POPULARITY
2 episodes with Peter Noone
4 episodes with Peter Noone
3 episodes with Peter Noone
2 episodes with Peter Noone
3 episodes with Peter Noone
2 episodes with Peter Noone
2 episodes with Peter Noone
2 episodes with Peter Noone
2 episodes with Peter Noone
National redhead day. Entertainment from 1981. Guy Fawkes day in England, The game Monopoly went on sale, 1st US president? Todays birthdays - Natalie Schafer, Roy Rogers, Vivian Leigh, Ike Turner, Art Garfunkel, Peter Noone, Mike Score, Bryan Adams, Tatum O'neal. James Clark Maxwell died.Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Redheads - Marc DanielsArthus theme (the best you can do) - Christopher CrossFancy free - Oak Ridge BoysBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Gilligans Island TV themeThe yellow rose of Texas - Roy RogersRocket 88 - Ike Turner & Jackie BrenstonCecilia - Simon & GarfunkelI'm into something good - Herman's HermitsI ran - A Flock of seagullsSummer of 69 - Bryan AdamsExit - It's not love - Dokken https://www.dokken.net/
3rd ANNIVERSARY SHOW! I'm rebroadcasting our three anniversary shows! This is our third one from March 2024 featuring different and unique guest promos by a slew of guests who appeared during that year: “Cousin Brucie” Morrow, America's favorite air personality; John Lodge of the Moody Blues; Ted Nugent; Al Kooper of Blood Sweat & Tears; Gary Puckett of the Union Gap; Suzi Quatro; Tony Orlando; William Lee Golden of the Oak Ridge Boys; Richie Furay of Buffalo Springfield; Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits; Timothy B. Schmit of the Eagles; Jeremy Swift of Ted Lasso; Rod Argent of The Zombies; The Amazing Kreskin; Jim Messina of Loggins and Messina; Stewart Copeland of The Police; Gilbert O'Sullivan; Ron Carter, Bass Maestro; Randy Brecker of The Brecker Brothers; Lou Christie; Nils Lofgren of The E Street Band; Jeremy Clyde of Chad & Jeremy; Songwriter Brendan Graham; Saxophonist Ada Rovatti; Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & May; Mark Farner of Grand Funk Railroad; Guitarist Elliott Randall of Steely Dan; Laeticia Eido of Fauda; Jerry Jemmott the Groovemaster; Roger Earl of Foghat; Felix Cavalieri of The Rascals; Leisa Rea of the Ukelele Orchestra of G.B. ; Songwriter L. Russell Brown; Composer Neil Martin; Andy Summers of The Police; Singer-Songwriter Henry Gross; Gary Lewis of The Playboys; Burton Averre of The Knack; Jazz pianist Eliane Elias; The Celtic Tenors; Tommy James; Denny Tedesco director of The Wrecking Crew; Composer Sherry Chung; Bruce Belland of The Four Preps; Classical Music publicist Mary Lou Falcone; Bruce Kulick of KISS; Navid Negahban of The Old Man; Steve Hackett of Genesis; Rob Stoner of Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder band; John Helliwell of Supertramp; Bob Reynolds of Snarky Puppy; Jim Yester of The Association; Singer-Songwriter J.J. Gilmore; Rock Photographer Jay Blakesberg; Fred Lipsius of Blood Sweat & Tears; Robert Funaro of The Sopranos; Bassist Nathan East; Jim Peterik of the Ides of March; Mark Stein of Vanilla Fudge; Robby Robinson musical director for Frankie Valli; Patrick Myers of Killer Queen; Tony Carey of Rainbow; Eurovision winner Eimear Quinn; and Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon!---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here .To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------“THE GIFT” is Robert's new single featuring his song arranged by Grammy winning arranger Michael Abene. Praised by David Amram, John Helliwell, Joe La Barbera, Tony Carey, Fay Claassen, Antonio Farao, Danny Gottlieb and Leslie Mandoki.Click HERE for all links.—-------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES” is Robert's recent single. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------“THE RICH ONES”. Robert's recent single. With guest artist Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears) on flugelhorn. Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------------“MILES BEHIND”, Robert's debut album, recorded in 1994, was “lost” for the last 30 years. It's now been released for streaming. Featuring Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears), Anton Fig (The David Letterman Show), Al Foster (Miles Davis), Tim Ries (The Rolling Stones), Jon Lucien and many more. Called “Hip, Tight and Edgy!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------“IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
Part two of this month’s new release series is highlighted by long-awaited returns by legendary veteran bands. The Dictators celebrate their 50th anniversary with their first album in 25 years. The Fastbacks are back after a 23 year hiatus. Peter Noone of 60’s pop idiols Herman’s Hermits is back with vocal contributions to a Buffalo Springfield-Rolling Stones hybrid cover created by The Weeklings. Other veteran artists with new tunes include Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Jon Spencer. There’s also a plethora of brand new tunes from our friends at Rum Bar Records, including the kickoff of a new monthly singles campaign by The Dogmatics. There’s hot new singles from Rum Bar regulars The Laissez Fairs, Cheap Cassettes, along with Junior Varsit, Joe Jennings MVP’s, and a Dogmatics side project called Hotbox. Besides all of those hot acts, there’s a ton of female voices heard on this episode. Cherrie Currie collaborates with the Dead Boys on a “believe it or not” cover of Taylor Swift. Lura Jane Grace is back with a wondefully angry new EP. There’s also new music by The Bell Rays, The Dahlmanns, Vicious Dreams, and many others! For more info, […]
Part two of this month's new release series is highlighted by long-awaited returns by legendary veteran bands. The Dictators celebrate their 50th anniversary with their first album in 25 years. The Fastbacks are back after a 23 year hiatus. Peter Noone of 60's pop idiols Herman's Hermits is back with vocal contributions to a Buffalo Springfield-Rolling Stones hybrid cover created by The Weeklings. Other veteran artists with new tunes include Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Jon Spencer. There's also a plethora of brand new tunes from our friends at Rum Bar Records, including the kickoff of a new monthly singles campaign by The Dogmatics. There's hot new singles from Rum Bar regulars The Laissez Fairs, Cheap Cassettes, along with Junior Varsit, Joe Jennings MVP's, and a Dogmatics side project called Hotbox. Besides all of those hot acts, there's a ton of female voices heard on this episode. Cherrie Currie collaborates with the Dead Boys on a “believe it or not” cover of Taylor Swift. Lura Jane Grace is back with a wondefully angry new EP. There's also new music by The Bell Rays, The Dahlmanns, Vicious Dreams, and many others! For more info, […]
Ep. 100 Peter Noone: Watch Every Act It's our ONE HUNDREDTH EPISODE and to celebrate Josh sits down with a living legend, Peter Noone! Peter shares stories of his incredible (and still going) career. Our host share their 100 favorite things and dream of booking the bills of the 60s. Don't forget you can see us at MAX in booth #512 Peter Noone (https://peternoone.com/) is a multi talented entertainer known best for Herman's Hermits Follow us on social media and let us know your thoughts and questions - https://linktr.ee/nobusinesslikepod Our theme song is composed by Vic Davi (@VicDaviMusic).
Christian is joined for the entire show by musician Peter Noone, who talks about his life, career, musical headlines and some of the latest headlines in rock n roll. Later, they're treated to a surprise visit from Jackie The Joke Man Martling.
Peter Noone - better known as Herman with Herman's Hermits - is a 1960s Superstar. They had a remarkable string of hits including #1s: "Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter" and "Henry VIII, I Am", plus "I'm Into Something Good" (written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin), "Kind Of A Hush", "No Milk Today", "Listen People" and many more.My Co-Host for this interview is Gary Puckett, another 1960s Superstar with Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, which had 6 Top 10 hits in 1968 including "Woman Woman" and "Young Girl".In honor of my Co-Host the featured song in this episode is “Lady Willpower”, which was a big hit for Gary and the band. ---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------“LOU'S BLUES” is Robert's new single. Called “Fantastic! Great playing and production!” (Mark Egan - Pat Metheny Group/Elements) and “Digging it!” (Peter Erskine - Weather Report)!Click HERE for all links.—----------------------------------------“THE RICH ONES”. Robert's recent single. With guest artist Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears) on flugelhorn. Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------------“MILES BEHIND”, Robert's debut album, recorded in 1994, was “lost” for the last 30 years. It's now been released for streaming. Featuring Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears), Anton Fig (The David Letterman Show), Al Foster (Miles Davis), Tim Ries (The Rolling Stones), Jon Lucien and many more. Called “Hip, Tight and Edgy!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------“IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Intro/Outro Voiceovers courtesy of:Jodi Krangle - Professional Voiceover Artisthttps://voiceoversandvocals.com Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Peter at:www.peternoone.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
It's T.J.'s birthday! It's T.J.'s birthday! And we would like to give him all of the cassettes! The celebrated 4th member of the UBP (a. Tony, b. Casey, c. P3Z-Nutz) celebrates 46 years of Beatles love and weirdo-sniffer-collecting on the occasion of his 50th birthday! From meeting Paul McCartney to a crisis of what Apple '92 closeout cassettes to buy in '96, T.J. and Tony discuss some of the birthday boy's favorite Beatles memories in a lifetime of loving the music and unmatched excellence of the Fab 4. But a special birthday episode can't derail the usual chicanery, and lots of rando preguntas are asked, including:
Welcome to a Very Special Episode of the podcast celebrating the show's 3rd Anniversary! I started the podcast in March 2021 during the depths of the pandemic, when musicians like me couldn't play live. It was a bleak time for all of us. I needed to find a creative outlet and so I started this podcast. From the beginning it grew quickly and exponentially. It's been ranked for some time now in the Top 1% of all podcasts. I have listeners worldwide on every continent in 200 countries, and it has won several awards! My guests have included many of the world's most famous musicians and other creatives.Last year to celebrate the 2nd Anniversary I played excerpts from several guest interviews. But for this 3rd Anniversary show I wanted to do something different - and fun. So here's what I decided. After each interview I ask my guest to record a short promo for the podcast. I use these promos at the beginning of other guest interviews. Everyone does their promo a little differently in their own style. After all, they're artists! So I thought it would be fun to put together a montage of promos featuring a slew of my guests. The entire list is below.I want to thank my guests and my listeners for the success of the podcast. As I like to say - Keep On Rockin'! Featured Guests:"Cousin Brucie" Morrow, John Lodge, Ted Nugent, Al Kooper, Gary Puckett, Suzi Quatro, Tony Orlando, William Lee Golden, Richie Furay, Peter Noone, Timothy B. Schmit, Jeremy Swift, Rod Argent, The Amazing Kreskin, Jim Messina, Stewart Copeland, Gilbert O'Sullivan, Ron Carter, Randy Brecker, Lou Christie, Nils Lofgren, Jeremy Clyde, Brendan Graham Ada Rovatti, Peter Yarrow, Mark Farner, Elliott Randall, Laetitia Eido, Jerry Jemmott, Roger Earl, Felix Cavaliere, Lisa Rea, L. Russell Brown, Neil Martin, Andy Summers, Henry Gross, Gary Lewis, Burton Averre, Eliane Elias, The Celtic Tenors, Tommy James, Denny Tedesco, Sherry Chung, Bruce Belland, Mary Lou Falcone, Bruce Kulick, Navid Negahban, Steve Hackett, Rob Stoner, John Helliwell, Bob Reynolds, Jim Yester, JJ Gilmour, Jay Blakesberg, Fred Lipsius, Robert Funaro, Nathan East, Jim Peterik, Mark Stein, Robby Robinson, Patrick Myers, Tony Carey, Eimear Quinn, Peter Asher---------------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------“THE RICH ONES”. Robert's new single. With guest artist Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears) on flugelhorn. Crossover instrumental.Click HERE for all links.—---------------------------------------“MILES BEHIND”, Robert's first album, was recorded in 1994 but was “lost” for the last 30 years. It's now been released for streaming. Featuring Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears), Anton Fig (The David Letterman Show), Al Foster (Miles Davis), Tim Ries (The Rolling Stones), Jon Lucien and many more. Called “Hip, Tight and Edgy!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------“IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
Peter Noone was a ‘60s Superstar with Herman's Hermits, one of the most celebrated and successful bands of the British Invasion era. They sold more than 60 million records and had 14 Gold singles and 7 Gold albums. Their hits included “I'm Into Something Good”, “Can't You Hear My Heartbeat”, and two #1s - “Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter” and “I'm Henry the VIII I am”. They appeared on numerous TV shows and starred in two movies.My featured song is “Hey Jake” from the album East Side Sessions by my band Project Grand Slam. Spotify link.—--------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------“MILES BEHIND”, Robert's first album, was recorded in 1994 but was “lost” for the last 30 years. It's now been released for streaming. Featuring Randy Brecker (Blood Sweat & Tears), Anton Fig (The David Letterman Show), Al Foster (Miles Davis), Tim Ries (The Rolling Stones), Jon Lucien and many more. Called “Hip, Tight and Edgy!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------‘THE SINGLES PROJECT” is Robert's new EP, featuring five of his new songs. The songs speak to the ups and downs of life. From the blissful, joyous “Saturday Morning” to the darker commentary of “Like Never Before” and “The Ship”. “This is Robert at his most vulnerable” (Pop Icon Magazine)Reviews: “Amazing!” (Top Buzz Magazine)“Magical…A Sonic Tour De Force!” (IndiePulse Music)“Fabulously Enticing!” (Pop Icon Magazine)“A Home Run!” (Hollywood Digest)Listener Reviews:Saturday Morning:”A neat and simply happy song!””It's so cute and fun. It's describing a world I wish I lived in every day!”Like Never Before:”Great message!””Great song, very perceptive lyrics!” Click here for all links.—--------------------------------------“IT'S ALIVE!” is Robert's latest Project Grand Slam album. Featuring 13 of the band's Greatest Hits performed “live” at festivals in Pennsylvania and Serbia.Reviews:"An instant classic!" (Melody Maker)"Amazing record...Another win for the one and only Robert Miller!" (Hollywood Digest)"Close to perfect!" (Pop Icon)"A Masterpiece!" (Big Celebrity Buzz)"Sterling effort!" (Indie Pulse)"Another fusion wonder for Project Grand Slam!" (MobYorkCity)Click here for all links.Click here for song videos—-----------------------------------------Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Peter:www.peternoone.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comPGS Store - www.thePGSstore.comYouTubeSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
Family From The Heart - An Encouraging And Entertaining Look At Family Life
In this episode Stephanie and I talk about the following: McKenna came home from her first semester of college at Western Kentucky University for a longer visit this time before heading back for the spring semester. We caught up on how she's adjusting to being away from home. Stephanie and I reminisced about starting our podcasting journey 18 years ago in December 2005. We talked about some of the early early day experiences of podcasting. I shared the fun night I had taking my dad to see Herman's Hermits starring Peter Noone. Stephanie told me about her movie night with Megan and friends watching the Taylor Swift ERAS tour film. It was nice for her to spend time with those friends she watched grow up. We gave our thoughts on the recent Doctor Who specials featuring David Tennant and Catherine Tate. We debated theories about possible spinoffs and the future of the show. I updated listeners on Stephanie's YouTube channel and working to get it live streaming capable. Subscribe to Stephanie's YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/stephanieravenscraft
Friday Freakout, Fun Facts, Dumb Crook News, Joe is joining Cameo, Peter Noone calls in, Dr Elmo sings "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer" live in studio + Christmas cookie decorating challenge!
