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ROCK REVISITED
Rocking quartet
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Sale of 40 million copies in three years is just one of Herman's Hermits' many achievements
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AS PART of the `British invasion,' Herman's Hermits had 11 top 10 hits and over 40 million singles and albums sold around the world in just three years from 1964 to 1967. The quartet comprised Peter `Herman' Noone on vocals, piano and guitar, Keith Lockwood on guitar, Derek `Lek' Leckenby on guitar and Barry Whitwam on drums.
Spotted by English producer Mickie Most, the band's first single, I'm into something good sold a million copies and topped the British charts for three weeks in 1964.
By the next year, they began to climb the charts across the Atlantic with six of their singles in the top10 and even appeared on the Connie Francis movie Where the boys meet the girls.
Featuring in their hits were legendary performers Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, who in the near future would form an integral part of the classic heavy metal band, Led Zeppelin. Mrs. Brown you've got a lovely daughter and I'm Henry the Eighth, I am reached the pinnacle.
Legal battles over royalties ripped the group apart in 1971 but it showed up a few years later without `Herman' and made little impact. Noone, however, gigged with his former partners in 1973 for some British Invasion revival shows. He then returned to acting for a while and produced with David Bowie his first British solo hit, Oh you pretty things.
For three years, he hosted a British TV programme but relocated to the south of France. The few singles he cut did moderately there and in Belgium.
Noone moved to Los Angeles, where the club scene prompted him to attempt a comeback with the Tremblers, whose musicians had backed Olivia Newton John and Barbara Streisand. Back home, Leckenby and Whitwam continued as the Hermits until the former's death in 1994, while Whitwam persisted till the end of the millennium. By then, they had run out of steam as did their following.
A. GEORGE ANTONY
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