From the Tiger Beat Archives, June 1966
Would you get up at 4:30 in the morning, drive in darkness 25 miles to an airport, fight your way through a crowd of fifty screaming girls, argue with at least three security officers just to spend two hours with five boys from Britain? Well, I would–when the five boys from Britain happen to be Herman’s Hermits!
Returning to England from their tour of Japan via America, the Hermits had a two-hour stopover at the Los Angeles International Airport. And two hours is just enough time to have a nice conversation with each one of them with a little time left over for goofing around, part of every Hermit’s life!
After spending several minutes convincing security guards I was really a reporter for Tiger Beat, I squeezed inside the private lounge leaving a large crowd of angered young ladies.
It didn’t take long for Pete (no one calls him Herman, just “Pete”) to make me a friend for life. “Hi!” He called, “I remember you. You talked to us the night before we flew home this summer. We went riding on me motorbike!” I just couldn’t believe Peter, with the millions of people he talks to could remember me from when I interviewed the boys at their Hollywood house six months before! It was typically Herman!
Charlie, the Hermits co-manager, was busy talking to Pete, so it was Karl who had to answer my inquiries first. “The trip to Japan? Oh, it was the greatest! I bought some swords, but long Japanese swords. The whole tour was fantastic except we sometimes had trouble with the language. We’d send down to room service for some filet steaks and we’d get back some kind of weird fish.”
Karl was unshaven, but looked sporty in his little straw hat. As he peeked from under the brim he told me, “Before we go on stage to do a show we always read comic books, mostly Superman and Batman. They’re goofy.” I asked Karl if he’d seen the Batman TV show. He giggled, “It’s great! When we were in Hawaii we surfed every day and we’d all come in at six, watch the news, and then Batman! We all love it!”
Now that they have been performing for a good while, few things embarrass them. Karl remembered one time he turned very red. “It didn’t happen on stage, I think it was in Ohio. We were all in these canoes on a lake and I fell in, fully clothed. I had to swim to shore with all these people watching.” He smiled recalling it.
Along with their poise on stage, the boys have also gained a great deal of money at a very young age. Don’t believe it if an entertainer tells you that success hasn’t changed them. Quite often those changes are for the good. Karl admitted, “I appreciate me mum and dad now that I’m away so much. When I was home all the time I used to think they were tyrants! Now I look forward to getting home and seeing them.”
Around me in the large lounge, Barry made feeble attempts at sleeping and Karl kept busy taking pictures with this camera. Later, to keep from falling asleep, Pete, Karl and Keith sang barbershop-quartet style all the words they had learned in Japanese, which amounts to about three. “Bong. . .Bong. . .Bong” they harmonized to Lek’s accompaniment on the ukulele, and then broke into fits of laughter.
They left Hawaii at twelve midnight so when they reached LA they had been awake nearly 24 hours. They continually confessed to being “very tired” but all were bright, joking and spontaneous as usual.
Following his anything but serious singing with the trio, Pete bounced over to me and inquired, “And what questions have you got for me today?” After nervously fingering through my notes, I pulled out a short list of questions. I asked, “Do you feel your values have changed with your success?”
“Of course!” he said bluntly. “At one time I loved a little motorbike and now I’ve got three cars. I have a Cadillac, a Jaguar and an Aston Martin. I drive them for different occasions. I haven’t taken the Aston Martin out yet, because I got it just two days before we left for Japan. I’ve been driving the Jag for about six months.”
Because he’s traveling so many days out of each month and is even gone sometimes for months at a time, Pete said he really missed the family, especially his little sister Suzanne. I asked him if she he helped discipline her when he’s at home. “Me?” He looked shocked! “I spoil her something awful! Most people give me dolls to give her. We get so many, I take them in and she just gets ruined! She doesn’t know which one to like. Most kids see one doll and go mad, but I take her so many, she goes crazy!”