GGACP celebrates the birthday (November 5th) of pop singer, radio host and British Invasion icon Peter Noone with this ENCORE of an episode from 2020. In this episode, Peter joins the boys for a loose and laugh-filled conversation about rock and roll excess, the birth of the Beatles, entertaining the Queen Mum and rubbing shoulders with Bob Dylan, Keith Moon and Elvis Presley (among others). Also, Alice Cooper climbs the charts, Keith Richards lays down the law, Imelda Marcos requests a tune and Herman's Hermits perform "If I Were a Rich Man." PLUS: "The Pirates of Penzance"! Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders! Dick Clark's Caravan of Stars! The genius of Mickie Most! And Gilbert "sings" "I'm Into Something Good"! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Packed with extra goodies, Andy opens his Groovy Soul this week with a bumper selection of Northern tunes, a new one from Rob Picazo and Smoove and Turrell who also pick the three Northern Soul stonkers in the 2nd hour. You are asked to pin your ears back for a beautiful tune by Sampha and Peter Noone celebrates his birthday. What more can you ask for? - its devilish!Tune into new broadcasts of Groovy Soul, LIVE, Sunday 12 - 2 PM EST / 5 - 7 PM GMT.For more info and tracklisting, visit :https://thefaceradio.com/groovy-soul//Dig this show? Please consider supporting The Face Radio: http://support.thefaceradio.com Support The Face Radio with PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/thefaceradio. Join the family at https://plus.acast.com/s/thefaceradio. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
National redhead day. Entertainment from 1958. Guy Fawkes day in England, The game Monopoly went on sale, 1st US president? Todays birthdays = Natalie Schafer, Roy Rogers, Vivian Leigh, Ike Turner, Art Garfunkel, Peter Noone, Mike Score, Bryan Adams, Tatum O'neal. James Clark Maxwell died. Intro - Pour some sugar on me - Def Leppard http://defleppard.com/Redheads - Marc DanielsIts all in the game - Tommy EdwardsCity lights - Ray PriceBirthdays - In da club - 50 Cent http://50cent.com/Gilligans Island TV themeThe yellow rose of Texas - Roy RogersRocket 88 - Ike Turner & Jackie BrenstonCecilia - Simon & GarfunkelI'm into something good - Herman's HermitsI ran - A Flock of seagullsSummer of 69 - Bryan AdamsExit - It's not love - Dokkenhttps://coolcasts.cooolmedia.com/
In this episode Tom and Bert go after the Rock & Roll HOF again after finding more outrageous "Snubs" that are just as bad or worse than the previous Performers discussed on our podcast about the Rock & Roll HOF Selection process.John Fogerty and Diana Ross are in the HOF based on their group performances with "Creedence Clearwater Revival" and "The Supremes" respectively BUT not as solo artists! The record speaks for itself and the guys hammer that point hard.Others that were screwed/snubbed in their opinion were, "The 5th Dimension" with Billy Davis Jr. and Marilyn McCoo, "Herman's Hermits" with Peter Noone, "Jan & Dean" "The J Geils Band", Olivia Newton John, Barry White and Tom Jones among the performers.The guys couldn't help themselves so they decided to bring the listeners Part 2 of these god awful travesties and set the record straight. These performers all deserved recognition and induction into the HOF period!You can email us at reeldealzmoviesandmusic@gmail.com or visit our Facebook page, Reel Dealz Podcast: Movies & Music Thru The Decades to leave comments. Hope you enjoy the show.
Recorded together in Mark Ellen's attic! Among the conversational footballs booted round the park this week you'll find:- … Freddie's “exquisite clutter”: would YOU buy one of his bonzai plant-holders, his catsuit with ballet shoes and a $0.5m silver bangle? … when did the story change from “the Stones are old, knackered and ought to give up!” to “the Stones are old, brilliant and should carry on forever!”? ... do all enduring legacies need an element of tragedy? … who calls the Ezra Collective “a jazz band”? … who's been married the longest … Bono, Alice Cooper or Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits? … 1984 was the annus mirabilis of the album? Birthday guest Matthew North has the records to prove it. … the perils of celebrities chairing press conferences (QED Jimmy Fallon). ... how they've only gone and wrecked the Rugby World Cup anthems. … and useful phrases to deploy when you didn't much care for your mate's band but don't want to hurt their feelings – eg You've done it again! Only YOU could have put in a show like that! You took it to a whole new level!Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on September 25th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/1SwIYJWoHKSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Recorded together in Mark Ellen's attic! Among the conversational footballs booted round the park this week you'll find:- … Freddie's “exquisite clutter”: would YOU buy one of his bonzai plant-holders, his catsuit with ballet shoes and a $0.5m silver bangle? … when did the story change from “the Stones are old, knackered and ought to give up!” to “the Stones are old, brilliant and should carry on forever!”? ... do all enduring legacies need an element of tragedy? … who calls the Ezra Collective “a jazz band”? … who's been married the longest … Bono, Alice Cooper or Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits? … 1984 was the annus mirabilis of the album? Birthday guest Matthew North has the records to prove it. … the perils of celebrities chairing press conferences (QED Jimmy Fallon). ... how they've only gone and wrecked the Rugby World Cup anthems. … and useful phrases to deploy when you didn't much care for your mate's band but don't want to hurt their feelings – eg You've done it again! Only YOU could have put in a show like that! You took it to a whole new level!Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on September 25th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/1SwIYJWoHKSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Recorded together in Mark Ellen's attic! Among the conversational footballs booted round the park this week you'll find:- … Freddie's “exquisite clutter”: would YOU buy one of his bonzai plant-holders, his catsuit with ballet shoes and a $0.5m silver bangle? … when did the story change from “the Stones are old, knackered and ought to give up!” to “the Stones are old, brilliant and should carry on forever!”? ... do all enduring legacies need an element of tragedy? … who calls the Ezra Collective “a jazz band”? … who's been married the longest … Bono, Alice Cooper or Peter Noone from Herman's Hermits? … 1984 was the annus mirabilis of the album? Birthday guest Matthew North has the records to prove it. … the perils of celebrities chairing press conferences (QED Jimmy Fallon). ... how they've only gone and wrecked the Rugby World Cup anthems. … and useful phrases to deploy when you didn't much care for your mate's band but don't want to hurt their feelings – eg You've done it again! Only YOU could have put in a show like that! You took it to a whole new level!Tickets for Word In Your Ear live at 21Soho on September 25th here: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/1SwIYJWoHKSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
This guys sit down with Jimmy's friend and neighbor, Peter Noone, the frontman of the legendary band Herman's Hermits. Sponsors: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/CONNORS Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/connors (ALL LOWERCASE) Follow us on - Twitter - @AdvConnors @JimmyConnors @Brett_Connors Instagram - @AdvConnors @Bretterz @GolddoodIsabella Facebook - Jimmy Connors official Facebook page Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
[TW//Drug Misuse, Suicidal Thoughts] Today I welcome singer, songwriter and author of the Amazon bestseller The Joy of Addiction, Sebastian Wocker. Aged 17, Wocker landed the principal part of Woof in the 1983 European tour of the musical Hair where, suffering teenage angst, low self-worth and low self-esteem, he went into a deep depression and had to throw in the towel after two months. He returned to his safe haven of drugs and alcohol in London, where he auditioned for and got into LAMDA (London Academy of Dramatic Arts), only to drop out after two days because he 'couldn't stand all those happy clappy prima donnas'. The real reason? He was an addict, hopelessly hooked on drugs and alcohol and didn't want to be found out. Sebastian takes us on a compelling journey down the abyss of alcohol, cocaine, speed, cannabis, hallucinogen and prescribed drug addiction, leading him to various rock bottoms and 'dark nights of the soul'. Then, aged 21, a moment of inspiration: a seed planted by his long suffering mother finally got him into the 12-step programme, offering him the life-changing gift of recovery. For anyone struggling with addiction, he shares how he got himself out and continues to live life, a day at a time — a free man. Having found recovery in 1987, Sebastian formed indie-rock band Yeah in 1990, playing the London, Hamburg and Berlin club circuits. After a five-page interview with Die Zeit Magazine in 1992, Yeah appeared on various radio and TV shows and in 1993 was awarded The John Lennon Talent Award in Hamburg. In 1998 he wrote and produced World Cup Crescendo for TV impressionist Alistair McGowan. In 2002 he signed as a songwriter for Global Chrysalis Publishing, writing numerous songs for Cherry Red Records and Universal Records and released his solo album: Don Sebastiano, The Spaghetti Tree. In 2007 Wocker recorded the soundtrack of German movie Pornorama with Mousse T and, in 2010, was the singing voice for Tobias Menzies in the award winning independent motion picture Forget Me Not. Sebastian has written as a journalist for The Independent, Mr Partner Magazine (Japan), Camden New Journal and Ham and High Express. He is currently journalist and editor of the Hampstead Village Voice and has interviewed various household names including Emma Thompson, Russell Brand, George Graham, Giles Coren and Martin Bell. Wocker is currently recording an audiobook for his best selling book The Joy of Addiction, out on Audible from February 2024 and is writing the sequel: The Joy of Relapse. He is currently the lead singer/song writer of indie band Ridiculous with Jon Moss, Erran Baron-Cohen and Peter Noone. Ridiculous has just recorded their debut single Everybody Loves That Girl at Abbey Road Studios. Topics - 0:00 Intro 4:30 Sebastian's many rock bottoms and finding recovery 18:40 Why Sebastian used drugs as a teenager 24:30 Drug use in young people in 2023 27:15 Cocaine 29:42 Using drugs to escape 31:45 The walk of shame 36:30 What is the 'joy of addiction'? 38:30 The joy of being in recovery 42:50 Advice for teenagers and parents who are struggling with drug misuse If you've been affected by any of the issues discussed on today's episode Sebastian recommends the following services: https://ukna.org/ www.cocaineanonymous.org.uk/ www.alcoholics-anonymous.org.uk/ https://familiesanonymous.org/ https://al-anonuk.org.uk/ https://al-anon.org/newcomers/teen-corner-alateen/ This Podcast is not for profit but my goal is to break even. Please donate here. Thank you! https://bit.ly/3kSucAs Buy 'The Joy Of Addiction' https://amzn.to/3N2fXTY Follow Sebastian Instagram - https://bit.ly/3Pdwl6V Twitter - https://bit.ly/46baXVU Facebook - https://bit.ly/3NoLpgx Follow Oliver Instagram - https://bit.ly/3IemHLY Twitter - http://bit.ly/3GQYj2l Facebook - http://bit.ly/3w8S1Gx LinkedIn - http://bit.ly/3kp4ymC TikTok - https://bit.ly/3YGLsYm Listen or watch on: YouTube - https://bit.ly/43uN4pJ
Recording From '75 Found In Closet, Record Company Releases As A Single#newmusic #thelimits #boxtops #hermanshermits #ricklevy #flowerpower #60smusic #theletter #rachel #record #musician #guitarist Luxury Records (distributed by Cleopatra Records) is very pleased and proud to announce the release of perhaps the most special and significant song from THE LIMITS called “Rachel.” Perennial popmeisters, THE LIMITS have gained a worldwide cult following with their original songs filled with brilliant hooks, jangle guitars, and clean tight production.Written in 1975 by Limits leader RICK LEVY, “Rachel” is the true story of the loss of a baby girl at birth by Rick and his then wife. The song was long forgotten until Limits co-founder Rook Jones, found some demo singles, and sent them to Levy. After sending to Cleopatra Records (the Limits label), President Brian Perera immediately asked to release the song because of how hauntingly beautiful and powerful it is. Cleopatra will also feature Rachel on their Tracks of the Week promotions.RICK LEVY is currently manager, guitarist/vocalist with Memphis Music Hall of Fame artists THE BOX TOPS. He has also been bandleader/tour manager for Tommy Roe, Hermans Hermits starring Peter Noone, Jay & the Techniques and more. In 2018, Crossroad Press released Rick's memoir, “High in the Mid 60s.” It can be ordered from: Website: http://www.ricklevy.comTo purchase The Limits “Rachel” single: https://orcd.co/6avb8pkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/rick.levy.75The Limits fanpage: http://www.facebook.com/groups/533610423393062https://www.facebook.com/groups/1493893264090763Thanks for tuning in, please be sure to click that subscribe button and give this a thumbs up!!Email: thevibesbroadcast@gmail.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/listen_to_the_vibes_/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thevibesbroadcastnetworkLinktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastTikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMeuTVRv2/Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheVibesBrdcstTruth: https://truthsocial.com/@KoyoteFor all our social media and other links, go to: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/the_vibes_broadcastPlease subscribe, like, and share!
Join us for a SUPERSIZED MONKEEING AROUND as we give our report on the Flower Power Cruise 2023, featuring exclusive audio recordings! We saw The Zombies, Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits, Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon, Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy, The Cowsills, The Buckinghams, The Manfreds, Felix Cavaliere and the Rascals, the … Monkeeing Around – Flower Power Cruise – Episode 33 Read More » The post Monkeeing Around – Flower Power Cruise – Episode 33 appeared first on The ESO Network.
Join us for a SUPERSIZED MONKEEING AROUND as we give our report on the Flower Power Cruise 2023, featuring exclusive audio recordings! We saw The Zombies, Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits, Peter Asher of Peter and Gordon, Jeremy Clyde of Chad and Jeremy, The Cowsills, The Buckinghams, The Manfreds, Felix Cavaliere and the Rascals, the Fifth Dimension, The Fab Four, The Jukebox Beatles, The Papas and the Mamas, and of course Micky Dolenz of The Monkees! Monkeeing Around is a part of the ESO Podcast Network, Executive Producer Mike Faber.
