(* Peter Noone and ..... )
Chart entered : 14 November 1970
Chart peak : 13
The Mancunian quintet were hot on the heels of the Dave Clark Five in exiting the charts.
They actually had a very similar career arc to the DC5 , spending the mid-sixties in America where they were insanely popular then returning to Britain when psychedelic rock put an end to the British Invasion and scoring big hits there once again ( more consistently than the Tottenham boys actually ) until the end of 1970.
When their Columbia contract came to an end that year the band loyally followed their longtime producer Mickie Most to his new label RAK. They did their bit to launch the label by recording a song written by his second signing Hot Chocolate , "Bet Yer Life I Do" and duly gave the label its first hit.
Having done their bit for Most, the band began to fracture. Peter Noone wanted to begin his solo career but was persuaded that a last single with the group but with his name out front was the best way to launch it. I'd never heard this record before and I can hear why. It's a sort of mash-up starting out as a Bread -like acoustic ballad written by Brown and Wilson but instead of writing their own chorus they've lifted that of a cheesy Euro-hit by Renato Dei Profeti and dropped it in despite it having a completely different tempo. I've no doubt champions of the band see it as an audacious way to sign off but to me it sounds like a contrived mess. It's a testament to the durability of their fanbase ( at least while Peter was in the band ) and the efficiency of the RAK marketing machine that it got as high as it did.
Peter then left the band. The other four ,Keith Hopwood, Barry Whitwam, Derek Leckenby and Karl Green wanted to continue but Most was only interested in Peter as a solo artist so they had to find a new label as well as a singer. They invited Peter Cowap, a friend of Graham Gouldman, who had already written for the group in the past and was also a good guitarist. His contacts helped them get a deal with RCA and their first single as "Hermits" came out in October 1971. "She's A Lady" was written by another friend Jeff Smith who would later join the band and produced by Eric Stewart. The now hairy Hermits got on TV to promote it but Cowap was neither a distinctive singer nor a charismatic frontman and the song sounds like a McGuinness Flint B-side. A second single ,"The Man" , released nearly a year later, went nowhere and RCA declined to release their LP "Sourmash" which has never seen the light of day.
Cowap left the band after they were dropped and the others accepted an offer to hook up with Peter again for a three week "British Reinvasion " tour of America in 1973. Halfway through the tour it was discovered that Peter had renegotiated his own fee behind the others' backs. Their relations were permanently soured. On the positive side there did seem enough interest for the band to tour there profitably without Peter who was still pursuing a solo career ( which of course we'll come back to ) . At this point Keith bailed out as a band member though he contributed some keyboards to later recordings. He formed his own company Pluto Music with Derek to do soundtrack work for commercials and television including Bob The Builder
They recruited a new singer and songwriter John Gaughan who worked for Cook and Greenaway and released one single on CBS with him as "John Gaughan and the Hermits" called "You Gotta Love Me Baby" in September 1973. When that flopped Gaughan moved on and was replaced by Jeff Foot aka Smith for the band's frequent tours of America with Karl Green taking on lead vocal duties. Another guitarist Frank Renshaw also joined the line up. In May 1975 they released a new single as The Hermits "Ginny Go Softly" a pleasant enough slice of mid seventies soft rock although Karl's vocal skills aren't the strongest.
Then Peter approached them to rejoin the band but they would not agree to his financial terms and carried on without him. When Peter put together a tour in England as "Peter Noone with Herman's Hermits" the injunctions started flying. After a long and costly battle the other guys won an order stopping him using the name in England and they reverted to it for their next single on Buddah in 1976, a cover of Leo Sayer's "Train" .
By the time of their last single on Pye in 1978 , "Heart Get Ready For Love" Foot had temporarily left. It's a workmanlike cover of a song by late-to-the-party glamsters Hello and sounds a good four years out of date. It was their last attempt at new material but they have returned to the studio on occasion to re-record their old hits ( as has Peter ) for cheap compilations.
The band remained a touring concern although Karl checked out in 1980 to become a sound engineer . Keith returned to the band for a short time in the early nineties. Derek remained a member until his death from non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1994 leaving Barry as the sole original member. In 2002 the legal battle flared up again as the English court order couldn't be enforced in America and since 2005 a hostile stand-off has been in place with Peter touring his Hermits in America and Barry's version covering the rest of the world.
