Peter Noone on living the 1960s dream and touring with Herman Hermits

I quickly realise the Manchester-born singer, who had 80 million hits with the likes of My Sentimental Friend and Silhouettes, almost single-handedly defines an area. He’s pop’s version of teen rites-of-passage film Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush. He’s the lead in a Keith Waterhouse novel. But there’s more. He’s a living example of how you can last 55 years in the business, without, as he says, any real outstanding talent.

But how is that possible? Noone, whose mother’s family were from Glasgow, tells a story of tough survival, none of this X Factor-five-minutes-of-grief nonsense. The blond teenager with a smile wider than the Coronation Street set where he once worked, was so determined on a pop career he was the frontman in a band aged just 15. Having already been sent to Manchester’s College of Music and Drama by his parents, Noone had landed some acting roles, including the role of Len Fairclough’s son in Coronation Street, but took his fees and bought a van.

And he and his band mates drove up and down the country in the direction of success. That’s when The Heartbeats, as they were, discovered their youngest, skinniest member was as chippy as the kitchen sink in a Fifties British movie. “We used to go into these motorway cafes on the A5 or wherever,” Noone recalls, “and there would be guys resenting these Cuban-heeled, long-haired, crew-necked, ‘Are you a boy or a girl?’ types. We were little lightweight guys but we learned they would beat us up just as quickly as the bigger blokes.”

In the cafes, Noone met up with future friend and bass legend Jack Bruce, who was astonished at what this little Mancunian would do to defend himself. “We used to screw the legs off our mother’s coffee tables, and keep them under our leather jackets,” he recalls. “Jack, who was with his Steamrollers band at the time, was totally taken aback. He said ‘What are they for?’ And I said, ‘If we don’t hit someone with them they’ll take them off us and hit us with them.’”

So being in a pop band was very much about being beaten up? He laughs: “I was in a few fights with Jack. And I’m sure we lost. But I would always have a go, although I do remember being in a couple of fights Tom Jones was in and he remembers I actually won.”

Peter Noone's use of his “dobber” suggest a young man who’d battle to make it to the top. Even if he wasn’t the most talented teenager to come out of the north west of England. “I did lots of acting, and landed a few films but instantly fell in with the musical crowd,” he says of his part-time college days. “I was never really that good outside of Herman’s Hermits.”

Noone’s dad was an accountant but the teenager didn’t believe life was advantaged. “We grew up in council houses. We were hard little boys. We were not artists. But the early 60s was all about possibility. You didn’t have to go in the army. There were lots of jobs.”

As a young boy, Peter Noone had been an obsessive stamp collector. He later became an obsessive record collector. Now he knew he desperately wanted pop success. “My life was this group. Even more than girls. I know loads of people say they got into groups so they could meet girls but that wasn’t my intention.”

That’s not to say young women were not on the agenda. When Noone’s parents moved to Liverpool to work, he remained in Manchester with his grandparents. “They would be at sleep at night and I’d bring girls back – and they didn’t know.”

By 1963, the Heartbeats had evolved into Herman’s Hermits but it took time to become decent. “When we turned up at the Cavern we were so crap that by the next gig we’d changed our name,” he admits. “We were atrocious.”

Yet, they practised, changed. And landed local management, which led to legendary pop producer Mickie Most being invited to check out the band. Thankfully, Most loved their lead singer, reckoning he looked like a Mancunian version of John F Kennedy who would appeal to mums and dads. The producer then landed the band a Gerry Goffin/Carole King song and in September 1964 they had a No1 with I’m Into Something Good.

The next few years were the stuff of fantasy, meeting the likes of the Beatles and the Stones. “I once walked into a bar and the Beatles and the Stones and Mary Quant were there. And I couldn’t get a drink because I was still under age and so John Lennon ordered up two Bacardis and two cokes and we split them.

“It was a strange friendship with John. He was always rude to me but I was always rude back. He would always say, ‘Hello Hermit, that’s a nice suit, do they make it in your size?’ I wanted him to like me and thankfully he did. But the great thing is none of us bands were in competition.” He grins: “I think the Beatles and the Stones maybe even thought a couple of our singles weren’t bad. But the great thing was we could go on Top of the Pops in Manchester with these guys and be pals.

He says: “All the time I was trying to be cool, but sometimes I didn’t manage it. Sometimes you have to say, ‘F*** me, it’s Roy Orbison!’”

Sometimes he would find himself capturing the eye of female pop stars. Noone once had a fling with Lulu. “I used to drive all the way up from Manchester to Glasgow just to have a look at her,” he recalls, smiling of the powers of the teenage heart. “We had a little bit of a thing and I was really enamoured with her. But the reality was driving all the way up and meeting her dad who worked in an abattoir. And I remember I had to sit there in a room with her little sister and have a cup of tea while all the time I was trying to pull Lulu.”

In 1965, the Hermits became part of the British invasion of the American charts. “The Beatles opened this locked door around the world.” The hits kept coming such as A Kind of Hush and Mrs Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter. The money poured in. Alcohol poured down teenage throats. Noone was forever it seems getting into scrapes. “I had to stop drinking,” he says. “I used to get into so many fights and I’d get arrested. I was turning into a clown. When you are 17 or 18 you can jump off hotel rooms into swimming pools and stay alive. I saw Pete Townshend do it and hit the back of his head and nearly died. But you can’t do that when you’re an older man. I went all the way to about 24, but then you realise you can’t go into bars and talk to other people’s girlfriends and expect to live.”

