Elvis approved Herman’s Hermits take to the roads the again for tour | Music | Entertainment

They were about to play the last show of their sold-out 1965 US tour in Honolulu when Herman’s Hermits’ manager Harvey Lisberg took a phone call.

“It was Colonel Tom Parker, ringing to say Elvis Presley wanted to meet us tomorrow,” recalls drummer Barry Whitwam, still elated by the memory.

“He was filming Paradise, Hawaiian Style. We’d been on the road for two months and were going home the next day, but me and our singer Peter Noone said, ‘Come on, it’s Elvis!’

“We were the new kids, we looked a bit goofy… he was mystified.”Herman’s Hermits were one of pop’s biggest bands, with a string of unforgettable Sixties hits including I’m Into Something Good, There’s A Kind Of Hush and Mrs Brown, You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter.

The Manchester combo formed in 1964 and sold 80 million records, half of them in the first four years. America loved them.

They were the third British Invasion band, behind the Dave Clark Five and The Beatles. “Then came Herman’s Hermits with the Rolling Stones hanging onto our shirt-tails until they overtook everybody,” says Barry, 76, his voice still as comfortably northwest as the Corrie cobbles.

Their 1965 show with the Stones in Philadelphia led to a blazing row between Harvey Lisberg and the Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, about who should headline.

The angry altercation on the side of the stage became so heated, Philly’s chief of police threatened to arrest both men for inciting a riot. Lisberg capitulated.

“While we played, the Stones stood in the wings shouting abuse at us, all unprintable…But after we played, 10,000 of the 15,000 fans left the building.”

That same year, Herman’s Hermits headlined the Pasadena Rose Bowl in California playing to 45,000, a week before the Beatles sold out New York’s Shea Stadium.

“Often we played baseball stadiums where the PA was the Tannoy system. We couldn’t hear what we were playing.

The girls were screaming, we had no monitors – so you just played from memory. It seemed to work. “The girls used to run across the grass to get close to us, and the cops tried to tackle them. We were just rolling with it, it was a fantastic feeling.”

They appeared on US TV’s fabled The Ed Sullivan Show five times. “The first time we did it was in black-and-white. As we drove out the building, we were mobbed. Kids jumped all over the Cadillac.

“That happened a lot. They’d open doors, and sometimes try and cut off a piece of your hair with scissors… “In New York, when I checked into the Squire Hotel I opened my door and there were two girls already inside it. How they got in, I’ll never know but I asked them to leave. You had to.”

Fans used flash bulb cameras and threw the used bulbs at the stage. “If you got hit by one, you’d know it. That’s what we got thrown at us – lightbulbs and knickers.”

And should we mention the gunpowder? Their 1967 US tour, supported by The Who, also ended in Hawaii. Barry Whitwam had a blast – literally. He was blown up by rival beat-keeper The Who’s Keith Moon, bringing new meaning to going down a bomb.

“I wasn’t hurt, and my hair grew back,” Barry assures me with a twinkle in his eye. The unexpected pyrotechnics happened during their closing number in front of 25,000 fans at the Honolulu International Centre.

“The Who had a lot of gunpowder left over from the tour,” Barry explains. “So Keith Moon and The Who’s road manager decided to pack black powder under my seat, with a fuse, and on our last song, I’m Henry VIII, I Am, BOOM! I exploded.

My suit was on fire, my hair was on fire, there was a big cloud of smoke…that’s where Spinal Tap got the idea from” (The 1984 mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap famously recreated the exploding drummer stunt).

Both Barry and Moony had turned 21 that summer and decided to have a joint birthday party at the Holiday Inn in Flint, Michigan. Mayhew ensured. Fans delivered around 200 cakes.

“Within 60 seconds it was the biggest cake fight you’d ever seen,” the twice-married father-of-three chuckles. “Our bass-player Karl Green pulled down Keith’s velvet trousers and the security guy got his gun and wanted to arrest Keith for indecent behaviour.”

Moon was swiftly evacuated but tripped and smashed his front teeth. “He needed dental surgery but was too drunk to have painkillers.”

A fire extinguisher fight in the car park ensued between Barry and Peter Noone. “We didn’t know that there were chemicals in the foam that damaged paint. Twenty cars needed re-spraying. I never owned up to that!

“The hotel was wrecked. All the furniture was in the pool. When we checked out, we got the bill – $5000 for the rooms $25,000 for damage…”

It was a mighty long way from Barry’s humble roots in Prestbury, Cheshire. The son of a refrigeration engineer and a machinist, he’d started drumming in his teens and was training to be a hairdresser in Manchester before stardom called.

He was twelve when his older brother Trevor was electrocuted in the bath. “A year later I told my parents I’d join a band if I had a drum kit and dad lent me £40.”

At 14 he was playing with Danny & the Demons, and then the Wailers, a three-piece doing covers or rock’n’roll songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Elvis and Eddie Cochran.

At the same time, producer Mickie Most had taken local band Herman & The Hermits into the studio but they hadn’t clicked. Most told their manager, Harvey Lisberg, “I’ll keep Peter Noone, but I need a new band.”

Lisberg asked the Wailers who turned him down, until he showed them their club bookings. “We’d seen them live and hadn’t liked them, but the gig bookings changed our mind.

Our guitarist Derek Leckenby was a short order chef. He was 17 and liked the idea of turning pro, so we agreed on condition they changed the name.”

Herman’s Hermits were born in 1964 and had their first Number On that August with I’m Into Something Good. 19 UK hits followed.

Barry’s sweetest memories are hearing that first single on Radio Luxembourg in his second-hand mini, meeting Elvis and their Royal Command performance in front of the Queen Mother – including a dance, to If I Was A Rich Man, in a Fiddler On The Roof segment with 12 dancing girls.

Their mistake he thinks, was “turning Music Hall after Mrs Brown got to number one in America with a million advance sales. It stayed there for three weeks. Then I’m Henry VIII, I Am went to number one, so management thought they were on to something and got us recording songs like Oh Mr Porter and Two Lovely Blackeyes. Leaning On The Lamp Post went Top Ten in the States. We became a novelty band.”

The Hermits’ hits fizzled out in the US by 1968, overtaken by The Monkees. They lasted two more years in the UK before Peter Noone quit.

Barry, who lives happily near Stockport with Pat, his wife of 34 years, is now the only original in the band with John Summerton (guitar), Tony Hancox (keyboards) and Jamie Thurston (bass).

All sing, “the harmonies are tremendous,” he says, adding, “We’re sixty next year, so we’re playing a world tour – Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Germany, hopefully New Zealand, maybe Japan and loads of theatres in the UK.”

No America though. Noone settled in the USA after leaving the band in 1971, but began touring as Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone in the 80s.

A legal wrangle over billing ensued in the noughties and Barry’s continuity Herman’s Hermits haven’t played there since 2009.

Could there ever be a reunion with Peter? “I think it’s possible to knock out a deal. We’d be daft not to.”

*Herman’s Hermits will be on tour from 1-29 Oct 2023, with Marmalade, Steve Ellis, Spencer James of The Searchers, Dave Berry, The Fourmost and Gerry’s Pacemakers. Tickets and info: www.sixtiesgold.com