So what happened to Peter's solo career ? Well it got off to a flying start with the first hit cover of a Bowie song. "Oh You Pretty Things" was released by Peter before it appeared on Hunky Dory. Bowie - still a one hit wonder at this point - played piano on the record ( whereas Rick Wakeman did the honours on his own version ). A couple of NME writers in a 1981 book on Bowie described Peter's version as "one of rock and roll's most outstanding examples of a singer failing to achieve any degree of empathy whatsoever with the mood and content of a lyric". I don't see that myself. I think Peter's an under-rated vocalist anyway and that semi-falsetto he adopts for the chorus is a good fit for the song's hysterical vision of a youth-led apocalypse, a lyrical trope that would run right through the decade from here to Secret Affair. Johnny Arthey's arrangement with its nudging strings and sledgehammer beats is infinitely superior to Bowie's sparse voice and piano take. It reached number 12 in May 1971 but that was as good as it got for Peter in the UK.
A crucial error was made with the next single "Walnut Whirl" which gave radio not one but two reasons to ban it. The title was very close to an iconic chocolate confection of the time but I think the bigger problem was the content of the song which celebrates the pleasures of bonking a fat girl ( interesting to note that it was co-written by Sandie Shaw ) and includes a line "sadly makes love to a Walnut Whirl" ( which strikes me as a rather messy pastime but each to his/her own ). It's a shame because it's a terrific tune, piano-based whimsical pop worthy of Gilbert O' Sullivan at his best.
Peter was unlucky with his next song choice in March 1972 . "Shoo Be Do Dah" is just about the only Chin and Chapman song that wasn't a massive hit in the seventies. An acoustic -based folk-tinged slow burner of the sort that Smokie would make their own a few years later, it's a lament for the loss of innocence in pop songwriting. It's an attractive tune but , at nearly five minutes, far too long and it's amazing that Most didn't realise that. Or perhaps he did but thought Peter was a spent force anyway. His next single "Should I" a lightly mariachi-flavoured piece of pop bubblegum released in July 1972 marks the end of his long association with the producer.
After returning from the 1973 Reinvasion tour covered above, Peter signed with Philips for the single "( I Think I'm Over ) Getting Over You" written by Tony Hazzard who'd penned the Hermits' hit "You Won't Be Leaving". It was released in November 1973 and the signs were good when Kenny Everett got behind it but that wasn't enough. It's a bit over-produced - Peter sounds like he's fighting to be heard over the harpsichords - and rather too like Gilbert O' Sullivan just as the latter's star was beginning to wane.
A year later he popped up on Casabalanca working with Tony Macaulay who co-wrote the single "Meet Me On The Corner Down At Joe's Cafe", a very deliberate attempt to evoke the spirit of Herman's Hermits which almost worked in America as it just missed out on the Top 100.
Peter re-emerged in 1976, after the bruising court battle with his ex-bandmates , on the Bus Stop label with the single "We Don't Need The Money". It was the first of three singles penned by Murray and Callendar who'd written hits for The Tremeloes and Cliff and he got on the Arrows' TV show to promote it. Viewing the clip it's clear that you can look both very youthful ( Peter was still under 30 ) and wildly out of your time. The song is vacuous and Peter's waistcoat and haircut suggest that nothing had moved on since the the time of the Ryan brothers. I haven't heard the second one "It's Good When I Get There" but don't expect it was much better and that the third one was a cover of Cliff's seven year old hit "Goodbye Sam Hello Samantha" released at the height of punk shows just how redundant he'd become.
Peter abandoned Britain in the late 70s and settled in America, apparently for good. In 1980 he re-emerged at the head of a new group The Tremblers who attempted to surf the American New Wave exemplified by The Cars and The Knack. They released an album "Twice Nightly" and two singles "Steady Eddy" and "Wouldn't I " . It's quite fun hearing Peter's impersonation of Ric Ocasek but the music never rises above the level of well-executed pastiche and it was received with resounding indifference.
His last attempt to make an impact with new material was the 1982 solo album "One Of The Glory Boys". The lead single was a cover of The Sutherland Brothers and Quiver's 1973 U.S. hit "You Got Me Anyway". Now that was one of the first records I really loved so I was expecting to have to put a contract out on him but actually his version's quite acceptable ; he doesn't mess with the tune or tempo and the eighties production trappings aren't too obtrusive. A brief investigation of the rest of the album suggests a competent attempt at a modern pop rock effort although Peter's isn't a rock voice and his attempt at "Give Me Just A Little More Time" is awful.
By the time the album was released Peter was already branching out into musical theatre and received good write-ups for The Pirates of Penzance in particular. He also started working as an actor making regular guest appearances in TV series such as Quantum Leap and Married With Children, sometimes as himself, sometimes in character. In 1989 he found a comfortable niche as the host of VH1's oldies show My Generation which ran for four years.
When the acting work dried up in the mid-90s Peter decided to get on the nostalgia circuit, hence the renewed battles over the group name which at the time of writing have left Peter the undisputed king in his new homeland. Having said that Peter is also much in demand as a talking head in documentaries about the sixties as a genuine survivor who is still telegenic and lucid at 66. He still sounds Mancunian as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment