Herman's Hermits: "I Can Take or Leave Your Loving"

March 2, 1968 (1 week)

"We're just about done with Peter Noone on this blog and I can't say I'm going to miss the cheeky bugger."

Or so I claimed last November, the last time a Herman's Hermits single came up for consideration. Even though I didn't hate their cover version of The Kinks' "Dandy", it was clear that it succeeded in spite of the Hermit treatment; it only made me appreciate Ray Davies' songwriting genius even more than I already do.

So, I ought to be glad that they're finally bowing out after six RPM number ones and for the most part I am. Half-a-dozen is more than enough. Tom Ewing and Aidan Curran only had to write a single review apiece ("I'm Into Something Good" being their sole British and Irish chart topper) while Tom Breihan had just a pair to cover ("Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and "I'm Henry VIII, I Am" which, surprisingly though mercifully, somehow failed to hit the top of the charts in Canada). Those guys might be able to write me under the table but how would they fare with having to share their thoughts on six chart toppers by Herman's bloody Hermits. That said, a small part of me is sad to see them go.

It's bizarre to think that Herman's Hermits were still a relevant chart act by the end of the sixties. They had seen off the majority of the competition — longtime rivals Peter and Gordon had begun to fade a year earlier — with the remaining elements of the British Invasion having grown into serious recording artistes with concept albums and drug addictions. Yet, with bubblegum pop at its peak, there was still a place for Peter Noone and his band who may or may not have played on their records. Noone was still young and boyish enough to hang with Davy Jones of The Monkees and that was more than enough of a reason to stick around.

Previous Hermit hits were unconvincing. In their cover of "Silhouettes", we're expected to believe that Noone would have drunkenly stalked his best girl so they he may catch her in the act of cheating on him. Nope, I don't buy it. On "Listen People", he's delivering an allegedly profound message of peace and understanding to a populace that had been looking to The Beatles and Bob Dylan for "the answer". Again, a good try but his nibs was out of his depth. This is what makes "I Can Take or Leave Your Loving" so refreshing: I can imagine him saying this to a groupie or even to a girl-next-door with a pretty smile. This is only from listening to it casually, as the narrative paints the young woman as the one at fault while our hero attempts to put on a brave face. This is the acceptable, pop-friendly side but I prefer to think of it as him having a nonchalant view on relationships in general. I mean, why else would he sound this chipper?

But that is the thing with Noone: very few in pop sound as genuinely optimistic as he does — and all the better for it since he sounds like he's being himself for once. "I Can Take or Leave Your Loving" isn't all that special in the scheme of things but I think it does fairly well when held up against the new generation of American bubblegum groups. It has no more substance than what the likes of The Union Gap and Paul Revere and the Raiders were putting out but it has a chorus you might want to sing along with and a melody that could see you through your day. Will I miss having to review Herman's Hermits singles? Not particularly but this final go has given me a newfound respect for Noone (as well as whoever it is that happens to be playing on this). Good to go out on a high note!

Coming up, a vocal group of considerable importance. One who took themselves very seriously while quite often appearing to be a joke. Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb could've learned a thing or two from shameless spotlight hogger like Peter Noone.

Score: 6

Herman's Hermits: "Dandy"

November 14, 1966 (1 week)

With the rise of The Monkees in the latter part of 1966, how much did the landscape of the British Invasion was altered? Beatlemania was done, the Merseybeat groups had faded and the harder rock combos from the south of England had shifted to darker and/or more cynical content. Peter and Gordon and Herman's Hermits still remained but even they must have known they were on borrowed time.

In what seems like a surprisingly cagey move to remain relevant, Peter Noone's Hermits chose to follow the tougher crowd from down south. Ray Davies had already become a respected songwriter in the midst of The Kinks' golden age but few recognized his potential as a hit maker for others. Having a Top 40 hit with a Lennon-McCartney castoff was easy but what about someone doing some sharp and witty social commentary from one of The Beatles' chief competitors? That took guts. (Say what you will about Noone's weak singing voice but he was able to spot talent in others; his one real solo hit was with "Oh You Pretty Thing" written by David Bowie, who in 1971 was still known primarily as a one-hit wonder)

Plundering The Kinks' back catalog for material proved to be fruitful for those few who've bothered having a go. Covers by the likes of The Pretenders ("Stop Your Sobbing") The Jam ("David Watts") and Kristy McColl ("Days") are at the very least tasteful. Even Herman's Hermits managed not to completely mess up "Dandy". That said, improving upon a Ray Davies original is damn-near impossible and if superior talents like Chrissy Hynde and Paul Weller weren't able to do so then there would have been little hope for Noone and his chums (who, lest we forget, may or may not have played on this).

I recently wrote a little on "Dandy" in my review of The Kinks' magnificent "Sunny Afternoon", feeling that the two songs go together as a commentary on members of the aristocracy who idle their lives away on leisure and various indulgences. In the case of "Dandy", it's all about getting in as much illicit sex as his dick can handle (the character in "Sunny Afternoon", meanwhile, is reaping what he sowed by becoming a shell of his former self). Noone was a popular pinup back in his day and it's quite possible he may have indulged in what was being made available to him. As such, I hear his version of "Dandy" as slightly more of a celebration of his lifestyle. (Take note of his perked up vocal as he repeats the title of the song at the start of each verse: "Dandy, DANDY!")

Barring the odd superfluous string section, the two versions are more or less musically identical so all that is left is to further knock Noone's flawed reading. Flawed? I could stand to be a little more generous, couldn't I? Okay, let's say that Noone took to the song in his naive manner for better or worse. On the one hand, he has considerably more spirit than the dry Davies; on the other, he strips away any depth to the character. Even when Noone tries to sing it properly, he still misses the mark: Davies' garbled attempt to do everything possible to get a rhyme out of the lines "pouring out your charm / to meet you own demarnds" is corrected by the lead Hermit but at the cost of its humour.

With scores of 4, 4, 3, and 4 you certainly can't accuse Herman's Hermits of being inconsistent. They manage to pull their average up just slightly with what is their finest RPM chart topper to date. Despite my misgivings above, "Dandy" is Ray Davis at the top of his game and that's reason enough to put it above the poor offerings that came before it. We're just about done with Peter Noone on this blog and I can't say I'm going to miss the cheeky bugger.

Score: 5

Herman's Hermits: "Listen People"

March 21, 1966 (1 week)

Canada's RPM singles chart took a serious step towards legitimacy with two key changes this week: (1) the Top 40 was expanded to the RPM 100 and (2) records that peaked were still being tracked as they fell, rather than the old practice of eliminating them completely. Thus, the previous week's chart topper, The Dave Clark Five's "At the Scene", was now down at number five. Whatsmore, former number ones that had been heaved off the listing had now been reinstated. Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walkin'" occupied the number nine spot while Lou Christie's "Lightnin' Strikes", which hadn't been on top in a month, was somehow all the way up at four. Yet, David and Jonathan's version of "Michelle" was nowhere to be found so there may still have been some kinks to iron out (either that or everyone in Canada came to the collective realization that it was the worst and needed to be scrubbed from the record).

The number one on this key date in Canadian pop history was "Listen People" by Herman's Hermits, a group who the kids just couldn't seem to get enough of. Having had RPM chart toppers with covers of "Silhouettes" and "Wonderful World", it was perhaps time for them to go back to recording some original material. I say 'original' in the loosest possible sense since lead singer Peter Noone and his bandmates who may or may not have been playing had nothing to do with its composition. No, this task fell to a young Graham Gouldman, a Mancunian who was still just nineteen but who had already racked up a seriously impressive songwriting resume.