Aged 21 in 1963, Harvey Lisberg wanted to be the next Brian Epstein and ended up managing Herman's Hermits and 10cc, among others, before relaunching the snooker stars Jimmy White and Hurricane Higgins. We thoroughly recommend his just-published memoir ‘I'm Into Something Good' and this wide-ranging encounter takes in … ... the unique division of labour in 10cc and the magnificently doomed invention of ‘the Gizmo'. … the perils of $100,000's credit in Las Vegas casinos. … life for the wives of rock stars “in love with music”. … his friendship with Colonel Tom Parker and a day spent with Elvis in Honolulu. … a prickly relationship with Mickie Most. … why America fell in love with Peter Noone. … Herman's Hermits' US tours with the Stones and the Who. … and how he changed the snooker world by remodelling the “Artful Dodger” Jimmy White. Buy Harvey's memoir here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Im-Into-Something-Good-Managing-ebook/dp/B0BSHGRN5VSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aged 21 in 1963, Harvey Lisberg wanted to be the next Brian Epstein and ended up managing Herman's Hermits and 10cc, among others, before relaunching the snooker stars Jimmy White and Hurricane Higgins. We thoroughly recommend his just-published memoir ‘I'm Into Something Good' and this wide-ranging encounter takes in … ... the unique division of labour in 10cc and the magnificently doomed invention of ‘the Gizmo'. … the perils of $100,000's credit in Las Vegas casinos. … life for the wives of rock stars “in love with music”. … his friendship with Colonel Tom Parker and a day spent with Elvis in Honolulu. … a prickly relationship with Mickie Most. … why America fell in love with Peter Noone. … Herman's Hermits' US tours with the Stones and the Who. … and how he changed the snooker world by remodelling the “Artful Dodger” Jimmy White. Buy Harvey's memoir here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Im-Into-Something-Good-Managing-ebook/dp/B0BSHGRN5VSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Aged 21 in 1963, Harvey Lisberg wanted to be the next Brian Epstein and ended up managing Herman's Hermits and 10cc, among others, before relaunching the snooker stars Jimmy White and Hurricane Higgins. We thoroughly recommend his just-published memoir ‘I'm Into Something Good' and this wide-ranging encounter takes in … ... the unique division of labour in 10cc and the magnificently doomed invention of ‘the Gizmo'. … the perils of $100,000's credit in Las Vegas casinos. … life for the wives of rock stars “in love with music”. … his friendship with Colonel Tom Parker and a day spent with Elvis in Honolulu. … a prickly relationship with Mickie Most. … why America fell in love with Peter Noone. … Herman's Hermits' US tours with the Stones and the Who. … and how he changed the snooker world by remodelling the “Artful Dodger” Jimmy White. Buy Harvey's memoir here …https://www.amazon.co.uk/Im-Into-Something-Good-Managing-ebook/dp/B0BSHGRN5VSubscribe to Word In Your Ear on Patreon for early - and ad-free! - access to all of our content: https://www.patreon.com/wordinyourear Get bonus content on Patreon Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Join Michael in his conversation with Stephen Moore about the book he co-authored with Gary Oezle: All Roads Lead to the Birchmere: America's Legendary Music Hall, which chronicles the creation and growth of the Birchmere one of America's great independent music venues just outside of Washington, DC. Michael's special guest is Peter Noone.
Peter Noone was a ‘60s Superstar with Herman's Hermits, one of the most celebrated and successful bands of the British Invasion era. They sold more than 60 million records and had 14 Gold singles and 7 Gold albums. Their hits included “I'm Into Something Good”, “Can't You Hear My Heartbeat”, and two #1s - “Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter” and “I'm Henry the VIII”. They appeared on numerous TV shows and starred in two movies.My featured song is “Hey Jake” from my new album, Bobby M and the Paisley Parade. Spotify link.—--------------------------------------The Follow Your Dream Podcast:Top 1% of all podcasts with Listeners in 200 countries!For more information and other episodes of the podcast click here. To subscribe to the podcast click here.To subscribe to our weekly Follow Your Dream Podcast email click here.To Rate and Review the podcast click here.“Dream With Robert”. Click here.—----------------------------------------Peter and I discuss the following:He joined the Cyclones at 13Then Peter Novack & The HeartbeatsBreakthrough gig with Gerry and the Pacemakers“I'm Into Something Good” became #1 in UKMet Micky Most via Sam Cooke tributeEnglish accent on Mrs. BrownBuddy HollySnuff GarrettMicky MostJay and the Americans“I'm Into Something Good”“Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter”“I'm Henry VIII”“She's A Must To Avoid”“BOBBY M AND THE PAISLEY PARADE” is Robert's latest album. Featuring 10 songs and guest appearances by John Helliwell (Supertramp), Tony Carey (Rainbow) and international sitar sensation Deobrat Mishra. Produced by Tony Carey. Called "ALBUM OF THE YEAR!" by Indie Shark and “One of the great rock sets of the year!” by Big Celebrity Buzz. "Catchy and engaging with great tunes!" - Steve Hackett (Genesis)"This album has life and soul!" - John Helliwell (Supertramp)"Bobby M rocks!" - Gary Puckett (Union Gap)"Nice cool bluesy album!" - Jim McCarty (The Yardbirds)"Robert really really really rocks!" - Peter Yarrow (Peter Paul & Mary)"Great songs. Great performances. It's a smash!" - David Libert (The Happenings)Click here for all streaming links. Download here. Audio production:Jimmy RavenscroftKymera Films Connect with Peter at:www.peternoone.com Connect with the Follow Your Dream Podcast:Website - www.followyourdreampodcast.comEmail Robert - robert@followyourdreampodcast.com Follow Robert's band, Project Grand Slam, and his music:Website - www.projectgrandslam.comPGS Store - www.thePGSstore.comYouTubeFacebook - www.facebook.com/projectgrandslamSpotify MusicApple MusicEmail - pgs@projectgrandslam.com
#Sixties #TheBeatles #Peternoone Coffee Talk with ADIKA Live I Episode #1263 Aired Feb 17th 2021 10:00AM PST I 1:00PM ESTBreak out the Tea! The British are Coming!Guest: Peter Noone of Herman's HermitsAt the age of fifteen, Peter achieved international fame as “Herman's Hermits”, lead singer of the legendary Sixties pop band Herman's Hermits. His classic hits included: “I'm Into Something Good” “Mrs. Brown, you've Got A Lovely Daughter”, “I'm Henry VIII, I Am”, “Silhouettes”, “Can't You Hear My Heartbeat”, “Just A Little Bit Better”, “Wonderful World”, “There's A Kind of Hush”, “A Must To Avoid”, “Listen People”, “The End of the World” and “Dandy”. Ultimately, Herman's Hermits sold over sixty million recordings. In all, fourteen singles and seven albums went gold. The Hermits were twice named Cashbox's “Entertainer of the Year”.https://peternoone.com/*********************************************************************** The New Website ➜ https://www.adikalive.com/Merchandise ➜https://adika-live.creator-spring.comThe Ultimate VIP ALL ACCESS BACKSTAGE PASSFull episodes can be seen in Patreon! Get exclusive content and entry into the vinyl games on Patreon: ➜ https://www.patreon.com/The_adika_group?fan_landing=trueYour Donation Helps Support your Favorite Show & Channel ➜ https://www.paypal.me/stephenadika1AMAZON WISHLIST ➜ https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/30GQNR69L9048?ref_=wl_shareCLICK TO SUBSCRIBE ➜ https://www.youtube.com/c/TheAdikaGroup?sub_confirmation=1Artists on Record | ADIKA Live The PodcastApple ➜ https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/coffee-talk-with-adika-live/id1529816802?uo=4Spotify ➜ https://open.spotify.com/show/2lXgg3NVdnU3LmXgCrgHwk iHeartRadio ➜ https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-coffee-talk-with-adika-liv-71566693/*Follow ADIKA Live on Tik Tok: ➜https://vm.tiktok.com/TTPdMmEfFm/ADIKA Live on Twitter➜ https://twitter.com/TalkAdikaThank you for your support!_____________________________________________Artists On Record: ➜https://m.facebook.com/profile.php?id=868952540607953&ref=content_filterTheme Song - Mark SlaughterWebsite: ➜ https://www.markslaughter.com/ySupport the show
In addition to performing with the Box Tops our guest Rick Levy has walked the path of the famous without becoming famous himself. He even wrote a book about it. He's been a tour manager, manager, musical director, and performer with many many artists like Peter Noone, Tommy Roe, the Box Tops, and Jay and the Techniques among others. Hope you enjoy our ramblings!!
"It's Radio with TV's Tim Stack" catches up with his friend Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits! At the age of fifteen, Peter achieved international fame as Herman, lead singer of the legendary Sixties pop band Herman's Hermits. His classic hits included: “I'm Into Something Good” “Mrs. Brown, you've Got A Lovely Daughter”, “I'm Henry VIII, I Am”, “There's A Kind of Hush”, and, “Listen to People”, “ Ultimately, his Herman's Hermits sold over sixty million recordings. In all, fourteen singles and seven albums went gold. The Hermits were twice named Cashbox's “Entertainer of the Year.” https://peternoone.com
Live with The Cowsill on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson There's so much wonderfulness and fun packed into this 1:15 Live, I'm woe to break it down and give any spoilers. Suffice it to say we talked about their avid, loyal fans, me being one, since kneesocks, their group dynamic, how the 7 came and went, family auditions, oh yes they did, how the harmonies stack, how the songs on their new album, Rhythm of the World, got written, recorded, and out there in spite of the pandemic and a stroke of someone's bad business, the hero who saved the day, meet & greets, how they genuinely love their fans and invite all to join them, even when they're eating, their podcast, Peter Noone for one, The Flower Power Cruise this March, another Happy Together Tour this summer, and always, Bob, Susan, and Paul, loving being together, whether taking a “snow day,” continuing to thrill their fans and make musical magic, or just chatting it up with the likes of me. I've been blessed to present Bob a few times over the last decade, and stay close sending him the constant onslaught of comments that still post almost daily from his visit to my living room for Women Who Write years ago. I've met Susan a few times and attempted more than once to wrangle her here, Paul I've only gandered onstage till today, yet they all felt like family almost instantly. It's who they are, what they do. I adore these three, all The Cowsills family, and have put in my request to be adopted. Rhythm of the World https://cowsill.com/home/music/rhythm-of-the-world/ TheCowsills Live on Game Changers With Vicki Abelson Wednesday, 1/11/23, 5 pm PT, 8 pm ET Streamed Live on my Facebook Replay here: https://bit.ly/3QzHCwT
His granddaughter refers to him as the Justin Bieber of the 60s. And for very good reason. He was the king of Bubblegum music, and hugely popular the world over. But TOMMY ROE didn't set out to father a whole new genre of music. He actually managed to cut some pretty decent rockers along the way too. In this week's episode Tommy tells us how he got into music in the first place, what drove him to write his first song, Sheila, as a young teenager and how he still laments the fact that the girl he wrote that song about, never knew of its existence. Tommy says he'd love to find her today, some 60 years later. Maybe you could help? Tommy also tells us about how he had to compete with the British Invasion and had to come up with catchy tunes that he knew would sell. Hence of all his other hits. At first, he resented being the king of the kids but grew to embrace it as other musicians began to copy his sound. Up next, you probably remember PETER NOONE as the lead singer and founder of that 60s English band, Herman's Hermits, but Peter is also an accomplished TV and stage actor. To my greatest surprise, Peter turned out to be one of the funniest and most uplifting guys I've had the pleasure of speaking with. I caught up with him just ahead of his 75th birthday and giggled my way through this chat. Peter jokes about how getting older has its perks. He also talks about how his band became famous, how the name came about, and about meeting Elvis. Peter talks about being 15 when he founded Herman's Hermits, at a time when so many English bands were coming up around him and what it was like in Liverpool at that time. He also tells us about what fame and fortune did to the young lads in 1965 when Herman's Hermits outsold every other band in the world. Iconic blues rock guitarist WALTER TROUT knows better than most, that no matter how fast or far a man travels, he can never truly outrun his past. Walter joins us to chat about his experience with a liver transplant, and how the life changing event affected his music. He says he can't believe he's still here because he had been in hospital eight months with brain damage. He lost 120 pounds, didn't recognise his wife or children, lost the ability to speak, and didn't have a bite of solid food for six months. Walter had to have speech therapy and re-learn how to talk. He had to re-learn how to walk but the worst for him was that he didn't know how to play the guitar anymore. He had to start over again from scratch and teach himself how to play chords and how to play scales and how to bend a note. He worked on it seven hours a day, every day for a year until he finally performed again two years later. Walter also regales us with the story of how he met his wife whilst on stage and despite his rocky start, says his life today is like a fairy tale. If you'd like to find out more head for my website www.abreathoffreshair.com.au Connect with me through my facebook page https://www.facebook.com/SandyKayePresents or on twitter https://twitter.com/sandykpresents To learn more about Tommy Roe https://tommyroe.com/ To read about Peter Noone https://peternoone.com/ And to get more info about blues guitarist Walter Trout head for https://www.waltertrout.com/
Hello everyone we are still not all back from the east coast shows .... too many flight cancellations!!! So one more "re-run for fun" episode from the early days of the podcast. Here is Peter Noone of "Herman's Hermits" and he is a hoot!!! We love visiting with these icons and hearing their incredible stories and if it's one thing we've learned from these podcasts it's that everyone has an incredible story. Enjoy .... and next week we will start up again and have our very last 2022 episode. Merry Christmas everyone!!!!