The leader of this group is perhaps the most bubbly and carefree of the singers on today’s stages. It was not always this way! The last time I talked with him he told me he never knew what to do with his hands on stage. But just as the group has matured musically, he has matured in his stage presentation. Pete confessed, “It’s kind of like being hypnotized when I’m on the stage. I’m a completely different person out there. It’s all natural, you understand. I can’t plan anything because if I do, when I go on stage, it comes out wrong. So I just have to be myself as much as possible.”
Though he appears to be a rather calm chap, Peter has had his moments of “madness,” and he laughed out loud relating one of them. “Well, when I was younger, Barry and I put together an old car of my father’s. We drove it out one Sunday and wrecked it. I got arrested. It didn’t bother me that I was wrecking a car it’d taken us months to make, but when I got arrested, I was a bit worried.”
Before he could say more, Pete jumped up to look at a big card that had been slipped under the door. There was a pile of notes on a nearby coffee table. The crowd outside kept up a constant stream of yelling and door banging, the majority of which only irritated the boys who are still hoping to get little peace.
Barry was dressed in a handsome blue coat with a dress shirt and expensive cufflinks. He was very tan from their two-day Hawaiian holiday, which, to be honest, made it difficult to concentrate on an interview. Somehow, we got on the topic of Barry when he was youngster and his eyes grew big and he used his hands to emphasize his remarks. “I was very fat. When I was ten years old I lost it all. In some of the photographs when I was little I look like a barrel with two little legs and arms sticking out.”
Like the other boys, Barry lives with his family in Manchester. With all the things he has bought around the world and all the gifts he’s received, I imagined his room was beautifully decorated. He set me straight about that! “No, it’s not! It’s an estate. The furniture is very old and all scuffed up from when I was a kid. Also, there’s a pile of junk in one corner and a pile of old magazines and newspapers in the other corner!”
Pete had been bouncing around the room and came over our way. “What’s the latest ‘in’ sayings on the LA scene?” he joked. “Is it MARV?”
“No one seemed to be able to help the inquisitive young man and a disappointed look fell over his face. “Well, that’s showbiz,” Keith deadpanned.
Keith had been relatively quiet except for his part in the “Japanese Trio” formed earlier that morning. He sat comfortably now, nibbling on a breakfast roll. Pete did mention to me that Keith used to be much quieter than he is now. I asked Keith about this and he nodded, “I was probably more quiet before I joined this lot. We meet so many people all the time, probably subconsciously it’s made a difference. I do like meeting people. I also like traveling.”
Though he said his childhood was a quiet, normal one, he boasted, “I broke my jaw once! I didn’t know I even broke it then one day I saw the scar and I said, ‘Hey, what’s this scar?’ and me mum said ‘you broke your jaw.’ The mystery was ended.”
It is inevitable that at some time something will go wrong on stage while the boys are performing. It’s happened to Keith and he had fun recalling it. “I fell flat on my face once!” He began laughing so hard he continued in spurts. “It was in a ballroom in England. . .We were a bit high-spirited. . .All leaping about in the middle of this solo. . . And it was a very slippery stage. . .I just put my foot down in the wrong place and I squashed all over the stage. . .The number just sort of died because everyone was laughing so hard. . .Then we started another number.”
Apart from sleeping, Keith (who has the most beautiful facial features!!) relaxes by reading all sorts of books. The night I called on the boys in Benedict Canyon he spent the majority of the evening engrossed in “The Three Musketeers.” Like the others, he is impressed by things the fans have taken a lot of trouble to make. He remarked, “Some paintings have been really great. We get a lot of sketches. I’ve taken some home and put them on me wall.”
Earlier while I was waiting for the Hermits to arrive, I stood near the adults who just left their plane. They were giggling at the young girls who were so eager to catch a glimpse of Herman and the Hermits. One woman spoke up bragging, “I sat right across from Herman.” An older gentleman leaned over to me, “They sang for ten minutes and we all listened.”
That’s the way with this group! Even the “old folks” were impressed with the five young men. Why? Because no matter where they are or what they’re doing, they are always just themselves. In doing this they not only have the love and adulation of their fans, but a good many mums and dads too!
It’d been a glorious morning! Worth the blaring alarm, long drive, pushing and talking it took to get there!
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