message. But I do think that I have a better pop voice now than I did at 16… I have a great band, so I’m going to keep going as long as I can still do it well. We are actually working-class people, which means we’re only happy when we’re working.

You really haven’t played full concerts in town. How’d this one happen?

Notes for Notes inspired me because they put instruments in kids’ hands and give them a place to play and record. That’s how it began for me. I watched it grow from something really small with old guitars and old amplifiers into what it is today, this massive organization giving kids an opportunity. If you’re in a room with a bunch of kids playing music, you’re not going to be in a gang… Music is a great tool for getting people together. I didn’t know any of the people in Herman’s Hermits before we started the band. We only had one thing in common: liking the same music. 

Playing is how you get good. Take someone like Jimmy Page. He didn’t have any time for anything else except his guitar. And if you want to be a musician, that’s probably what you should be doing.