"Listen People" isn't one of his top tier compositions but it does just about manage to make Herman's Hermits seem like a real band capable of more than novelty pop and crummy covers. It makes me think of nineties' boy bands and girl groups moving in the direction of R&B in order to come across as more serious but inevitably failing miserably. What groups like The Spice Girls failed to take into account was that becoming serious squeezes out whatever charm and spirit they had to begin with. That's good news for the Hermits since they didn't have any charm or spirit to begin with; the bad news is their music remained as useless as ever.

I'd like to think that a genuinely good singer could've done more with Gouldman's song but I'm not so sure that's the case. While Noone is clearly way out of his depth as he strives for profundity, I think his sweet, endearing nature gives the song a little more gravitas. No one's going to take this clown's advice seriously, a point that manages to make the singer's earnestness all the more effective. He ought to be doing more novelty pap which makes his go at being the voice of his generation all the more laudable — even if it still can't quite rescue yet another lame Hermits' "effort".

While music nerds like to yammer on about "influential" acts like The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith, they conveniently leave out the fact that virtually everyone with a recording career of at least two or three years is bound to influence someone. Take Herman's Hermits: budding musicians jamming on guitars in a garage in Albuquerque or Winnipeg weren't learning anything from them but a pre-fab group was being groomed to move directly into the space they were occupying. If it hadn't been for Peter Noone laying the groundwork for cutesy hopelessness, what would have become of Davy Jones? The Monkees were soon to take to the airways and their lengthy run of singles was about to commence. But they didn't even play their own instruments! Well, neither did the Hermits for the most part. Unfortunately, The Monkees fluked a handful of good-to-great singles which means they couldn't quite recreate the Hermit blueprint.

