On My Mind: The Peter Noone Interview with Forgotten Hits

Thursday, October 19, 2006

The Peter Noone Interview with Forgotten Hits

With permission from Kent Kotal/ Forgotten Hits/the60sShop here is part one of the interview with Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits. To subscribe to FORGOTTEN HITS, which is a great newsletter if you are like me and into music of the 60's, you can e-mail them at The60sShop@aol.com . Here is part one of the series. First a little background ...I've been doing FORGOTTEN HITS, an online music newsletter, for the past seven years. We started as a publication that featured songs and artists who, despite being HUGE hits at the time of their original release, just don't seem to get the airplay and recognition that deserve today due to the extremely tight playlists being dictated by the conglomerates who control oldies radio today. For whatever reason, THEY seem to feel that the public is better served by hearing the same 50-60 songs over and over and over and over again instead. Over the years, we've expanded our base to feature special themes and artists and, from time to time, even exclusive interviews with some of these artists who created this great music in the first place. Most recently, we had the opportunity to interview PETER NOONE the driving force behind HERMAN'S HERMITS. In fact, the interview caused such a buzz that we are sending it out again to a whole new list of readers who heard about our series through word of mouth. We used this interview to bridge two OTHER series that are currently in the works. First up, we tabulated (using national chart information) THE TOP 200 BIGGEST TWO-SIDED HITS OF ALL-TIME. Our NEXT series (kicking off on Monday, October 9th), is our readers' list of their FAVORITE, FORGOTTEN B-SIDES. Because some of MY all-time favorite B-SIDES come from HERMANS HERMITS it is THIS material that we chose to spotlight during our PETER NOONE series. All of that being said, if you like what you see here, drop us a note and we'll add you to our regular FORGOTTEN HITS Mailing List. Your comments and memories are ALWAYS welcome. And, we hope that you will also vote for YOUR FAVORITE, FORGOTTEN B-SIDES as well ... to date, we've already received over 13,500 votes ... and the first chapter hasn't even gone out yet!!!! When I began putting together my PERSONAL list of FAVORITE B-SIDES, I found myself listing more titles for HERMAN'S HERMITS than for any other artist. Amazingly, HERMAN'S HERMITS only had one charted B-SIDE here in America... and that was NO MILK TODAY, the flipside of THERE'S A KIND OF HUSH. (It was disqualified from this competition because it made our TOP 200 TWO-SIDED HITS OF ALL-TIME LIST ... coming in at #99 ... eventually making The Top 40 on its own, peaking at #33 on the Cash Box Chart.)

I found many of their OTHER B-SIDES to be extremely strong recordings, however ... in fact, I like SOME of these undiscovered flip-sides better than some of their chart making hits! (I truly believe that HERMAN'S HERMITS were denied additional chart rankings simply because some of these B-SIDES were never considered for radio airplay!)

Since I had been interviewing PETER NOONE anyway for an up-coming FORGOTTEN HITS feature, I figured that this might make the PERFECT way to kick off our new FAVORITE, FORGOTTEN B-SIDES SERIES ... the perfect LINK, if you will, between THE TOP 200 BIGGEST TWO-SIDED HITS OF ALL-TIME and your own B-SIDE FAVORITES!

Over the next several days, we'll explore some of my favorite HERMAN'S HERMITS B-SIDES ... and visit with group leader PETER NOONE. In the meantime, here's the one B-SIDE that made it to the charts.

NO MILK TODAY was released as a single in its own right back home in Jolly Ol' England back in October of 1966 ... four months before THERE'S A KIND OF HUSH hit the British Chart. It rose to #7 in the U.K. and, in PETER NOONE's own words, is one of his favorite HERMITS recordings: "No Milk Today is the PERFECT HERMITS record." (Ironically, in concert, NOONE most-often cites their version of THE END OF THE WORLD as his favorite ... and he really DOES like their recording of this tune ... but he confided to me that, next to I'M INTO SOMETHING GOOD for its pure pop genius, NO MILK TODAY is his absolute FAVORITE HERMAN'S HERMITS recording.)

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We also uncovered this little bit of HERMAN'S HERMITS / NO MILK TODAY trivia during our talks:

FORGOTTEN HITS: The only "charted" HERMAN'S HERMITS' B-SIDE here in America was NO MILK TODAY, which was a BIG hit in its own right in Great Britain ... it's also one of my favorites (and I love the bit about your Mum in the tub from your stage show!) Would you have preferred that this was released as a single on its own here in the States?
PETER NOONE: No Milk Today was Herman's Hermits' best single and was put together by John Paul Jones, Mickie Most and me with Keith and Karl doing the back grounds. It was our biggest selling record worldwide and was a B-side in the US because some boy band covered "There's A Kind Of Hush" and put it out in Ohio so we were afraid the radio wouldn't play "There's A Kind Of Hush" by us and we threw away No Milk in the US.

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A LITTLE BIT of '60's SHOP PERSONAL TRIVIA: One of my VERY favorite songs and recordings from the early '60's is the SKEETER DAVIS #1 Chicagoland Hit, THE END OF THE WORLD. (We featured this one in our CHICAGOLAND #1 SERIES, along with an in-depth profile of SKEETER DAVIS, a while back in FORGOTTEN HITS.) To my ears, it's just one of those PERFECT recordings, where EVERYTHING comes together and projects just the right amount of heart-felt emotion and drama. I used to date a girl named MARY on-and-off in High School and one night, as we were driving home from some high school event ... probably a basketball game or something ... the SKEETER DAVIS tune came on the radio. Naturally, I cranked it up and told her how much I loved this song. Her response was this blank, dumb-founded stare and then, "Who IS this?!?!? WHO is singing THIS song?!?!!! This is a HERMAN'S HERMITS song!!!" When I told her that this was the original, hit version ... that HERMAN'S HERMITS had only "covered" the tune a couple of years later ... she couldn't believe it ... the HERMITS' version was the ONLY one she had ever heard ... and she felt that WHOEVER this other singer was, was, in fact, absolutely RUINING a perfectly good song!!!

I've learned over the years ... and this seems to be true of ALL music people ... that we tend to love and embrace the version that we heard first ... regardless of whether or not that "first-heard" version was the original or the remake. It's that "first heard" version that dictates to our minds exactly HOW any particular song is SUPPOSED to sound. Therefore, when she played me the HERMAN'S HERMITS version of THE END OF THE WORLD ... which, until that day, I had never heard ... I HATED it!!! (Naturally, this relationship was now pretty much DOOMED from ever moving forward!!! LOL)

Anyway, HERMAN'S HERMITS released THEIR version of THE END OF THE WORLD as the B-SIDE to their chart-topping hit, I'M HENRY THE VIII, I AM back in 1965 ... and it seems to remain both a fan favorite as well as a PETER NOONE favorite. (I've come to appreciate it more over the years as well.) In fact, as we go to press this morning, the HERMAN'S HERMITS' version of THE END OF THE WORLD already has 111 of your votes as a FAVORITE, FORGOTTEN B-SIDE!!! So, good sport that I am, we'll feature the HERMAN'S HERMITS' FAR inferior version of this '60's classic here today, too. (lol)