Herman’s Hermits lead singer back into something good
Peter Noone, best known as the lead singer for the British Invasion band Herman’s Hermits, has worked nonstop since he first stepped onstage when he was 14.
So the pandemic-related shutdowns that forced him to stay home the past few months have been hard on him.
“This is the first time I’ve not worked,” Noone said in a telephone interview. “Before we became famous, we lived in a van and we drove around; we did every kind of date that you could do, and we became entertainers — we didn’t know that we were going to get hit records; we wanted to have an entertaining show. And that’s what I’ve done with my life. So not having a show was really confusing.”
Noone played a few solo shows with safety precautions in place, including one in a restaurant in Italy and one at a Rhode Island drive-in. But that wasn’t the same as touring with the Hermits.
Happily, he’s getting to do that now, starting with a short spin through Texas, including a stop
Saturday at San Antonio’s Tobin Center for the Performing Arts.
Noone is grateful for any chance to get onstage because he loves to perform his hits — including chipper chart toppers “I’m Into Something Good,” “There’s a Kind of Hush” and “I’m Henry VIII, I Am.”
The concert is part of the first weekend of ticketed public performances at the Tobin Center since the venue shut down in March as part of the effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. The other performance is the one-man show “An Evening with C.S. Lewis,” playing Friday and Sunday.
Capacity is capped at around 20 percent, with two seats between each group of ticket holders. There will be temperature
checks at the entrance, and masks are required. Plexiglass shields have been installed at the box office and concession stands. To stave off lines at the concession stand, ticket holders will be able to make purchases through an app called Noble: Easy Order. Easy Pay.
“I think we feel like we’re in pretty good shape,” said Aaron Zimmerman, vice president for programming. “We’ve run four or five free events to work though some of the safety protocols to make sure we’re keeping our patrons and artists safe. We’re doing all we can to do that and bring back shows safely.”
This weekend marks Noone’s third outing at the Tobin Center. He’s an audience favorite, Zimmerman said.
“It’s amazing how he resonates to this day,” he said. “He’s a great act, very charismatic and extremely talented after all these years. People just love him, and that’s why we keep bringing him back.”
When he couldn’t play live, Noone kept busy working on the shop at his website, peternoone.com, so fans could buy the merchandise piling up in his garage while the band was grounded. He also took part in a few Facebook Live chats with fans, making clear that he would only be talking — he was not going to play.
“I think live music has to be precious,” he said. “If people want to hear me sing, they have to either buy a record or go and see me in a concert. I don’t want (videos) all over Youtube because that would kill the vibe of the music business.”
Noone also worked to keep fit, mostly by taking long walks, to make sure he’d be ready when pandemic restrictions were lifted. He started putting more emphasis on fitness years into his career, when he started working with a vocal coach. She told him to approach his music as though he were an athlete, advice that didn’t entirely click until he went to see a Rolling Stones show.
“They’re athletes,” he said. “They’re not really creepy old men; they’re athletes. They’re very fit people. And I thought, I’ve got to be fit.”
He also expects the band to be healthy, too, as they head into next year, since a lot of the concerts scrapped in 2020 were moved into 2021.
“The 100 concerts that we didn’t do this year will all get put into next year, with the 100 concerts that we already had,” he said. “So now we’re going to be doing 200 concerts next year. Which is actually a dream come true for workaholics.”
Still, 200 dates is practically a vacation considering how the musicians worked at the start of their career. For instance, they spent 1965 on a 360-day world tour.
“And we wanted more! Of course, some of those days were lost by flying to England, you’d lose a whole day,” he said. “But we made records as well on those days off. And I miss that kind of momentum, really.”
Noone eventually branched off into other endeavors, including starring in productions of “The Pirates of Penzance” and “Romance, Romance.” He enjoyed it but found he missed singing the songs that made him famous. So he started doing that again.
“I remember that I was very happy when I got back onstage and started singing again,” he said. “Then in the middle of one of the songs, I suddenly stopped and thought, ‘This is where you’re supposed to be. This is home, up here singing those songs.’
“And when you look out in the audience and you do something like ‘There’s a Kind of Hush,’ and you see a couple my age holding hands because it brings back a great memory, that’s a reward. You get paid by inspiration.”