Score: 4

~~~~~

Can Con

With the chart being expanded from forty entries to a hundred, there was ample opportunity to include some Canadian talent. The Guess Who? and Little Caesar and the Consuls are both present and correct, as is Terry Black who I previously covered in this subsection. A couple of acts I'd never previously been familiar with also appear. At a respectable number twenty-seven is Toronto's The Big Town Boys with "Hey Girl Go It Alone" and it's rather good. A bit like a minor Byrds track, it won't blow anyone away but it's solid and even a little inventive. One to look out for, assuming they ever did anything else of note. The same cannot be said for fellow Hogtown group The Shays. The only thing interesting about them is that their number sixty-seven "smash" is that it's called "This Week Has Seven Days", which they obviously stole from the popular news discussion CBC TV show of the same name. Too bad they didn't have the same quality control and/or influence.

Herman's Hermits: "Wonderful World"

July 5, 1965 (1 week)

One of my all-time favourite songs is "The Mayor of Simpleton" by XTC. While not a major hit, it did manage to sneak into the Top 50 in both Canada and the UK. For a group who had always either been praised for their intelligence and wit or bashed for being too clever for their own damn good, it must have come as a surprise that one of their most popular numbers is one that's all about being a total dunce. Yet, in penning lines like "well I don't know how many ounces make up a ton of all the Nobel Prizes that I've never won" leader Andy Partridge only managed to make them seem even smarter than they already were.

Partridge has admitted that he has been criticized for copying Sam Cooke's classic "Wonderful World". While there's no denying the thematic lyrical similarity — 'I'm not exactly blessed in the brain department but my love is all that matters' — there's not much else connecting the two.  But I will say that Cooke and Partridge aren't the most convincing pair idiots. Neither of them happened to be lettered but (a) they both came out of eras in which going to university was a luxury for a privileged few and (b) everyone who has attended post-secondary institutions has encountered their fair share of morons inside those same halls of learning. (In researching this review, I learned that Cooke had, contrary to the lyrics, been an A student in high school)

Herman's Hermits seem to have been at a particular disadvantage when it came to recording "Wonderful World". Their cover of that great hymn to drunken stalkers "Silhouettes" had been ill-advised enough so what hope did they have with an even better song by the sadly now-deceased Cooke? Well, they had one advantage over both the King of Soul and Partridge and that was Peter Noone on vocals, a young man who could do simple with the best of them.

Don't get me wrong: Noone may be a perfectly intelligent individual. I am not qualified to say either way. But being an actor he was able to put his skills to good use by being a convincing dumbass. Those years spent studying drama at school with no doubt a few key roles starring as the Artful Dodger had paid off, and not just in terms of getting him a part on legendary English soap Coronation Street. His turn as a lovable dope is so sincere that he and the his fellow Hermits managed to transform Cooke's rather thoughtful composition into the sort of brainless pop that Gerry and the Pacemakers and Freddie and the Dreamers were having hits with.

A genius move this may have been but it still can't help Herman's Hermits in their quest to rise above mediocrity. The band — which may or may not feature then session ace Jimmy Page on guitar — gives a charmingly lightweight performance which also suits just how dopey it's meant to sound. I get what they were doing and I can get through its swift one minute and fifty-five second run time without too much desire to turn it the hell off but at the end of the day they patently weren't either Sam Cooke or XTC. Very few are, even the smart ones.

Score: 4

Herman's Hermits: "Silhouettes"

May 10, 1965 (1 week)

"Till we meet again, "Silhouettes". I just hope that the next group to take you to number one is as tasteful as The Rays."

Such were my closing words in my review from July of 2024. Of course, I knew that a cover version was coming and I was confident that it was going to be an absolute trainwreck. Call it an educated guess.

Last time, I was keen to point out that despite the problematic nature of "Silhouettes", it was a good song with a cute little payoff at the end. ("Oh, the drunken jealous stalker dude got the wrong house: that makes it okay!") I have no such similar goodwill with this Herman's Hermits cover. The group — which may or may not have included a young session ace named Jimmy Page — chose to take all the unease of out the original in order to make it into a jaunty little romp instead, as if we should all be in on the joke right from the get go.

Nah, that's giving lead singer Peter Noone, the other Hermits and producer Mickie Most way too much credit. I'm not even convinced that they were aware that "Silhouettes" even has a punchline. Rather, as a band whose mandate was to be as family friendly as possible, they were just going to be zippy and charming and moronic no matter the material they had. Let's examine some of the qualities of "Silhouettes" that Herman's Hermits missed out on.

✓ Jealousy — Dude is taking a walk one night and just happens to cruise past his best girl's place when he discovers her silhouette getting might cozy with another guy. His sadness turns into rage as he pounds on her door.

✓ Paranoia — His nibs' imagination runs away with him without much prompting. Ever hear about giving someone you supposedly love and trust the benefit of the doubt? No, neither have I.

✓ Stalking — Of course we all believe him when he says that he just happened to be in the area. Totally an isolated incident that has never occurred before or since.

✓ Being a Drunken Arse — It's an unspoken element of "Silhouettes" but everyone who has reached adulthood (and perhaps even those who are a bit younger) ought to have realized that that the "hero" of this story is totally wasted. Not being able to recognize the right house while being on the wrong street is the first giveaway. Overall lack of self-awareness is another.