Harvey Brownstone conducts an in-depth interview with Peter Noone, Superstar Lead Singer of British Band “Herman's Hermits” About Harvey's guest: Today's special guest, Peter Noone, is a singer-songwriter, musician, actor and radio host who's been entertaining audiences since he was a child actor on “Coronation Street”. After studying at the Manchester School of Music, where he won the Outstanding Young Musician Award, he became an international superstar at the age of FIFTEEN, as lead singer of the phenomenally popular British pop band, “Herman's Hermits”, selling over 60 million records and 7 gold albums, with 14 gold hit singles including "I'm into Something Good", "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", "Silhouettes", "Wonderful World", "I'm Henry the 8th, I Am", "There's a Kind of Hush", "The End of the World", and many more. “Herman's Hermits” were twice named by Cashbox magazine as "Entertainer of the Year", and they opened the 1970 Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium. Our guest has appeared on hundreds of TV shows including Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, Sonny and Cher, “Laverne and Shirley”, “Quantum Leap”, “Married with Children”, and of course, as “Paddington” on the ever-popular “As the World Turns”. And he's starred in TV movies including “The Canterville Ghost”, “Pinocchio”, and “Dick Whittington”, as well as a number of feature films including “Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter”, “Hold On!”, “When The Boys Meet The Girls”, “Never Too Young to Rock”, and the unforgettable “Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band”. As a solo artist, he recorded the hit singles, “Oh! You Pretty Things", "Meet Me on the Corner Down at Joe's Cafe", and "I Think I'm Over Getting Over You", as well as his solo album, “One of the Glory Boys”. He also conquered London's West End AND Broadway, playing the role of the dashing young hero, “Frederic”, in “The Pirates of Penzance”, which he took on tour all over the world. And when he's not performing concerts before sold-out audiences, he's hosting his own immensely popular show on Sirius XM's 60's Gold station. For more interviews and podcasts go to: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/ https://www.facebook.com/PeterNooneHH/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBtp_gpEjO8&list=RDEMM2OWP0ie6DKozYtIXg6kJg&start_radio=1https://instagram.com/peternoone #PeterNoone #HermansHermits #harveybrownstoneinterviews
National Redhead day. Pop culture from 1966. In England, Guy Fawkes day, monopoly goes on sale, 1st airplane flight across U.S. Todays birthdays - Roy Rogers, Vivian Leigh, Natalie Schafer, Art Garfunkel, Bryan Adams, Tatum O'Neal, Peter Noone, Mike Score, Ike Turner. James Clark Maxwell died
Peter tells us why he originally wanted to look and sound just like Buddy Holly. Hear how hard Peter and the Hermits worked for years before they signed a record deal, and how their situation improved once they had a manager who helped the band evolve and became a more professional operation. Listen to how they toured the country using public transport or cycling to venues and being paid just £5 per gig! What happened as the band became more successful? What was it like to be the lead singer of a suddenly hugely successful band? Hear what happened when Peter met the Queen and how this affected his relationship with the rest of the band. Find out why Peter feels that having your music in the movies is more rewarding than anything else, including how he feels about his song being placed in the Netflix number one show The Queen's Gambit. It's a great conversation plus you can hear Peter singing along to the songs he loves as well as his on Herman's Hermits songs! Peter Noone Website IMDB Twitter Instagram Facebook Music is the difference between a good film and a great one. Music Songs included in this episode are: Rave On by Buddy Holly I'm into Something Good by Herman's Hermits A Kind of Hush by Herman's Hermits End of The World by Herman's Hermits SYNC SESSION FEATURING: Jodylynn Talevi – Lisa Dunn – Heather Ragnars Songs Blue & Gold by Dante Mazzetti I'm Chaos & Destruction by Abz K (Syncromental) Falling by Agat 2 Sense Music presents The Sync Report, where you will meet industry experts and top level songwriters as we pull the curtain back on music placement and scores, build vital relationships and provide real opportunities to our listeners. Listen to indie filmmakers present their latest productions and describe specific scenes as they consider music submitted by our audience. Please tell your friends about us, and remember to rate, comment, & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts and across all platforms. And find us at The Sync Report here TSR Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube Linkedin Tik Tok The Sync Report podcast is: Hosted By: Colin O'Donoghue - Rose Ganguzza - Jason P. Rothberg Featuring: Kevin Sharpley - Paula Flack and Willow - Milfredo Seven - Phill Mason – Jodylynn Talevi – Lisa Dunn Produced By: Jason P. Rothberg - Paula Flack - Robert Cappadona - Kevin Sharpley Executive Producers: Colin O'Donoghue - Rose Ganguzza - Jason P. Rothberg - Kevin Sharpley - Gianfranco Bianchi - Dean Lyon Writers: Jason P. Rothberg - Lisa Dunn - Paula Flack Editors: Jason P. Rothberg - Milfredo Seven - Paula Flack - Edgar “Edge” Camey - Adam McNamara Marketing Director: Paula Flack Music Supervisors: Phill Mason Music Department: Heather Ragnars - Lisa Dunn Foley: Phill Mason Research: Lisa Dunn Art Director: Gianfranco Bianchi Graphic Design: Jodylynn Talevi College Programs: Dr Stacy Montgomery College interns: Angela Nicastro – Drift – Princess Arga – Sean Jeon
Margaret talks to stand up and self-proclaimed 'snog monster' Jenny Eclair about the allure of Rod Stewart, Peter Noone and the-actor-who-is-about-to-play-Elvis-in-an-upcoming-biopic.
Peter Noone's career started as Stanley Fairclough in Britain's biggest soap opera: Coronation Street. Peter was 15 when he became the lead singer of Herman's Hermits and only 16 when “I'm Into Something Good” reached no.1 in the UK chart. Six months later, they reached the top of the US charts with "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter,” but what was it like to grace the cover of every magazine and deal with huge fame in the 1960's? Hear how the perception of fans changed over time including the development of groupies! And what it was like to be the “clean cut” band versus the perception of the Rolling Stones. What was it like to tour the US as part of the Brit Invasion, with police escorts and thousands of screaming fans everywhere they went? How did Peter get involved in music and acting? And what did his school friends think of him being in Coronation Street? What happened when Peter met Cream's Ginger Baker in a casino and who saved him from himself? And this is just the first half of our conversation with Peter. Make sure you listen to next week's episode to hear even more of Peter Noone's journey in music. Stay tuned for the music sync session as we listen to music from our audience, hoping to have their music used in the indie feature documentary film "The Boys of 742." Hear what our filmmakers and our expert music & film panel think will sync with the film's visuals. Peter Noone Website IMDB Twitter Instagram Facebook Music is the difference between a good film and a great one. Music Songs included in this episode are: The Everly Brothers – Walk Right Back SYNC SESSIONS Featuring: Chris Rolfe - Tricia Jackson - Matt Gideon – Heather Ragnars - Jodylynn Talevi - Lisa Dunn - Phill Mason Songs Stand Up by Tape Pop Fantasy by The Morning Kings I See Trouble by Joey Plunkett You Don't Get a Song by Jennifer Msumba 2 Sense Music presents The Sync Report, where you will meet industry experts and top level songwriters as we pull the curtain back on music placement and scores, build vital relationships and provide real opportunities to our listeners. Listen to indie filmmakers present their latest productions and describe specific scenes as they consider music submitted by our audience. Please tell your friends about us, and remember to rate, comment, & subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts and across all platforms. And find us at The Sync Report here TSR Website Facebook Instagram Twitter Youtube Linkedin Tik Tok The Sync Report podcast is: Hosted By: Colin O'Donoghue - Rose Ganguzza - Jason P. Rothberg Featuring: Kevin Sharpley - Paula Flack and Willow - Milfredo Seven - Phill Mason – Jodylynn Talevi – Lisa Dunn Produced By: Jason P. Rothberg - Paula Flack - Robert Cappadona - Kevin Sharpley Executive Producers: Colin O'Donoghue - Rose Ganguzza - Jason P. Rothberg - Kevin Sharpley - Gianfranco Bianchi - Dean Lyon Writers: Jason P. Rothberg - Lisa Dunn - Paula Flack Editors: Jason P. Rothberg - Milfredo Seven - Paula Flack - Edgar “Edge” Camey - Adam McNamara Marketing Director: Paula Flack Music Supervisors: Phill Mason Music Department: Heather Ragnars - Lisa Dunn Foley: Phill Mason Research: Lisa Dunn Art Director: Gianfranco Bianchi Graphic Design: Jodylynn Talevi College Programs: Dr Stacy Montgomery College interns: Angela Nicastro – Drift – Princess Arga – Sean Jeon
Scoot talks to Peter Noone about his love for Louisiana and his role in the mid-century British Invasion of American pop music
Episode 564 Hour 1: The show starts with the host giving a heartfelt message to his contacts in Florida. The new album, "The Starving Artist" is now available, the host gives a rundown as to what made the cut. Stewie and the host go back and forth with the way the former says certain words. The host makes a blind joke, Stewie gives him crap for doing so. Sports - Jim rome blocks dumb e-mails about Kansas's loss over the weekend, naturally they get blocked. Sleez's Monday Night football pick, followed by a story about Bob Guccione. Jeff Mervine joins the show to discuss a contest he is in for Face of Horror, you can vote for him at the following link. https://faceofhorror.org/2022/mervine-jeffrey?fbclid=IwAR2zIZcMh1mZOpfwfNsfPBF93YP3c_isk2QdHUk19VNVAoSKYB9lREJIrMM The host plays a selection from the new album featuring Stewie reacting to "The Silence Of The Lambs", Jeff gives his review after. Hour 2: The death of Coolio, a brief recap of his feud with Wierd Al. Weatherman during the hurricane in Florida, clip from George Carlin about a rain event. A follow-up about a story last week about a former Kansas cop, a creepy guy is causing trouble near an art school. Did the White House tap into a rioter's phone? Ford going electric. What's more annoying, political people or religious people showing up at your doorstep unannounced? Kesha and Katy Perry are under fire for mentioning Jeffrey Dahmer in some old songs. Clip of George Carlin where he mentions the killer. Clip of South Park's characterization of him. Two girls bonding over baldness. The show closes with "Don't You Dare Have Lunch With Jeffrey Dahmer", as done live on The Howard Stern Show by Peter Noone. Break music - "Gangsta's Paradise" by Coolio Rejoiner music - "Fire On The Mountain" by The marshal Tucker Band --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/lawrence-ross9/message
Episode one hundred and fifty-three of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Heroes and Villains” by the Beach Boys, and the collapse of the Smile album. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a sixteen-minute bonus episode available, on "I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night" by the Electric Prunes. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources There is no Mixcloud this week, because there were too many Beach Boys songs in the episode. I used many resources for this episode. As well as the books I referred to in all the Beach Boys episodes, listed below, I used Domenic Priore's book Smile: The Story of Brian Wilson's Lost Masterpiece and Richard Henderson's 33 1/3 book on Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle. Stephen McParland has published many, many books on the California surf and hot-rod music scenes, including several on both the Beach Boys and Gary Usher. His books can be found at https://payhip.com/CMusicBooks Andrew Doe's Bellagio 10452 site is an invaluable resource. Jon Stebbins' The Beach Boys FAQ is a good balance between accuracy and readability. And Philip Lambert's Inside the Music of Brian Wilson is an excellent, though sadly out of print, musicological analysis of Wilson's music from 1962 through 67. Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson by Peter Ames Carlin is the best biography of Wilson. I have also referred to Brian Wilson's autobiography, I Am Brian Wilson, and to Mike Love's, Good Vibrations: My Life as a Beach Boy. As a good starting point for the Beach Boys' music in general, I would recommend this budget-priced three-CD set, which has a surprisingly good selection of their material on it, including the single version of “Heroes and Villains”. The box set The Smile Sessions contains an attempt to create a finished album from the unfinished sessions, plus several CDs of outtakes and session material. Transcript [Opening -- "intro to the album" studio chatter into "Our Prayer"] Before I start, I'd just like to note that this episode contains some discussion of mental illness, including historical negative attitudes towards it, so you may want to check the transcript or skip this one if that might be upsetting. In November and December 1966, the filmmaker David Oppenheim and the conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein collaborated on a TV film called "Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution". The film was an early attempt at some of the kinds of things this podcast is doing, looking at how music and social events interact and evolve, though it was dealing with its present rather than the past. The film tried to cast as wide a net as possible in its fifty-one minutes. It looked at two bands from Manchester -- the Hollies and Herman's Hermits -- and how the people identified as their leaders, "Herman" (or Peter Noone) and Graham Nash, differed on the issue of preventing war: [Excerpt: Inside Pop, the Rock Revolution] And it made a star of East Coast teenage singer-songwriter Janis Ian with her song about interracial relationships, "Society's Child": [Excerpt: Janis Ian, "Society's Child"] And Bernstein spends a significant time, as one would expect, analysing the music of the Beatles and to a lesser extent the Stones, though they don't appear in the show. Bernstein does a lot to legitimise the music just by taking it seriously as a subject for analysis, at a time when most wouldn't: [Excerpt: Leonard Bernstein talking about "She Said She Said"] You can't see it, obviously, but in the clip that's from, as the Beatles recording is playing, Bernstein is conducting along with the music, as he would a symphony orchestra, showing where the beats are falling. But of course, given that this was filmed in the last two months of 1966, the vast majority of the episode is taken up with musicians from the centre of the music world at that time, LA. The film starts with Bernstein interviewing Tandyn Almer, a jazz-influenced songwriter who had recently written the big hit "Along Comes Mary" for The Association: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] It featured interviews with Roger McGuinn, and with the protestors at the Sunset Strip riots which were happening contemporaneously with the filming: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] Along with Frank Zappa's rather acerbic assessment of the potential of the youth revolutionaries: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] And ended (other than a brief post-commercial performance over the credits by the Hollies) with a performance by Tim Buckley, whose debut album, as we heard in the last episode, had featured Van Dyke Parks and future members of the Mothers of Invention and Buffalo Springfield: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] But for many people the highlight of the film was the performance that came right before Buckley's, film of Brian Wilson playing a new song from the album he was working on. One thing I should note -- many sources say that the voiceover here is Bernstein. My understanding is that Bernstein wrote and narrated the parts of the film he was himself in, and Oppenheim did all the other voiceover writing and narration, but that Oppenheim's voice is similar enough to Bernstein's that people got confused about this: [Excerpt: Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution] That particular piece of footage was filmed in December 1966, but it wasn't broadcast until April the twenty-fifth, 1967, an eternity in mid-sixties popular music. When it was broadcast, that album still hadn't come out. Precisely one week later, the Beach Boys' publicist Derek Taylor announced that it never would: [Excerpt: Brian Wilson, "Surf's Up"] One name who has showed up in a handful of episodes recently, but who we've not talked that much about, is Van Dyke Parks. And in a story with many, many, remarkable figures, Van Dyke Parks may be one of the most remarkable of all. Long before he did anything that impinges on the story of rock music, Parks had lived the kind of life that would be considered unbelievable were it to be told as fiction. Parks came from a family that mixed musical skill, political progressiveness, and achievement. His mother was a scholar of Hebrew, while his father was a neurologist, the first doctor to admit Black patients to a white Southern hospital, and had paid his way through college leading a dance band. Parks' father was also, according to the 33 1/3 book on Song Cycle, a member of "John Philip Sousa's Sixty Silver Trumpets", but literally every reference I can find to Sousa leading a band of that name goes back to that book, so I've no idea what he was actually a member of, but we can presume he was a reasonable musician. Young Van Dyke started playing the clarinet at four, and was also a singer from a very early age, as well as playing several other instruments. He went to the American Boychoir School in Princeton, to study singing, and while there he sang with Toscaninni, Thomas Beecham, and other immensely important conductors of the era. He also had a very special accompanist for one Christmas carolling session. The choir school was based in Princeton, and one of the doors he knocked on while carolling was that of Princeton's most famous resident, Albert Einstein, who heard the young boy singing "Silent Night", and came out with his violin and played along. Young Van Dyke was only interested in music, but he was also paying the bills for his music tuition himself -- he had a job. He was a TV