Peter Noone and his band were almost Sherman’s Hermits. An English pub owner told the 15-year-old that he looked like “Herman,” a character from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, and that his band looked like a bunch of hermits. The character was actually named “Sherman,” but Herman stuck and Herman’s Hermits were born. They’ve been making music for more than 50 years.
In 1965, the young group outsold The Beatles, and ultimately sold more than 52 million recordings. Fourteen singles and seven albums went gold, with hits like “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 “Can’t You Hear my Heartbeat.”
Peter Blair Denis Noon was more than just a pretty face. He was born in Manchester, England, where he studied voice and acting at St. Bede’s College and the Manchester School of Music and Drama. As a child, he played Stanley Fairclough in the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street. Then came the Hermits.
As Herman, the photogenic face of Herman’s Hermits, Noone graced the cover of nearly every international publication including Time magazine. He performed on hundreds of television shows and appeared with Ed Sullivan, Jackie Gleason, Dean Martin, and Danny Kaye. Still, Noone had his sights set on a theatrical career. He took the lead roles in full-scale theatrical productions of Dick Whittington, Aladdin, and Sinbad the Sailor in theaters in England. In the 1980s, he starred on Broadway in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s production of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Pirates of Penzance. He reprised his role as the dashing hero, Frederic, at the Drury Lane Theatre in London and in the U.S. and international tours of the operetta.
That step onto the boards in New York and London was a big step for Noone, especially with his family. “It was pretty rewarding, he said. “My dad never gave me a compliment, but he said, ‘That was good, son.’ That was a big-time compliment.”
Noon has appeared on the soap opera As the World Turns and had a four-year stint as host of VH1’s My Generation, a half-hour retrospective of pop and rock music. In 2019, Noone won the “Entertainer of the Year” award at the Casino Entertainment Awards. Today, accompanied by his Hermits, Noone performs more than 200 concerts a year. He consistently plays to sold-out venues, and his admirers span generations. Today’s teen girls scream as loudly as their mothers did in 1965 and the music begs you to sing along, or, at the very least, tap your feet. It’s happy, fun music that will make you smile.
