Chapter 7 High Noone

I’m Into Something Good

By Peter Noone

It was here that we found ourselves.

The Coffin Club in Bolton Lancashire.

Herman and the Hermits grew up here.

It was one of the places where we got to play frequently as we got ourselves musically adept.

It was here that Mickie Most was conned into discovering us.

Yes.

The Mickie Most.

The world famous record producer, and he was coming to see us.

With the help of our incredibly astute managers (Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Silverman), Mickie the Most had been sent a plane ticket and we had paid for a night at the luxurious Midland Hotel in Manchester.

This was the only way we could get him to make the 200 mile trip up to North of England to see us, and in order not to make a mess of our incredible opportunity we had primed and prompted the audience.

One by one, we wandered around the club telling people that “Tonight the world’s greatest producer was coming all the way from America” to finally discover us and make us famous so that one day we could come back here to Bolton and marry you (oops).

Yes we lied. He wasn’t coming from America but Watford in Hertfordshire, and we were actually going to marry Gina Lollabrigida.

Well most of us were.

We got all our friends (mostly girls) to scream throughout the show.

I was pretty shocked at how badly all our girlfriends screamed. It was nothing like the screaming we had heard at all the Beatles concerts we had seen, or like anything in an Elvis movie, but, because although they wanted it to work out well me and the Hermits, when our friends screamed,they screamed. in all the wrong places.

Rather than scream during the sexy talking bit in I’ll Never Dance Again , they would scream when I announced the song, and then instead of screaming when I did my fabulous hand clutched to the chest (a la Judy Garland) they screamed when I coughed. You know how it is when everything is well orchestrated.

It wasn’t.

They also couldn’t work out how to scream at the same time.

You would hear Beryl scream “Oh Herman” then her friend Hilda would giggle and then she would have a go at it too.

These are their real names, and I use them here to protect the innocent, and neither of them were.

However, it apparently was a good enough job for Mickie Most to be impressed.

Mickie loved us.

Well, he didn’t love all of us, but was prepared to have us drive the 7-hour trip to London to attempt to put something on tape.

This was what they called a recording in the olden days.

Here I should mention that although we were the most popular local group by miles, we had never reached the semi-finals of any talent show we had ever entered, and I (as the spiritual leader of the group and obviously the one with the most get up and go), had decided that in order to succeed in show-business, it was necessary to include deception, and good management in order to get ahead, or, win a talent contest, whichever came first.

That is the only reason that I told the girls that he was from America, and also because I knew that Mickie Most would be the perfect record producer for us, and if he wasn’t then my sister would choose another one for us.

In the downstairs darkness of what we can safely call our very own Cavern Club (sometimes known as The Beachcomber Club), we won round one of our shot at fame.

Mickie was sold on recording Herman and the Hermits.

How fitting that a few months later, this would be the place where I would hear my very first recording, for the very first time on the radio.

It was upstairs in the kitchen (the dressing room), of the same club, and I had my left foot in one of my incredibly fab Beatle boots (Cuban heeled boots) and my right foot out of my incredibly fab Beatle Boots (I had bought a pair), when on the radio I heard, Jimmy Saville say, “Ere’s me mates... Erman and the Ermits with their smashin new record I’m Into Something Good.”

I don’t know if you can imagine what this meant to the hopping on one foot Herman.

I said to myself... “Oh My G-d I have made it”.

Not the record but it.

I was there with all my idols on the radio.

Hadn’t Elvis started the same way.

With a solitary first play on the radio?

Buddy Holly?

The Everly Brothers?

The Beatles?

All of them had started just like this.

No not with one foot in a Beatle boot you numbskull, but by hearing themselves on the radio.

Now I was one of them.

Not one of them, but one of them.

I pulled on my blue trousers, then I put the other boot on so the trouser cuffs were even and looked magnificent as they settled closely to that spot about 4 inches above the top of the boot assuring that you will remain a virgin forever. and it was just then that I saw out of the corner of my mischievous teenage boys eye, the sack of potatoes.