star. From the age of ten, he started getting roles in TV shows -- he played the youngest son in the 1953 sitcom Bonino, about an opera singer, which flopped because it aired opposite the extremely popular Jackie Gleason Show. He would later also appear in that show, as one of several child actors who played the character of Little Tommy Manicotti, and he made a number of other TV appearances, as well as having a small role in Grace Kelly's last film, The Swan, with Alec Guinness and Louis Jourdain. But he never liked acting, and just did it to pay for his education. He gave it up when he moved on to the Carnegie Institute, where he majored in composition and performance. But then in his second year, his big brother Carson asked him to drop out and move to California. Carson Parks had been part of the folk scene in California for a few years at this point. He and a friend had formed a duo called the Steeltown Two, but then both of them had joined the folk group the Easy Riders, a group led by Terry Gilkyson. Before Carson Parks joined, the Easy Riders had had a big hit with their version of "Marianne", a calypso originally by the great calypsonian Roaring Lion: [Excerpt: The Easy Riders, "Marianne"] They hadn't had many other hits, but their songs became hits for other people -- Gilkyson wrote several big hits for Frankie Laine, and the Easy Riders were the backing vocalists on Dean Martin's recording of a song they wrote, "Memories are Made of This": [Excerpt: Dean Martin and the Easy Riders, "Memories are Made of This"] Carson Parks hadn't been in the group at that point -- he only joined after they'd stopped having success -- and eventually the group had split up. He wanted to revive his old duo, the Steeltown Two, and persuaded his family to let his little brother Van Dyke drop out of university and move to California to be the other half of the duo. He wanted Van Dyke to play guitar, while he played banjo. Van Dyke had never actually played guitar before, but as Carson Parks later said "in 90 days, he knew more than most folks know after many years!" Van Dyke moved into an apartment adjoining his brother's, owned by Norm Botnick, who had until recently been the principal viola player in a film studio orchestra, before the film studios all simultaneously dumped their in-house orchestras in the late fifties, so was a more understanding landlord than most when it came to the lifestyles of musicians. Botnick's sons, Doug and Bruce, later went into sound engineering -- we've already encountered Bruce Botnick in the episode on the Doors, and he will be coming up again in the future. The new Steeltown Two didn't make any records, but they developed a bit of a following in the coffeehouses, and they also got a fair bit of session work, mostly through Terry Gilkyson, who was by that point writing songs for Disney and would hire them to play on sessions for his songs. And it was Gilkyson who both brought Van Dyke Parks the worst news of his life to that point, and in doing so also had him make his first major mark on music. Gilkyson was the one who informed Van Dyke that another of his brothers, Benjamin Riley Parks, had died in what was apparently a car accident. I say it was apparently an accident because Benjamin Riley Parks was at the time working for the US State Department, and there is apparently also some evidence that he was assassinated in a Cold War plot. Gilkyson also knew that neither Van Dyke nor Carson Parks had much money, so in order to help them afford black suits and plane tickets to and from the funeral, Gilkyson hired Van Dyke to write the arrangement for a song he had written for an upcoming Disney film: [Excerpt: Jungle Book soundtrack, "The Bare Necessities"] The Steeltown Two continued performing, and soon became known as the Steeltown Three, with the addition of a singer named Pat Peyton. The Steeltown Three recorded two singles, "Rock Mountain", under that group name: [Excerpt: The Steeltown Three, "Rock Mountain"] And a version of "San Francisco Bay" under the name The South Coasters, which I've been unable to track down. Then the three of them, with the help of Terry Gilkyson, formed a larger group in the style of the New Christy Minstrels -- the Greenwood County Singers. Indeed, Carson Parks would later claim that Gilkyson had had the idea first -- that he'd mentioned that he'd wanted to put together a group like that to Randy Sparks, and Sparks had taken the idea and done it first. The Greenwood County Singers had two minor hot one hundred hits, only one of them while Van Dyke was in the band -- "The New 'Frankie and Johnny' Song", a rewrite by Bob Gibson and Shel Silverstein of the old traditional song "Frankie and Johnny": [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "The New Frankie and Johnny Song"] They also recorded several albums together, which gave Van Dyke the opportunity to practice his arrangement skills, as on this version of "Vera Cruz" which he arranged: [Excerpt: The Greenwood County Singers, "Vera Cruz"] Some time before their last album, in 1965, Van Dyke left the Greenwood County Singers, and was replaced by Rick Jarrard, who we'll also be hearing more about in future episodes. After that album, the group split up, but Carson Parks would go on to write two big hits in the next few years. The first and biggest was a song he originally wrote for a side project. His future wife Gaile Foote was also a Greenwood County Singer, and the two of them thought they might become folk's answer to Sonny and Cher or Nino Tempo and April Stevens: [Excerpt: Carson and Gaile, "Somethin' Stupid"] That obviously became a standard after it was covered by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. Carson Parks also wrote "Cab Driver", which in 1968 became the last top thirty hit for the Mills Brothers, the 1930s vocal group we talked about way way back in episode six: [Excerpt: The Mills Brothers, "Cab Driver"] Meanwhile Van Dyke Parks was becoming part of the Sunset Strip rock and roll world. Now, until we get to 1967, Parks has something of a tangled timeline. He worked with almost every band around LA in a short period, often working with multiple people simultaneously, and nobody was very interested in keeping detailed notes. So I'm going to tell this as a linear story, but be aware it's very much not -- things I say in five minutes might happen after, or in the same week as, things I say in half an hour. At some point in either 1965 or 1966 he joined the Mothers of Invention for a brief while. Nobody is entirely sure when this was, and whether it was before or after their first album. Some say it was in late 1965, others in August 1966, and even the kind of fans who put together detailed timelines are none the wiser, because no recordings have so far surfaced of Parks with the band. Either is plausible, and the Mothers went through a variety of keyboard players at this time -- Zappa had turned to his jazz friend Don Preston, but found Preston was too much of a jazzer and told him to come back when he could play "Louie Louie" convincingly, asked Mac Rebennack to be in the band but sacked him pretty much straight away for drug use, and eventually turned to Preston again once Preston had learned to rock and roll. Some time in that period, Van Dyke Parks was a Mother, playing electric harpsichord. He may even have had more than one stint in the group -- Zappa said "Van Dyke Parks played electric harpsichord in and out." It seems likely, though, that it was in summer of 1966, because in an interview published in Teen Beat Magazine in December 66, but presumably conducted a few months prior, Zappa was asked to describe the band members in one word each and replied: "Ray—Mahogany Roy—Asbestos Jim—Mucilage Del—Acetate Van Dyke—Pinocchio Billy—Boom I don't know about the rest of the group—I don't even know about these guys." Sources differ as to why Parks didn't remain in the band -- Parks has said that he quit after a short time because he didn't like being shouted at, while Zappa said "Van Dyke was not a reliable player. He didn't make it to rehearsal on time and things like that." Both may be true of course, though I've not heard anyone else ever criticise Parks for his reliability. But then also Zappa had much more disciplinarian standards than most rock band leaders. It's possibly either through Zappa that he met Tom Wilson, or through Tom Wilson that he met Frank Zappa, but either way Parks, like the Mothers of Invention, was signed to MGM records in 1966, where he released two solo singles co-produced by Wilson and an otherwise obscure figure named Tim Alvorado. The first was "Number Nine", which we heard last week, backed with "Do What You Wanta": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Do What You Wanta"] At least one source I've read says that the lyrics to "Do What You Wanta" were written not by Parks but by his friend Danny Hutton, but it's credited as a Parks solo composition on the label. It was after that that the Van Dyke Parks band -- or as they were sometimes billed, just The Van Dyke Parks formed, as we discussed last episode, based around Parks, Steve Stills, and Steve Young, and they performed a handful of shows with bass player Bobby Rae and drummer Walt Sparman, playing a mix of original material, primarily Parks' songs, and covers of things like "Dancing in the Street". The one contemporaneous review of a live show I've seen talks about the girls in the audience screaming and how "When rhythm guitarist Steve Stillman imitated the Barry McGuire emotional scene, they almost went wiggy". But The Van Dyke Parks soon split up, and Parks the individual recorded his second single, "Come to the Sunshine": [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "Come to the Sunshine"] Around the time he left the Greenwood County Singers, Van Dyke Parks also met Brian Wilson for the first time, when David Crosby took him up to Wilson's house to hear an acetate of the as-yet-unreleased track "Sloop John B". Parks was impressed by Wilson's arrangement techniques, and in particular the way he was orchestrating instrumental combinations that you couldn't do with a standard live room setup, that required overdubbing and close-micing. He said later "The first stuff I heard indicated this kind of curiosity for the recording experience, and when I went up to see him in '65 I don't even think he had the voices on yet, but I heard that long rotational breathing, that long flute ostinato at the beginning... I knew this man was a great musician." [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Sloop John B (instrumental)"] In most of 1966, though, Parks was making his living as a session keyboard player and arranger, and much of the work he was getting was through Lenny Waronker. Waronker was a second-generation music industry professional. His father, Si Waronker, had been a violinist in the Twentieth Century Fox studio orchestra before founding Liberty Records (the label which indirectly led to him becoming immortalised in children's entertainment, when Liberty Records star David Seville named his Chipmunk characters after three Liberty executives, with Simon being Si Waronker's full forename). The first release on Liberty Records had been a version of "The Girl Upstairs", an instrumental piece from the Fox film The Seven-Year Itch. The original recording of that track, for the film, had been done by the Twentieth Century Fox Orchestra, written and conducted by Alfred Newman, the musical director for Fox: [Excerpt: Alfred Newman, "The Girl Upstairs"] Liberty's soundalike version was conducted by Newman's brother Lionel, a pianist at the studio who later became Fox's musical director for TV, just as his brother was for film, but who also wrote many film scores himself. Another Newman brother, Emil, was also a film composer, but the fourth brother, Irving, had gone into medicine instead. However, Irving's son Randy wanted to follow in the family business, and he and Lenny Waronker, who was similarly following his own father by working for Liberty Records' publishing subsidiary Metric Music, had been very close friends ever since High School. Waronker got Newman signed to Metric Music, where he wrote "They Tell Me It's Summer" for the Fleetwoods: [Excerpt: The Fleetwoods, "They Tell Me It's Summer"] Newman also wrote and recorded a single of his own in 1962, co-produced by Pat Boone: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "Golden Gridiron Boy"] Before deciding he wasn't going to make it as a singer and had better just be a professional songwriter. But by 1966 Waronker had moved on from Metric to Warner Brothers, and become a junior A&R man. And he was put in charge of developing the artists that Warners had acquired when they had bought up a small label, Autumn Records. Autumn Records was a San Francisco-based label whose main producer, Sly Stone, had now moved on to other things after producing the hit record "Laugh Laugh" for the Beau Brummels: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Beau Brummels had had another hit after that and were the main reason that Warners had bought the label, but their star was fading a little. Stone had also been mentoring several other groups, including the Tikis and the Mojo Men, who all had potential. Waronker gathered around himself a sort of brains trust of musicians who he trusted as songwriters, arrangers, and pianists -- Randy Newman, the session pianist Leon Russell, and Van Dyke Parks. Their job was to revitalise the career of the Beau Brummels, and to make both the Tikis and the Mojo Men into successes. The tactic they chose was, in Waronker's words, “Go in with a good song and weird it out.” The first good song they tried weirding out was in late 1966, when Leon Russell came up with a clarinet-led arrangement of Paul Simon's "59th Street Bridge Song (Feeling Groovy)" for the Tikis, who performed it but who thought that their existing fanbase wouldn't accept something so different, so it was put out under another name, suggested by Parks, Harpers Bizarre: [Excerpt: Harpers Bizarre, "Feeling Groovy"] Waronker said of Parks and Newman “They weren't old school guys. They were modern characters but they had old school values regarding certain records that needed to be made, certain artists who needed to be heard regardless. So there was still that going on. The fact that ‘Feeling Groovy' was a number 10 hit nationwide and ‘Sit Down, I Think I Love You' made the Top 30 on Western regional radio, that gave us credibility within the company. One hit will do wonders, two allows you to take chances.” We heard "Sit Down, I Think I Love You" last episode -- that's the song by Parks' old friend Stephen Stills that Parks arranged for the Mojo Men: [Excerpt: The Mojo Men, "Sit Down, I Think I Love You"] During 1966 Parks also played on Tim Buckley's first album, as we also heard last episode: [Excerpt: Tim Buckley, "Aren't You the Girl?"] And he also bumped into Brian Wilson on occasion, as they were working a lot in the same studios and had mutual friends like Loren Daro and Danny Hutton, and he suggested the cello part on "Good Vibrations". Parks also played keyboards on "5D" by the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "5D (Fifth Dimension)"] And on the Spirit of '67 album for Paul Revere and the Raiders, produced by the Byrds' old producer Terry Melcher. Parks played keyboards on much of the album, including the top five hit "Good Thing": [Excerpt: Paul Revere and the Raiders, "Good Thing"] But while all this was going on, Parks was also working on what would become the work for which he was best known. As I've said, he'd met Brian Wilson on a few occasions, but it wasn't until summer 1966 that the two were formally introduced by Terry Melcher, who knew that Wilson needed a new songwriting collaborator, now Tony Asher's sabbatical from his advertising job was coming to an end, and that Wilson wanted someone who could do work that was a bit more abstract than the emotional material that he had been writing with Asher. Melcher invited both of them to a party at his house on Cielo Drive -- a house which would a few years later become notorious -- which was also attended by many of the young Hollywood set of the time. Nobody can remember exactly who was at the party, but Parks thinks it was people like Jack Nicholson and Peter and Jane Fonda. Parks and Wilson hit it off, with Wilson saying later "He seemed like a really articulate guy, like he could write some good lyrics". Parks on the other hand was delighted to find that Wilson "liked Les Paul, Spike Jones, all of these sounds that I liked, and he was doing it in a proactive way." Brian suggested Parks write the finished lyrics for "Good Vibrations", which was still being recorded at this time, and still only had Tony Asher's dummy lyrics, but Parks was uninterested. He said that it would be best if he and Brian collaborate together on something new from scratch, and Brian agreed. The first time Parks came to visit Brian at Brian's home, other than the visit accompanying Crosby the year before, he was riding a motorbike -- he couldn't afford a car -- and forgot to bring his driver's license with him. He was stopped by a police officer who thought he looked too poor to be in the area, but Parks persuaded the police officer that if he came to the door, Brian Wilson would vouch for him. Brian got Van Dyke out of any trouble because the cop's sister was a Beach Boys fan, so he autographed an album for her. Brian and Van Dyke talked for a while. Brian asked if Van Dyke needed anything to help his work go smoothly, and Van Dyke said he needed a car. Brian asked what kind. Van Dyke said that Volvos were supposed to be pretty safe. Brian asked how much they cost. Van Dyke said he thought they were about five thousand dollars. Brian called up his office and told them to get a cheque delivered to Van Dyke for five thousand dollars the next day, instantly earning Van Dyke's loyalty. After that, they got on with work. To start with, Brian played Van Dyke a melody he'd been working on, a melody based on a descending scale starting on the fourth: [Plays "Heroes and Villains" melody] Parks told Wilson that the melody reminded him vaguely of Marty Robbins' country hit "El Paso" from 1959, a song about a gunfighter, a cantina, and a dancing woman: [Excerpt: Marty Robbins, "El Paso"] Wilson said that he had been thinking along the same lines, a sort of old west story, and thought maybe it should be called "Heroes and Villains". Parks started writing, matching syllables to Wilson's pre-conceived melody -- "I've been in this town so long that back in the city I've been taken for lost and gone and unknown for a long, long time" [Excerpt: Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks, "Heroes and Villains demo"] As Parks put