He adds a little colour. “I seem to be attracted to all the crazy people. I was once with Gregg Allman in Los Angeles and we were arrested by three different police officers on the same day. You know, there are two kinds of drinkers: the dancers and the fighters. And sometimes the dancers become fighters when the bars close.”

By 1996, the Hermits were outselling the Beatles in the States. But what of his relationship with the other Hermits? Did he treat them as his backing band? “They kept me under control but I can remember once though meeting the Queen at a Royal Command Performance, in a line with Tom Jones and Andy Williams and the rest of the band were separate upstairs. I could have handled that better.”

The Hermits were about easy listening pop, which all too often melded into cheesy music hall in the form of I’m Henry The Eighth, I Am. Did this push the band in the direction of the end of the pier? “Yes, we became the Bachelor’s replacements,” the singer admits. “I remember we did a Royal Command Show and part of it featured the song If I Were A Rich Man, where we put down the guitars and danced around them. And right then we came to realise that wasn’t what we were about at all. So we all made a deal and we quit.”

Noone was in demand as a solo artist, for variety television, the likes of the Mike Yarwood Show. And he had a Number 12 hit in 1971 with David Bowie’s Oh You Pretty Things. “Bowie at one point was having a real problem recording his own songs, so I got this one. But the agreement with Top of the Pops at the time was that all musicians had to play on their own instruments. So David Bowie turned up to record Oh You Pretty Things but wearing a dress, alongside this very nice young man Peter Noone from Manchester.” He adds: “It was a very nice dress. He looked good in it.”

Noone met his future wife Mireille in New York’s Bag Of Nails Club. “The prettiest, nicest woman I’d ever met in my life.” The couple have been together since, living in San Bernardino in California.

But had he emerged from the 1060s with a few bob in the bank? It was almost compulsory in the Sixties to be robbed by record companies. “We were in this [finance] thing with Elton and Tom [Jones] and I think somebody lived on a island somewhere on our money. Yet, I’m a persistent little sh*t. I keep going. I made lots of money and I also had it ripped off. So I don’t really look back in anger. The only way to have revenge is to have a happy life.”

He adds: “I have plumber’s soul. If I get a cheque from Uruguay from sixty bucks I’ll dance around the kitchen because I know that if I had fixed a toilet in 1964 I would never get paid again. Royalties are lovely. And I think the trademark on Herman’s Hermits is worth $200m dollars. If you’ve got one per cent of that you’re laughing all over town.”

He pauses to remember: “This idea of young lads who used to run around a van in Manchester with strippers seems madness, but it all became a trademark. And for the last couple of years in America I’ve averaged over £2m a year. That’s a lot to do with Herman’s Hermits.”

After the Hermits imploded Noone tried to form a punk band, the Tremblers. Clearly, that was never going to work, but you have to admire his onward drive. “Well, you try,” he says grinning. He moved onto Broadway, landing the lead in the Pirates of Penzance. “One of the things I didn’t really know about musical theatre was that you had to be talented. The casting directors would ask, ‘Can you dance?’ and I’d say, ‘No, not really.’ ‘Next!’”

He smiles: “You know, I used to go to ballet classes, just to give myself an advantage. I was the butchest person in the room. And I took singing lessons when I was in Pirates and I’m so glad because it means I can get up and sing those same Herman’s Hermits songs in the same tunes I recorded them in.”

His persistent reinvention continued. Noone came up with his own off-Broadway musical theatre show, My Very Own British Invasion, telling of a 1960s British pop star who falls in love in America. Along the way he became great friends with other Brit pop stars such as Davy Jones of The Monkees, which is a reminder of his own mortality. “We used to tour a lot in America after The Monkees' success and it was lovely. He was a Mancunian so I could say to him what I liked, he always had a come back.

“But at the same time, I felt so sorry for him because Davy had been a child star. I never had that. I always felt grateful to be part of the scene. He never had someone to help him load the van. It was all done for him since The Monkees landed.”

His voice deepens. “The last time I saw Davy on stage he told me he was getting dizzy. I said ‘Jesus, man, you need to go to the doctor.’ I was thinking it could be brain damage from smoking nine million joints. He was ‘wake and bake’, he would smoke a lot of pot. Then I got angry when he died. ‘How f******’ stupid of you to die!’ It was the same with David Cassidy. He’d probably be still alive if they’d put him in jail. It’s so stupid.”

Peter Blair Denis Bernard Noone, at 71, says he’s lucky to be living the dream. Can he believed he once appeared in gigs alongside the Beatles and Stones? “Not even the people who were in these bands realised how big they were.”

He still has dinner with Mick Jagger and Ronnie Wood. Tom Jones came to his 50th wedding anniversary party.

Noone clearly still loves performing. But there’s more to it than that, he admits. “I’ve got 181 concerts this year. Just this week I drove for hours in the p******’ rain to see Jerry Lee Lewis, who is 83, but he looks like sh*t – and we did a song together called Herman the Hermit. And it was amazing. So here’s the thing. I love the Hermits' songs. I truly get inside them. Like the Stanislavsky method I make them become part of me. But this isn’t just a career. I need to do it. I’m like Mick [Jagger] in this sense.” He breaks into a loud laugh. “And we’re more like Morecambe and Wise than we’d care to admit.”

Peter Noone appears in the Solid Gold Sixties Show, Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, March 29.