✓ Idiocy — Wasted or sober, this dude is a massive idiot. In this respect, the Hermits might have been the band best suited to a cover of "Silhouettes" since no one in British pop could do 'winning simpleton' quite like Noone.

For a song that has been covered on several occasions throughout the last seventy years, you'd think that someone would have been able to get something out of "Silhouettes" to at least match the quality of The Rays' original. Assuming Noone even knew what the song was about, he may have simply been trying to imprint his usual cheeky self on to a record with a problematic narrative. Somehow or other this very pedestrian cover gave them another big hit around the world. Proof that the public was inevitably going to lap up any old shit just so long as it happened to be British. Herman's Hermits were only just getting started.

Score: 3

Herman's Hermits: "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"

April 19, 1965 (2 weeks)

The first British Invasion began in the early part of 1964 as Beatlemania swept North America and everyone tried to grab a piece of it. The second gathered momentum in the early eighties with the rise of MTV as UK groups had a far easier time adapting to the era of the pop music video (since it had been commonplace to film promos on the other side of the Atlantic). A third attempted invasion never really happened as North American Generation Xers chose to embrace supposedly authentic genres like grunge and gangsta rap in favour of Madchester, shoegaze and Britpop.

What all three of these "invasions" share is that they were arguably bigger in Canada than down in the US. With the Canadian link to the Commonwealth, there was much more of an openness to British pop, even prior to '64. While only two UK singles managed to reach number one on the American Hot 100 prior to The Beatles, there had been six north of the border, a modest but still significant difference. The Beatles had even been on an upward trend and it's likely they would have made a sizable impact in Canada even without appearing on The Ed Sullivan Show. For much of '64, the appetite down south had been primarily for one band: it was only near the end of the year that non-Beatles or Lennon-McCartney-composed UK singles topped the American charts. Yet, in Canada the likes of the Dave Clark Five, Gerry and the Pacemakers and the Honeycombs all spent time on top.

If we go by the period spanning 1964 to 1966, fifty British Invasion singles went to the top of Canada's pop charts, nearly double the total in the US. And, sure, the RPM era ushered in the trend of single week number ones but it was UK groups who were taking a large chunk of the extra spots. Motown acts like The Four Tops and Temptations earned well-deserved chart toppers on the Hot 100 but came up short just over the border even though there had been theoretically more room for them. For Canadians, it was Brit acts all the way!

No group benefited more from this than Manchester's Herman's Hermits, whose brand of English music hall novelty pop saw them remain a relevant chart act in Canada well after fading in both the UK and US. (A curious feature of lower level British acts of the time is that many of them, including Herman's Hermits and Petula Clark, did far better in North America than back home) Not only did they have no less than six number ones on the RPM charts but they came up just short on several other occasions as well. Amazingly, the song they are probably best-remembered for today, the moronically catchy "I'm Henry VIII, I Am", isn't even one of their ten highest charting entries in Canada.

Obviously I'll be getting to the remaining quintet of Hermits' chart toppers before long (one of them in just a few days in fact) but I should point out that they're a grim batch. They consist mainly of poorly thought out cover versions voiced by the workmanlike singing of Peter Noone. Apparently, he was something of a pinup back in his day though I couldn't tell you why (girls, and indeed some boys, must've really liked lads with lots and lots of teeth). Still, he was certainly far easier to look at than listen to.

"Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" is probably the best of their number one hits. Yes, the bar is low. It's tempting to grade it on a curve and give it a bonus point or two but I won't be doing that. Herman's Hermits recorded a lot of material over the years, mostly in tandem with big time English producer Mickie Most along with some future members of Led Zeppelin as session musicians. Noone — the sole member who appeared on every one of their hits — had every opportunity to grow as an artist just as many of his contemporaries were doing. I don't know if I'd necessarily say that he blew his chance given how big he became but chart hits were the priority; overall quality clearly wasn't valued.

That said, it was probably a wise decision to have Noone just try to ape British music hall legend George Formby on "Mrs. Brown". The guitar part(s) — played by Hermits Derek Leckenby and Keith Hopwood — even manage to sound like Formby's trademark banjolele. Had Noone tried to copy The Beatles or Stones he doubtless would've sounded like even more of a fraud. Stick to your wheelhouse is something some people supposedly say and they might as well be describing a certain young English actor who wished to cash in on the British Invasion by recording some half-baked pop of his own.

With both ABBA and The Monkees having been given critical reconsideration in recent years, there's always the chance that Herman's Hermits might be given similar treatment in the future. Somehow I doubt it though. So-called guilty pleasure groups manage to rise above the dregs for either their outstanding craft — like ABBA — or for being able to make the most of some dire creative conditions — like The Monkees — but neither of these apply to Noone: he had no craft to speak and ended up getting very little out of some favourable studio conditions. His reign of ghastly terror was on.

Score: 4