it "The engine had started. It was very much ad hoc. Seat of the pants. Extemporaneous values were enforced. Not too much precommitment to ideas. Or, if so, equally pursuing propinquity." Slowly, over the next several months, while the five other Beach Boys were touring, Brian and Van Dyke refined their ideas about what the album they were writing, initially called Dumb Angel but soon retitled Smile, should be. For Van Dyke Parks it was an attempt to make music about America and American mythology. He was disgusted, as a patriot, with the Anglophilia that had swept the music industry since the arrival of the Beatles in America two and a half years earlier, particularly since that had happened so soon after the deaths both of President Kennedy and of Parks' own brother who was working for the government at the time he died. So for him, the album was about America, about Plymouth Rock, the Old West, California, and Hawaii. It would be a generally positive version of the country's myth, though it would of course also acknowledge the bloodshed on which the country had been built: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider" section] As he put it later "I was dead set on centering my life on the patriotic ideal. I was a son of the American revolution, and there was blood on the tracks. Recent blood, and it was still drying. The whole record seemed like a real effort toward figuring out what Manifest Destiny was all about. We'd come as far as we could, as far as Horace Greeley told us to go. And so we looked back and tried to make sense of that great odyssey." Brian had some other ideas -- he had been studying the I Ching, and Subud, and he wanted to do something about the four classical elements, and something religious -- his ideas were generally rather unfocused at the time, and he had far more ideas than he knew what to usefully do with. But he was also happy with the idea of a piece about America, which fit in with his own interest in "Rhapsody in Blue", a piece that was about America in much the same way. "Rhapsody in Blue" was an inspiration for Brian primarily in how it weaved together variations on themes. And there are two themes that between them Brian was finding endless variations on. The first theme was a shuffling between two chords a fourth away from each other. [demonstrates G to C on guitar] Where these chords are both major, that's the sequence for "Fire": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Mrs. O'Leary's Cow/Fire"] For the "Who ran the Iron Horse?" section of "Cabin Essence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] For "Vegetables": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Vegetables"] And more. Sometimes this would be the minor supertonic and dominant seventh of the key, so in C that would be Dm to G7: [Plays Dm to G7 fingerpicked] That's the "bicycle rider" chorus we heard earlier, which was part of a song known as "Roll Plymouth Rock" or "Do You Like Worms": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Bicycle Rider"] But which later became a chorus for "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] But that same sequence is also the beginning of "Wind Chimes": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] The "wahalla loo lay" section of "Roll Plymouth Rock": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Roll Plymouth Rock"] And others, but most interestingly, the minor-key rearrangement of "You Are My Sunshine" as "You Were My Sunshine": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "You Were My Sunshine"] I say that's most interesting, because that provides a link to another of the major themes which Brian was wringing every drop out of, a phrase known as "How Dry I Am", because of its use under those words in an Irving Berlin song, which was a popular barbershop quartet song but is now best known as a signifier of drunkenness in Looney Tunes cartoons: [Excerpt: Daffy Duck singing "How Dry I Am" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ap4MMn7LpzA ] The phrase is a common one in early twentieth century music, especially folk and country, as it's made up of notes in the pentatonic scale -- it's the fifth, first, second, and third of the scale, in that order: [demonstrates "How Dry I Am"] And so it's in the melody to "This Land is Your Land", for example, a song which is very much in the same spirit of progressive Americana in which Van Dyke Parks was thinking: [Excerpt: Woody Guthrie, "This Land is Your Land"] It's also the start of the original melody of "You Are My Sunshine": [Excerpt: Jimmie Davis, "You Are My Sunshine" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYvgNEU4Am8] Brian rearranged that melody when he stuck it into a minor key, so it's no longer "How Dry I Am" in the Beach Boys version, but if you play the "How Dry I Am" notes in a different rhythm, you get this: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody] Which is the start of the melody to "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] Play those notes backwards, you get: [Plays "He Gives Speeches" melody backwards] Do that and add onto the end a passing sixth and then the tonic, and then you get: [Plays that] Which is the vocal *countermelody* in "He Gives Speeches": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "He Gives Speeches"] And also turns up in some versions of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains (alternate version)"] And so on. Smile was an intricate web of themes and variations, and it incorporated motifs from many sources, both the great American songbook and the R&B of Brian's youth spent listening to Johnny Otis' radio show. There were bits of "Gee" by the Crows, of "Twelfth Street Rag", and of course, given that this was Brian Wilson, bits of Phil Spector. The backing track to the verse of "Heroes and Villains": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Owed more than a little to a version of "Save the Last Dance For Me" that Spector had produced for Ike and Tina Turner: [Excerpt: Ike and Tina Turner, "Save the Last Dance For Me"] While one version of the song “Wonderful” contained a rather out-of-place homage to Etta James and “The Wallflower”: [Excerpt: “Wonderful (Rock With Me Henry)”] As the recording continued, it became more and more obvious that the combination of these themes and variations was becoming a little too much for Brian. Many of the songs he was working on were made up of individual modules that he was planning to splice together the way he had with "Good Vibrations", and some modules were getting moved between tracks, as he tried to structure the songs in the edit. He'd managed it with "Good Vibrations", but this was an entire album, not just a single, and it was becoming more and more difficult. David Anderle, who was heading up the record label the group were looking at starting, would talk about Brian playing him acetates with sections edited together one way, and thinking it was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together, the only possible way, and then hearing the same sections edited together in a different way, and thinking *that* was perfect, and obviously the correct way to put them together. But while a lot of the album was modular, there were also several complete songs with beginnings, middles, ends, and structures, even if they were in several movements. And those songs showed that if Brian could just get the other stuff right, the album could be very, very, special. There was "Heroes and Villains" itself, of course, which kept changing its structure but was still based around the same basic melody and story that Brian and Van Dyke had come up with on their first day working together. There was also "Wonderful", a beautiful, allusive, song about innocence lost and regained: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] And there was CabinEssence, a song which referenced yet another classic song, this time "Home on the Range", to tell a story of idyllic rural life and of the industrialisation which came with westward expansion: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "CabinEssence"] The arrangement for that song inspired Van Dyke Parks to make a very astute assessment of Brian Wilson. He said later "He knew that he had to adhere to the counter-culture, and I knew that I had to. I think that he was about as estranged from it as I was.... At the same time, he didn't want to lose that kind of gauche sensibility that he had. He was doing stuff that nobody would dream of doing. You would never, for example, use one string on a banjo when you had five; it just wasn't done. But when I asked him to bring a banjo in, that's what he did. This old-style plectrum thing. One string. That's gauche." Both Parks and Wilson were both drawn to and alienated from the counterculture, but in very different ways, and their different ways of relating to the counterculture created the creative tension that makes the Smile project so interesting. Parks is fundamentally a New Deal Liberal, and was excited by the progresssive nature of the counterculture, but also rather worried about its tendency to throw the baby out with the bathwater, and to ignore the old in pursuit of the new. He was an erudite, cultured, sophisticated man who thought that there was value to be found in the works and attitudes of the past, even as one must look to the future. He was influenced by the beat poets and the avant garde art of the time, but also said of his folk music period "A harpist would bring his harp with him and he would play and recite a story which had been passed down the generations. This particular legacy continued through Arthurian legend, and then through the Middle Ages, and even into the nineteenth century. With all these songs, half of the story was the lyrics, and the folk songs were very interesting. They were tremendously thought-driven songs; there was nothing confusing about that. Even when the Kingston Trio came out -- and Brian has already admitted his debt to the Kingston Trio -- 'Tom Dooley', the story of a murder most foul 'MTA' an urban nightmare -- all of this thought-driven music was perfectly acceptable. It was more than a teenage romantic crisis." Brian Wilson, on the other hand, was anything *but* sophisticated. He is a simple man in the best sense of the term -- he likes what he likes, doesn't like what he doesn't like, and has no pretensions whatsoever about it. He is, at heart, a middle-class middle-American brought up in suburbia, with a taste for steaks and hamburgers, broad physical comedy, baseball, and easy listening music. Where Van Dyke Parks was talking about "thought-driven music", Wilson's music, while thoughtful, has always been driven by feelings first and foremost. Where Parks is influenced by Romantic composers like Gottschalk but is fundamentally a craftsman, a traditionalist, a mason adding his work to a cathedral whose construction started before his birth and will continue after his death, Wilson's music has none of the stylistic hallmarks of Romantic music, but in its inspiration it is absolutely Romantic -- it is the immediate emotional expression of the individual, completely unfiltered. When writing his own lyrics in later years Wilson would come up with everything from almost haiku-like lyrics like "I'm a leaf on a windy day/pretty soon I'll be blown away/How long with the wind blow?/Until I die" to "He sits behind his microphone/Johnny Carson/He speaks in such a manly tone/Johnny Carson", depending on whether at the time his prime concern was existential meaninglessness or what was on the TV. Wilson found the new counterculture exciting, but was also very aware he didn't fit in. He was developing a new group of friends, the hippest of the hip in LA counterculture circles -- the singer Danny Hutton, Mark Volman of the Turtles, the writers Michael Vosse and Jules Siegel, scenester and record executive David Anderle -- but there was always the underlying implication that at least some of these people regarded him as, to use an ableist term but one which they would probably have used, an idiot savant. That they thought of him, as his former collaborator Tony Asher would later uncharitably put it, as "a genius musician but an amateur human being". So for example when Siegel brought the great postmodern novelist Thomas Pynchon to visit Brian, both men largely sat in silence, unable to speak to each other; Pynchon because he tended to be a reactive person in conversation and would wait for the other person to initiate topics of discussion, Brian because he was so intimidated by Pynchon's reputation as a great East Coast intellectual that he was largely silent for fear of making a fool of himself. It was this gaucheness, as Parks eventually put it, and Parks' understanding that this was actually a quality to be cherished and the key to Wilson's art, that eventually gave the title to the most ambitious of the complete songs the duo were working on. They had most of the song -- a song about the power of music, the concept of enlightenment, and the rise and fall of civilisations: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] But Parks hadn't yet quite finished the lyric. The Beach Boys had been off on tour for much of Brian and Van Dyke's collaboration, and had just got back from their first real tour of the UK, where Pet Sounds had been a smash hit, rather than the middling success it had been in the US, and "Good Vibrations" had just become their first number one single. Brian and Van Dyke played the song for Brian's brother Dennis, the Beach Boys' drummer, and the band member most in tune with Brian's musical ambitions at this time. Dennis started crying, and started talking about how the British audiences had loved their music, but had laughed at their on-stage striped-shirt uniforms. Parks couldn't tell if he was crying because of the beauty of the unfinished song, the humiliation he had suffered in Britain, or both. Dennis then asked what the name of the song was, and as Parks later put it "Although it was the most gauche factor, and although maybe Brian thought it was the most dispensable thing, I thought it was very important to continue to use the name and keep the elephant in the room -- to keep the surfing image but to sensitise it to new opportunities. One of these would be an eco-consciousness; it would be speaking about the greening of the Earth, aboriginal people, how we had treated the Indians, taking on those things and putting them into the thoughts that come with the music. That was a solution to the relevance of the group, and I wanted the group to be relevant." Van Dyke had decided on a title: "Surf's Up": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Surf's Up"] As the group were now back from their tour, the focus for recording shifted from the instrumental sessions to vocal ones. Parks had often attended the instrumental sessions, as he was an accomplished musician and arranger himself, and would play on the sessions, but also wanted to learn from what Brian was doing -- he's stated later that some of his use of tuned percussion in the decades since, for example, has come from watching Brian's work. But while he was also a good singer, he was not a singer in the same style as the Beach Boys, and they certainly didn't need his presence at those sessions, so he continued to work on his lyrics, and to do his arrangement and session work for other artists, while they worked in the studio. He was also, though, starting to distance himself from Brian for other reasons. At the start of the summer, Brian's eccentricity and whimsy had seemed harmless -- indeed, the kind of thing he was doing, such as putting his piano in a sandbox so he could feel the sand with his feet while he wrote, seems very much on a par with Maureen Cleave's descriptions of John Lennon in the same period. They were two newly-rich, easily bored, young men with low attention spans and high intelligence who could become deeply depressed when understimulated and so would get new ideas into their heads, spend money on their new fads, and then quickly discard them. But as the summer wore on into autumn and winter, Brian's behaviour became more bizarre, and to Parks' eyes more distasteful. We now know that Brian was suffering a period of increasing mental ill-health, something that was probably not helped by the copious intake of cannabis and amphetamines he was using to spur his creativity, but at the time most people around him didn't realise this, and general knowledge of mental illness was even less than it is today. Brian was starting to do things like insist on holding business meetings in his swimming pool, partly because people wouldn't be able to spy on him, and partly because he thought people would be more honest if they were in the water. There were also events like the recording session where Wilson paid for several session musicians, not to play their instruments, but to be recorded while they sat in a pitch-black room and played the party game Lifeboat with Jules Siegel and several of Wilson's friends, most of whom were stoned and not really understanding what they were doing, while they got angrier and more frustrated. Alan Jardine -- who unlike the Wilson brothers, and even Mike Love to an extent, never indulged in illegal drugs -- has talked about not understanding why, in some vocal sessions, Brian would make the group crawl on their hands and knees while making noises like animals: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains Part 3 (Animals)"] As Parks delicately put it "I sensed all that was destructive, so I withdrew from those related social encounters." What this meant though was that he was unaware that not all the Beach Boys took the same attitude of complete support for the work he and Brian had been doing that Dennis Wilson -- the only other group member he'd met at this point -- took. In particular, Mike Love was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. As he said later "I called it acid alliteration. The [lyrics are] far out. But do they relate like 'Surfin' USA,' like 'Fun Fun Fun,' like 'California Girls,' like 'I Get Around'? Perhaps not! So that's the distinction. See, I'm into success. These words equal successful hit records; those words don't" Now, Love has taken a lot of heat for this over the years, and on an artistic level that's completely understandable. Parks' lyrics were, to my mind at least, the best the Beach Boys ever had -- thoughtful, intelligent, moving, at times profound, often funny, often beautiful. But, while I profoundly disagree with Love, I have a certain amount of sympathy for his position. From Love's perspective, first and foremost, this is his source of income. He was the only one of the Beach Boys to ever have had a day job -- he'd worked at his father's sheet metal