Popular in the 60's,now trying to take on the 70's...
PETER NOONE & HERMAN'S HERMITS
A: Lady Barbara
(RAK 1970)
Herman's Hermits had an odd sort of career; over here in the UK they were purveyors of fine crafted pop hits (Silhouettes, No Milk Today, I'm Into Something Good, There's a Kind of Hush - all bona fide sing-a-long classics), but in the states they seemed to be some kind of slightly jokey music hall act having big hits with I'm 'Enery The Eighth, and Mrs. Brown, You've Got A lovely Daughter. An interesting approach to take - presumably distinguishing themselves from the other first wave of British invasion acts by add an extra amount English eccentricity to their output. Fair-do's to them it seems to have worked-at least until the 60's gave way to make way for a new decade, and this is where we find them in 1970, with what turned out to be their last single.
I don't know if the band knew at the time it was going to be their last record, but billing them as Peter Noone* & Herman's Hermits, says that someone at the record company knew that this was the end and labelling it as such would be a great way to transition into the lead singer's solo career. Which incidentally went nowhere fast, apart from an unlikely hit version of Bowie's Oh!You Pretty Things.
Lady Barbara** is an odd song (especially for a band winding down their career) - it doesn't really have echoes of the poppy sensibilities, or indeed their more vaudevillian excesses. That's not to say that it's not catchy (one of the writers was Errol Brown - soon to be making an impact upon the charts with the smooth pop stylings of Hot Chocolate). The song is a bit all over the place starting slowly with a slightly folksy feel with a tremulous backing of what could be lutes, mandolins or balalaikas, which then sudden steps up a (slight) gear when a full string backing pops up with the main melody. The acoustic nature of the piece gives it a bucolic ambience, but this is not your rural rustic idyll, but instead the song breaks down briefly into something that wouldn't sound out of place to one of those formal balls that crop up in adaptations of Jane Austen novels, it then turns into a bit of a slow sing-a-long, before returning to the more up-tempo melody, and then back to the Gavotte again and so on. A strange record, but not unlikeable for all that.
Flipping the disc over we find something more traditional in the shape of Don't Just Stand There. There the expected guitars, bass and drum sound of the beat era - but this isn't fast paced belter. Once again we're going for the slower ballad, and this one has an added melancholy curtesy of an honky-tonk piano there's some country guitar sounds in the background, and you think were headed out west with a a sad country song. Then it starts building up speed, and sticks a jazz organ in the instrumentation for the chorus, and even starts to sound a bit jolly in places, and suddenly we've got an up-beat country pop fusion that swings and sways quite pleasantly lead.
And so Herman's Hermits*** end their career not with bang, but not with a whimper either, instead with an enjoyable curiosity. This may not be an essential record, but it's an engaging detour
Next time some irresistible porcine funkiness...
* Honestly 7 years later he could have just added a hyphen and become Peter No-One, and fitted nicely into the Punk/New Wave nihilistic aesthetic.
**For ages I thought this was a song about someone from the Salvation Army until I realised that I was conflating it with the film Major Barbara
***A band who got their name because a pub landlord thought that Peter Noone looked like the character Sherman from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons.