Someone had left this magnificent bag of unpeeled Russet potatoes as a message to me.

Years later I found out that Idaho has famous potatoes, but these potatoes were not yet famous but I was.

I was drawn like a moth to a flame to this beautiful bag of spuds.

In my defense I should submit that if this was not a divine message, then what was a sack full of potatoes doing in my dressing room?

See. Got you there!

I then realized why these potatoes had been delivered to the dressing room.

Of course.

How stupid of me not to have seen the message.

These potatoes were there to help me celebrate hearing my first record on the radio with only one shoe on, so I opened the burlap bag, gingerly took out a perfectly round potato and threw it through the open window of the kitchen, across a 1785 yard canal, through the unopened window of the sewing machine factory, which, I hasten to add, the said factory your honour,had closed down sometime before Ozzie and Harriett were married.

Smash!

That was the word they used wasn’t it?

You know the big DJ’s always said “It’s a smash” and I had a smash on the radio with the Hermits.

Karl liked potatoes too, but he was overcome with joy at seeing me overcome with joy so he offered to help me empty the bag of potatoes so my Mum wouldn’t eat them, because she was on a very strict Fatkins diet.

I think Keith may have had a throw of one too, just to see what it felt like, but he will not admit to it, or pay his share of the legal bill.

Lek said “Hey you shouldn’t do that you might break one of those windows if you throw it like this”, and showed us why my school always had beaten his school at cricket since the early 1900s, as he missed the building by at least 300 yards, having his potato drop with a sad plop into the canal they had built to stop budding rock stars from getting a clean shot at the sewing machine factory.

Many potatoes this sack held, but many were the windows and so inviting were they now, that we had a smash, so we did.

We could not stop ourselves, nor did we want to.

We were caught up in a sort of Mashed Potato Yeah Type moment, as we had often performed that song, but until now hadn’t realized that it was about US.

Yes that song was written for Herman’s Hermits. I never knew that until just now.

When asked “Who would throw the first potato”, I would have to say “ME”.

Who amongst you has not wanted to throw the first potato?

Let he or she who is without a potato, throw the first one.

Here, I hasten to add, that no danger could have befallen any of the inhabitants of the deserted sewing machine factory and we were sure it was empty because it was there within, that we always took our girl friends (or yours), after the show, to show them my stamp-collection, and what factories had looked like just after the Industrial Revolution.

But on this night our thoughts were far from the Revolution of our fore or five fathers.

Our thoughts were on our future and our bulging bag full.

(oops)

Suddenly, as if by magic, we were all out of potatoes, and so we sort of looked at each other and made jokes about singers and sewing machines and how providential it was that someone had put that huge bag full of potatoes in such a weird place as our dressing room.

As we went down the stairs to do our singing and playing we all knew that from now on it would be different.

The audience knew it too and we got our first real screams.

Some girls screamed for us too, which was nice, although we felt sort of unworthy,(and I personally preferred the ones I got across the canal in the sewing machine factory), but it was our moment, and I know nobody there that night realized that our lives had changed forever.

We were in the big time.

We were now members of that elite part of society.

We were part of the Inner Sanctum of people who had been heard on the radio!

In retrospect, I considered this to be far more an important milestone than being a regular on Coronation Street, which was the number one rated TV show in Great Britain, and still is, even though I haven’t appeared on it since 1961.

Little did we know that that wonderful night was just the beginning and that for the next 10 years everything we would do would be a brand new and exciting first.

The first time we got in the charts.

The first tour.

Top Of The Pops with the Beatles, The Supremes, Roy Orbison.

Meeting all of our heroes.

Of course we never found a bag of potatoes in our dressing room ever again, but I fully expect to find one some day.

Of course because the factory was shut down we hadn’t really done any malicious damage, and in retrospect a lot of the windows were already broken by hooligans and all we did was get rid of that bag that was left in our dressing room, probably by someone who knew we were going to be on the radio that night at exactly 5:30 pm on August the 7th, 1964.

Chapter 7 High Noone

I’m Into Something Good

—Peter Noone

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