company -- and didn't particularly relish the idea of going back to manual labour if the rock star gig dried up. It wasn't that he was *opposed* to art, of course -- he'd written the lyrics to "Good Vibrations", possibly the most arty rock single released to that point, hadn't he? -- but that had been *commercial* art. It had sold. Was this stuff going to sell? Was he still going to be able to feed his wife and kids? Also, up until a few months earlier he had been Brian's principal songwriting collaborator. He was *still* the most commercially successful collaborator Brian had had. From his perspective, this was a partnership, and it was being turned into a dictatorship without him having been consulted. Before, it had been "Mike, can you write some lyrics for this song about cars?", now it was "Mike, you're going to sing these lyrics about a crow uncovering a cornfield". And not only that, but Mike had not met Brian's new collaborator, but knew he was hanging round with Brian's new druggie friends. And Brian was behaving increasingly weirdly, which Mike put down to the influence of the drugs and these new friends. It can't have helped that at the same time the group's publicist, Derek Taylor, was heavily pushing the line "Brian Wilson is a genius". This was causing Brian some distress -- he didn't think of himself as a genius, and he saw the label as a burden, something it was impossible to live up to -- but was also causing friction in the group, as it seemed that their contributions were being dismissed. Again, I don't agree with Mike's position on any of this, but it is understandable. It's also the case that Mike Love is, by nature, a very assertive and gregarious person, while Brian Wilson, for all that he took control in the studio, is incredibly conflict-avoidant and sensitive. From what I know of the two men's personalities, and from things they've said, and from the session recordings that have leaked over the years, it seems entirely likely that Love will have seen himself as having reasonable criticisms, and putting them to Brian clearly with a bit of teasing to take the sting out of them; while Brian will have seen Love as mercilessly attacking and ridiculing the work that meant so much to him in a cruel and hurtful manner, and that neither will have understood at the time that that was how the other was seeing things. Love's criticisms intensified. Not of everything -- he's several times expressed admiration for "Heroes and Villains" and "Wonderful" -- but in general he was not a fan of Parks' lyrics. And his criticisms seemed to start to affect Brian. It's difficult to say what Brian thinks about Parks' lyrics, because he has a habit in interviews of saying what he thinks the interviewer wants to hear, and the whole subject of Smile became a touchy one for him for a long time, so in some interviews he has talked about how dazzlingly brilliant they are, while at other times he's seemed to agree with Love, saying they were "Van Dyke Parks lyrics", not "Beach Boys lyrics". He may well sincerely think both at the same time, or have thought both at different times. This came to a head with a session for the tag of "Cabinessence": [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Cabinessence"] Love insisted on having the line "over and over the crow flies uncover the cornfield" explained to him, and Brian eventually decided to call Van Dyke Parks and have him come to the studio. Up to this point, Parks had no idea that there was anything controversial, so when Brian phoned him up and very casually said that Mike had a few questions about the lyrics, could he come down to the studio? He went without a second thought. He later said "The only person I had had any interchange with before that was Dennis, who had responded very favorably to 'Heroes and Villains' and 'Surf's Up'. Based on that, I gathered that the work would be approved. But then, with no warning whatsoever, I got that phone call from Brian. And that's when the whole house of cards came tumbling down." Parks got to the studio, where he was confronted by an angry Mike Love, insisting he explain the lyrics. Now, as will be, I hope, clear from everything I've said, Parks and Love are very, very, *very* different people. Having met both men -- albeit only in formal fan-meeting situations where they're presenting their public face -- I actually find both men very likeable, but in very different ways. Love is gregarious, a charmer, the kind of man who would make a good salesman and who people use terms like "alpha male" about. He's tall, and has a casual confidence that can easily read as arrogance, and a straightforward sense of humour that can sometimes veer into the cruel. Parks, on the other hand, is small, meticulously well-mannered and well-spoken, has a high, precise, speaking voice which probably reads as effeminate to the kind of people who use terms like "alpha male", and the kind of devastating intelligence and Southern US attention to propriety which means that if he *wanted* to say something cruel about someone, the victim would believe themselves to have been complimented until a horrific realisation two days after the event. In every way, from their politics to their attitudes to art versus commerce to their mannerisms to their appearance, Mike Love and Van Dyke Parks are utterly different people, and were never going to mix well. And Brian Wilson, who was supposed to be the collaborator for both of them, was not mediating between them, not even expressing an opinion -- his own mental problems had reached the stage where he simply couldn't deal with the conflict. Parks felt ambushed and hurt, Love felt angry, especially when Parks could not explain the literal meaning of his lyrics. Eventually Parks just said "I have no excuse, sir", and left. Parks later said "That's when I lost interest. Because basically I was taught not to be where I wasn't wanted, and I could feel I wasn't wanted. It was like I had someone else's job, which was abhorrent to me, because I don't even want my own job. It was sad, so I decided to get away quick." Parks continued collaborating with Wilson, and continued attending instrumental sessions, but it was all wheelspinning -- no significant progress was made on any songs after that point, in early December. It was becoming clear that the album wasn't going to be ready for its planned Christmas release, and it was pushed back to January, but Brian's mental health was becoming worse and worse. One example that's often cited as giving an insight into Brian's mental state at the time is his reaction to going to the cinema to see John Frankenheimer's classic science fiction horror film Seconds. Brian came in late, and the way the story is always told, when he was sat down the screen was black and a voice said from the darkness, "Hello Mr. Wilson". That moment does not seem to correspond with anything in the actual film, but he probably came in around the twenty-four minute mark, where the main character walks down a corridor, filmed in a distorted, hallucinatory manner, to be greeted: [Excerpt: Seconds, 24:00] But as Brian watched the film, primed by this, he became distressed by a number of apparent similarities to his life. The main character was going through death and rebirth, just as he felt he was. Right after the moment I just excerpted, Mr. Wilson is shown a film, and of course Brian was himself watching a film. The character goes to the beach in California, just like Brian. The character has a breakdown on a plane, just like Brian, and has to take pills to cope, and the breakdown happens right after this: [Excerpt: Seconds, from about 44:22] A studio in California? Just like where Brian spent his working days? That kind of weird coincidence can be affecting enough in a work of art when one is relatively mentally stable, but Brian was not at all stable. By this point he was profoundly paranoid -- and he may have had good reason to be. Some of Brian's friends from this time period have insisted that Brian's semi-estranged abusive father and former manager, Murry, was having private detectives watch him and his brothers to find evidence that they were using drugs. If you're in the early stages of a severe mental illness *and* you're self-medicating with illegal drugs, *and* people are actually spying on you, then that kind of coincidence becomes a lot more distressing. Brian became convinced that the film was the work of mind gangsters, probably in the pay of Phil Spector, who were trying to drive him mad and were using telepathy to spy on him. He started to bar people who had until recently been his friends from coming to sessions -- he decided that Jules Siegel's girlfriend was a witch and so Siegel was no longer welcome -- and what had been a creative process in the studio degenerated into noodling and second-guessing himself. He also, with January having come and the album still not delivered, started doing side projects, some of which, like his production of tracks for photographer Jasper Daily, seem evidence either of his bizarre sense of humour, or of his detachment from reality, or both: [Excerpt: Jasper Daily, "Teeter Totter Love"] As 1967 drew on, things got worse and worse. Brian was by this point concentrating on just one or two tracks, but endlessly reworking elements of them. He became convinced that the track "Fire" had caused some actual fires to break out in LA, and needed to be scrapped. The January deadline came and went with no sign of the album. To add to that, the group discovered that they were owed vast amounts of unpaid royalties by Capitol records, and legal action started which meant that even were the record to be finished it might become a pawn in the legal wrangling. Parks eventually became exasperated by Brian -- he said later "I was victimised by Brian Wilson's buffoonery" -- and he quit the project altogether in February after a row with Brian. He returned a couple of weeks later out of a sense of loyalty, but quit again in April. By April, he'd been working enough with Lenny Waronker that Waronker offered him a contract with Warner Brothers as a solo artist -- partly because Warners wanted some insight into Brian Wilson's techniques as a hit-making producer. To start with, Parks released a single, to dip a toe in the water, under the pseudonym "George Washington Brown". It was a largely-instrumental cover version of Donovan's song "Colours", which Parks chose because after seeing the film Don't Look Back, a documentary of Bob Dylan's 1965 British tour, he felt saddened at the way Dylan had treated Donovan: [Excerpt: George Washington Brown, "Donovan's Colours"] That was not a hit, but it got enough positive coverage, including an ecstatic review from Richard Goldstein in the Village Voice, that Parks was given carte blanche to create the album he wanted to create, with one of the largest budgets of any album released to that date. The result was a masterpiece, and very similar to the vision of Smile that Parks had had -- an album of clever, thoroughly American music which had more to do with Charles Ives than the British Invasion: [Excerpt: Van Dyke Parks, "The All Golden"] But Parks realised the album, titled Song Cycle, was doomed to failure when at a playback session, the head of Warner Brothers records said "Song Cycle? So where are the songs?" According to Parks, the album was only released because Jac Holzman of Elektra Records was also there, and took out his chequebook and said he'd release the album if Warners wouldn't, but it had little push, apart from some rather experimental magazine adverts which were, if anything, counterproductive. But Waronker recognised Parks' talent, and had even written into Parks' contract that Parks would be employed as a session player at scale on every session Waronker produced -- something that didn't actually happen, because Parks didn't insist on it, but which did mean Parks had a certain amount of job security. Over the next couple of years Parks and Waronker co-produced the first albums by two of their colleagues from Waronker's brains trust, with Parks arranging -- Randy Newman: [Excerpt: Randy Newman, "I Think It's Going to Rain Today"] And Ry Cooder: [Excerpt: Ry Cooder, "One Meat Ball"] Waronker would refer to himself, Parks, Cooder, and Newman as "the arts and crafts division" of Warners, and while these initial records weren't very successful, all of them would go on to bigger things. Parks would be a pioneer of music video, heading up Warners' music video department in the early seventies, and would also have a staggeringly varied career over the years, doing everything from teaming up again with the Beach Boys to play accordion on "Kokomo" to doing the string arrangements on Joanna Newsom's album Ys, collaborating with everyone from U2 to Skrillex, discovering Rufus Wainwright, and even acting again, appearing in Twin Peaks. He also continued to make massively inventive solo albums, releasing roughly one every decade, each unique and yet all bearing the hallmarks of his idiosyncratic style. As you can imagine, he is very likely to come up again in future episodes, though we're leaving him for now. Meanwhile, the Beach Boys were floundering, and still had no album -- and now Parks was no longer working with Brian, the whole idea of Smile was scrapped. The priority was now to get a single done, and so work started on a new, finished, version of "Heroes and Villains", structured in a fairly conventional manner using elements of the Smile recordings. The group were suffering from numerous interlocking problems at this point, and everyone was stressed -- they were suing their record label, Dennis' wife had filed for divorce, Brian was having mental health problems, and Carl had been arrested for draft dodging -- though he was later able to mount a successful defence that he was a conscientious objector. Also, at some point around this time, Bruce Johnston seems to have temporarily quit the group, though this was never announced -- he doesn't seem to have been at any sessions from late May or early June through mid-September, and didn't attend the two shows they performed in that time. They were meant to have performed three shows, but even though Brian was on the board of the Monterey Pop Festival, they pulled out at the last minute, saying that they needed to deal with getting the new single finished and with Carl's draft problems. Some or all of these other issues almost certainly fed into that, but the end result was that the Beach Boys were seen to have admitted defeat, to have handed the crown of relevance off to the San Francisco groups. And even if Smile had been released, there were other releases stealing its thunder. If it had come out in December it would have been massively ahead of its time, but after the Beatles released Sgt Pepper it would have seemed like it was a cheap copy -- though Parks has always said he believes the Beatles heard some of the Smile tapes and copied elements of the recordings, though I don't hear much similarity myself. But I do hear a strong similarity in "My World Fell Down" by Sagittarius, which came out in June, and which was largely made by erstwhile collaborators of Brian -- Gary Usher produced, Glen Campbell sang lead, and Bruce Johnston sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Sagittarius, "My World Fell Down"] Brian was very concerned after hearing that that someone *had* heard the Smile tapes, and one can understand why. When "Heroes and Villains" finally came out, it was a great single, but only made number twelve in the charts. It was fantastic, but out of step with the times, and nothing could have lived up to the hype that had built up around it: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Heroes and Villains"] Instead of Smile, the group released an album called Smiley Smile, recorded in a couple of months in Brian's home studio, with no studio musicians and no involvement from Bruce, other than the previously released singles, and with the production credited to "the Beach Boys" rather than Brian. Smiley Smile has been unfairly dismissed over the years, but it's actually an album that was ahead of its time. It's a collection of stripped down versions of Smile songs and new fragments using some of the same motifs, recorded with minimal instrumentation. Some of it is on a par with the Smile material it's based on: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wonderful"] Some is, to my ears, far more beautiful than the Smile versions: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "Wind Chimes"] And some has a fun goofiness which relates back to one of Brian's discarded ideas for Smile, that it be a humour album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "She's Going Bald"] The album was a commercial flop, by far the least successful thing the group had released to that point in the US, not even making the top forty when it came out in September, though it made the top ten in the UK, but interestingly it *wasn't* a critical flop, at least at first. While the scrapping of Smile had been mentioned, it still wasn't widely known, and so for example Richard Goldstein, the journalist whose glowing review of "Donovan's Colours" in the Village Voice had secured Van Dyke Parks the opportunity to make Song Cycle, gave it a review in the New York Times which is written as if Goldstein at least believes it *is* the album that had been promised all along, and he speaks of it very perceptively -- and here I'm going to quote quite extensively, because the narrative about this album has always been that it was panned from the start and made the group a laughing stock: "Smiley Smile hardly reads like a rock cantata. But there are moments in songs such as 'With Me Tonight' and 'Wonderful' that soar like sacred music. Even the songs that seem irrelevant to a rock-hymn are infused with stained-glass melodies. Wilson is a sound sculptor and his songs are all harmonious litanies to the gentle holiness of love — post-Christian, perhaps but still believing. 'Wind Chimes', the most important piece on the album, is a fine example of Brian Wilson's organic pop structure. It contains three movements. First, Wilson sets a lyric and melodic mood ("In the late afternoon, you're hung up on wind chimes"). Then he introduces a totally different scene, utilizing passages of pure, wordless harmony. His two-and-a-half minute hymn ends with a third movement in which the voices join together in an exquisite round, singing the words, "Whisperin' winds set my wind chimes a-tinklin'." The voices fade out slowly, like the bittersweet afternoon in question. The technique of montage is an important aspect of Wilson's rock cantata, since the entire album tends to flow as a single composition. Songs like 'Heroes and Villains', are fragmented by speeding up or slowing down their verses and refrains. The effect is like viewing the song through a spinning prism. Sometimes, as in 'Fall Breaks and Back to Winter' (subtitled "W. Woodpecker Symphony"), the music is tiered into contrapuntal variations on a sliver of melody. The listener is thrown into a vast musical machine of countless working gears, each spinning in its own orbit." That's a discussion of the album that I hear when I listen to Smiley Smile, and the group seem to have been artistically happy with it, at least at first. They travelled to Hawaii to record a live album (with Brian, as Bruce was still out of the picture), taking the Baldwin organ that Brian used all over Smiley Smile with them, and performed rearranged versions of their old hits in the Smiley Smile style. When the recordings proved unusable, they recreated them in the studio, with Bruce returning to the group, where he would remain, with the intention of overdubbing audience noise and releasing a faked live album: [Excerpt: The Beach Boys, "California Girls [Lei'd studio version]"] The idea of the live album, to be called Lei'd in Hawaii, was scrapped, but that's not the kind of radical reimagining of your sound that you do if you think you've made an artistic failure. Indeed, the group's next albu
Super excited to announce new guest, Quentin Jones, to The Story!Quentin Jones is a Hall of Fame guitarist who is endorsed by Gretsch Guitars. Quentin Jones has played and recorded guitar with some of the most important names in rock-and-roll history. Among them are Al Kooper, Graham Nash, Peter Noone and Herman's Hermits, Robert Gordon, Marshall Crenshaw, the Rockats, Linda Gail Lewis, Billy Burnett, Johnny Neel, Dee Dee Sharp, Kenny Aaronson, David Uosikkinen, Liberty Devitto, John Sebastian, and Charlie Gracie, who took Quentin on the road with him when he was the opening act for Van Morrison. Gracie talks about Jones's talent and musical abilities in the book about Gracie's life and career, Rock N Rolls Hidden Giant. Quentin has own unique style and sound. He has gained fame playing rock-n-roll, blues, surf, rockabilly and old-time country and western. Quentin is endorsed by Gretsch guitars and in 2016 he was enshrined in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in Nashville Tennessee. Along with being one of today's top guitarists, Quentin is a well-known music producer and songwriter. His music appears in movies, network television shows, DVDs and has be recorded by some of the world's top artists. Quentin's music and projects have been covered by publications like Billboard Magazine, Mojo Magazine, Rolling Stone Magazine, Goldmine Magazine, The NY Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer...to name just a few. Quentin's musical achievements have gained him mentions in a number of books. Quentin was featured in the Sept 2021 issue of Guitar Player Magazine in an article about Robert Gordon and the guitar players who helped him resurrect rockabilly music.He is the founding member of the internationally known cult band the Reach Around Rodeo Clowns. The band has released six critically acclaimed albums that gained attention from fans, press and other artists, including some of rock's founding fathers, British Invasion bands and even author Stephen King! Today Quentin can be heard and seen singing and playing guitar with his band mates, drummer David Uosikkinen and bassist Kenny Aaronson, as QDK. These three legendary musicians have joined forces to keep rock-and-roll, electric blues, surf, and rockabilly music alive and well into the 21st century. The band is currently producing new music in the studio. You can find Quentin and his projects here:Website : https://quentinjonesguitar.com/homeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-story/donations
The British Invasion Superstar of the 60s is invading our lives again, and we're loving it
This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I'll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode -- there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear. Click below for the transcript Transcript Today's backer-only episode is an extra-long one -- it runs about as long as some of the shorter main episodes -- but it also might end up containing material that gets repeated in the main podcast at some point, because a lot of British rock and pop music gets called, often very incorrectly, music-hall, and so the subject of the music halls is one that may well have to be explained in a future episode. But today we're going to look at one of the very few pop hits of the sixties that is incontrovertibly based in the music-hall tradition -- Herman's Hermits singing "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am": [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am"] The term "music hall" is one that has been widely misused over the years. People talk about it as being a genre of music, when it's anything but. Rather, the music hall -- which is the British equivalent of the American vaudeville -- was the most popular form of entertainment, first under that name and then under the name "variety", for more than a century, only losing its popularity when TV and rock-and-roll between them destroyed the market for it. Even then, TV variety shows rooted in the music hall continued, explicitly until the 1980s, with The Good Old Days, and implicitly until the mid-1990s. As you might imagine, for a form of entertainment that lasted over a hundred years, there's no such thing as "music-hall music" as a singular thing, any more than there exists a "radio music" or a "television music". Many music-hall acts were non-musical performers -- comedians, magicians, acrobats, and so forth -- but among those who did perform music, there were all sorts of different styles included, from folk song to light opera, to ragtime, and especially minstrel songs -- the songs of Stephen Foster were among the very first transatlantic hits. We obviously don't have any records from the first few decades of the music hall, but we do have sheet music, and we know that the first big British hit song was "Champagne Charlie", originally performed by George Leybourne, and here performed by Derek B Scott, a professor of critical musicology at the university of Leeds: [Excerpt: Derek B. Scott, "Champagne Charlie"] If you've ever heard the phrase "the Devil has all the best tunes", that song is why. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, set new lyrics to it and made it into a hymn, and when asked why, he replied "Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?" The phrase had been used earlier, but it was Booth who popularised it. "Champagne Charlie" also has rather morbid associations, because it was sung by the crowd at the last public execution in Britain, so it often gets used in horror and mystery films set in Victorian London, so chances are if you recognised the song it's because you've heard it in a film about Jack the Ripper or Jekyll and Hyde. But the music hall, like all popular entertainment, demanded a whole stream of new material. The British Tin Pan Alley publishers and songwriters who wrote much of the early British rock and roll we've looked at started out in music hall, and almost every British popular song up until the rise of jazz, and most after that until the fifties, was performed in the music halls. We do have recordings from the later part of the music-hall era, of course, and they show what a wide variety of music was performed there, from pitch-black comedy songs like "Murders", by George Grossmith, the son of the co-writer of Diary of a Nobody: [Excerpt: George Grossmith, "Murders"] To sing-along numbers like "Waiting at the Church" by Vesta Victoria: [Excerpt: Vesta Victoria, "Waiting at the Church"] And one of the most-recorded music-hall performers, Harry Champion, a London performer who sang very wordy songs, at a fast tempo, usually with a hornpipe rhythm and often about food, like "A Little Bit of Cucumber" or his most famous song "Boiled Beef and Carrots": [Excerpt: Harry Champion, "Boiled Beef and Carrots"] But one that wasn't about food, and was taken a bit slower than his normal patter style, was "I'm Henry the VIII I Am": [Excerpt: Harry Champion, "I'm Henry VIII, I Am"] (Incidentally, the song as written on the sheet music has "Henery" rather than "Henry", and most people sing it "Enery", but the actual record by Champion uses "Henry" on the label, as does the Hermits' version, so that's what I'm going with). Fifty years after Champion, the song was recorded by Joe Brown. We've talked about Brown before in the main podcast, but for those of you who don't remember, he's one of the best British rock and roll musicians of the fifties, and still performing today, and he has a real love of pre-war pop songs, and he would perform them regularly with his band, the Bruvvers. Those of you who've heard the Beatles performing "Sheikh of Araby" on their Decca audition, they're copying Brown's version of that song -- George Harrison was a big fan of Brown. Brown's version of "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am" gave it a rock and roll beat, and dropped the verse, leaving only the refrain: [Excerpt: Joe Brown and the Bruvvers, "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am"] Enter Herman's Hermits, four years later. In 1964, Herman's Hermits, a beat group from Manchester led by singer Peter Noone, had signed with Mickie Most and had a UK number one with "I'm Into Something Good", a Goffin and King song originally written for Earl-Jean of the Cookies: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Into Something Good"] That would be their only UK number one, though they'd have several more top ten hits over here. It only made number thirteen in the US, but their second US single (not released as a single over here), "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", went to number two in the States. From that point on, the group's career would diverge enormously between the US and the UK -- half their US hits were never released as singles in the UK, and vice versa. Several records, like their cover version of Sam Cooke's "Wonderful World", were released in both countries, but in general they went in two very different directions. In the UK they tended to release fairly normal beat-group records like "No Milk Today", written by Graham Gouldman, who was also writing hits for the Yardbirds and the Hollies: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "No Milk Today"] That only charted in the US when it was later released as a B-side. Meanwhile, in the US, they pursued a very different strategy. Since the "British Invasion" was a thing, and so many British bands were doing well in the States partly because of the sheer novelty of them being British, Herman's Hermits based their career on appealing to American Anglophiles. This next statement might be a little controversial, even offensive to some listeners, so I apologise, but it's the truth. There is a large contingent of people in America who genuinely believe that they love Britain and British things, but who have no actual idea what British culture is actually like. They like a version of Britain that has been constructed entirely from pop-culture aimed at an American market, and have a staggeringly skewed vision of what Britain is actually like, one that is at best misguided and at worst made up of extremely offensive stereotypes. People who think they know all about the UK because they've spent a week going round a handful of tourist traps in central London and they've watched every David Tennant episode of Doctor Who. (Please note that I am not, here, engaging in reflex anti-Americanism, as so many British people do on this topic, because I know very well that there is an equally wrong kind of British person who worships a fictional America which has nothing to do with the real country -- as any American who has come over to the UK and seen cans of hot dog sausages in brine with "American style" and an American flag on the label will shudderingly attest. Fetishising of a country not one's own exists in every culture, and about every culture, whether it's American weebs who think they know about Japan or British Communists who were insistent that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a utopia). For their US-only singles, most of which were massive hits, Herman's Hermits played directly to that audience. The group's first single in this style was "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter", written by the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for playing Jim in The Vicar of Dibley, but at the time best known as a songwriter for groups like the Vernons Girls and for writing linking material for Six-Five Special and Oh Boy! That song was written for a TV play and originally performed by the actor Tom Courtenay: [Excerpt: Tom Courtenay, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"] The Hermits copied Courtenay's record closely, down to Noone imitating Courtenay's vocals: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter"] That became their first US number one, and the group went all-in on appealing to that particular market. Noone started singing, not in the pseudo-American style that, say, Mick Jagger sings in (and early-sixties Jagger is a perfect example of the British equivalent of those American Anglophiles, loving but not understanding Black America), and not in his own Manchester accent, but in a faked Cockney accent, doing what is essentially a bad impersonation of Anthony Newley. (Davy Jones, who like Noone was a Mancunian who had started his career in the Manchester-set soap opera Coronation Street, was also doing the same thing at the time, in his performances as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway version of Oliver! -- we'll talk more about Jones in future episodes of the main podcast, but he, like Noone, was someone who was taking aim at this market.) Noone's faked accent varied a lot, sometimes from syllable to syllable, and on records like "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and the Hermits' version of the old George Formby song "Leaning on a Lamp Post" he sounds far more Northern than on other songs -- fitting into a continuum of Lancashire novelty performers that stretched at least from Formby's father, George Formby senior, all the way to Frank Sidebottom. But on the Hermits' version of "I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am", Noone is definitely trying to sound as London as he can, and he and the group copy Joe Brown's arrangement: [Excerpt: Herman's Hermits, "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am"] That also became an American number one, and Herman's Hermits had truly found their niche. They spent the next three years making an odd mixture of catchy pop songs by writers like Graham Gouldman or PF Sloan, which became UK hits, and the very different type of music typified by "I'm Henry the Eighth I Am". Eventually, though, musical styles changed, and the group stopped having hits in either country. Peter Noone left the group in 1971, and they made some unsuccessful records without him before going on to the nostalgia circuit. Noone's solo career started relatively successfully, with a version of David Bowie's "Oh! You Pretty Things", backed by Bowie and the Spiders From Mars: [Excerpt: Peter Noone, "Oh! You Pretty Things"] That made the top twenty in the UK, but Noone had no further solo success. These days, there are two touring versions of Herman's Hermits -- in the US, Noone has toured as "Herman's Hermits featuring Peter Noone", with no other original members, since the 1980s. Drummer Barry Whitwham and lead guitarist Derek Leckenby kept the group going in the rest of the world until Leckenby's death in 1994 -- since then Whitwham has toured as Herman's Hermits without any other original members. Herman's Hermits may not have the respect that some of their peers had, but they had incredible commercial success at their height, made some catchy pop records, and became the first English group to realise there was a specific audience of Anglophiles in the US that they could market to. Without that, much of the subsequent history of music might have been very different.
Two master craftsmen of pop/rock, born two days apart; both possessing a good number of commonalities as well as some major diverging paths. My returning guest, journalist Glenn Greenberg (Paul McCartney at 80) and I discuss their friendship and rivalry, as well as what each learned from the other. Here's the 1967 CBS TV special, Inside Pop: The Rock Revolution: https://youtu.be/vyiGFRj5b-k The Brian Wilson/"Surf's Up" sequence appears 50 minutes in, but the earlier "debate" between Graham Nash and Peter Noone is worth the price of admission alone.
Get ready...In this episode Jimmy & Derik Talk SUPERSTARS! Check out these FUN interviews with Burt Reynolds, Peter Noone and the voice of Wheel of Fortune Charlie O'Donnell....SUPER COOL STUFF!
NOW AVAILABLE ON FOWL PLAYERS RADIO!!! www.fowlplayersradio.comWe welcome Sammy Serious, lead singer of The Zeros to the program! We talked about the band's history- their start in New Jersey and New York, their move to England, back to the states, Los Angeles, writing the H-O-W-A-R-D S-T-E-R-N theme song (and others) their appearance in "Caged Fury" with Erik Estrada, sharing the stage with bands such as Guns 'N Roses, Poison, Blue Oyster Cult, Peter Noone, and much more!! He has a website with tons of pictures from the old days, with music and merch for sale-www.sammyserious.comThe Fowl Players of Perryville are now booking shows for 2022! We have some shows coming up on Maryland Party Boat and Western Maryland Scenic Railroad. For more information please call 443-600-0446 or see www.fowlplayersofperryville.com Subscribe for free at www.fowlplayersradio.com or listen wherever you find podcasts online.No matter what platform you listen on, you can help us greatly by giving us a fair review and a 5 star rating!Also- be sure to visit our page on patreon.com- www.patreon.com/fowlplayersradio!Fowl Players Radio now has selected episodes on YouTube!#sammyserious #thezeros #serioussuicide #fowlplayersradio #thefowlplayersofperryville #michaelspedden
Investigative journalist, Peter Schweizer, RELEASES new book, "Red Handed" on the number of American elites who are eager to help the Chinese dictatorship in its quest for global hegemony. Head chef/owner of Red's 615 Kitchen in Nashville makes Nashville Hot Chicken. Southern comedian, Henry Cho, gives his HILARIOUS take on being born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. Peter Noone REMINISCES on career and performs. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
© 2020-2025 Ivy Podcast Discovery LLC
