Fact #124026
When:
Short story:
Herman's Hermits enter the Billboard Top 40 Singles Chart in the USA with Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter, which will peak at No1. The song had been recorded as a last-minute addition to their first album. The same song is also the highest new entry in Cash Box magazine chart of the 100 best-selling singles in the USA, entering at No31.
Full article:
Peter Noone (Herman) : At ten to ten we had one more track to do, and we only knew eleven songs. We had to have twelve songs – we hadn't told our producer that we only knew eleven. So the twelfth track became Mrs. Brown because it was the easiest and quickest one to record. One take, two microphones, ten minutes. Millions of records.
Our only motivation was to have hit records. We had massive competition, you know. The Beatles were our competition. The Stones were our competition. The Dave Clark Five... So all you did, really, was make the best records to sell the most records at the time. And I think we did pretty well - we sold more records than The Beatles worldwide in 1965. We actually beat them at their own game one year.
We always knew who we were, and we were just ourselves. We didn't have to pretend to be cool or different - we were just Herman's Hermits, and we chose that. When we started, there was already a Beatles. We lived in the neighborhood, we watched them, we played dates with them. So we knew we weren't going to be able to write songs like that. And we'd seen the Stones and the Ravens and The Kinks and all those other bands. And the best blues band was the Manfred Mann Band, and we knew we weren't going that way. So we chose to be specifically like this sort of romantic, comedic kind of band, really. There's an element of tongue-in-cheek in every one of our songs. Walking off into the sunset, holding hands, and being married forever was not exactly a brand new idea. Our songs were like "I'm Into Something Good" and "Wonderful world" and "There's a kind of hush all over the world, people are fallin' in love every minute." But that's who we were. If we were to do a Beware of the Brown Acid song, that would have been the joke record of the lot, y'know what I mean?
Barry Whitwam (drummer, Herman's Hermits) : On both Mrs Brown and I'm Henry VIII I Am, our producer, Mickie Most, told MGM Records, 'Let's wait for advance sales of a million before we put the single out.' When the record came out it went straight to No1. Both records were originally just album tracks that got played on radio.
Mickie Most (producer) : Of all their records, the one that will always be best-remembered is Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter, which is probably the worst record ever made … or at least the worst I've been associated with.
(Source : interview with John Tobler, 1988)
Joe Brown (UK pop idol) : I've turned down some things that became huge hits for other people. Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter was written for me by Trevor Peacock when my wife Vicky had our daughter Sam. I listened to it but I thought it was a load of shit. And of course Herman's Hermits picked it up and had a gigantic hit with it in America, where he also had a hit with Henry The VIII, which he also picked up from me.
He went to America with half my act. I didn't meet him til years later when I saw him at a function and I said hello to him but he blanked me. Then I saw him again years later when Sam was doing a gig at Ronnie Scott's in Birmingham, and he came in. That time he came up to me, I was surprised at how tall he was, and he apologized to me about Mrs Brown and Henry The VIII, but I said, 'That's all right mate. I was finished with them.' It doesn't bother me that sort of thing.
I do remember though, that one time I was in Nashville and I was invited to do a set at the Bluebird Café, so I got a little band together and we went up and I did Henry The VIII and they went mad for it, because they realized I was the bloke who'd done it in the first place.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black)
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Our only motivation was to have hit records. We had massive competition, you know. The Beatles were our competition. The Stones were our competition. The Dave Clark Five... So all you did, really, was make the best records to sell the most records at the time. And I think we did pretty well - we sold more records than The Beatles worldwide in 1965. We actually beat them at their own game one year.
We always knew who we were, and we were just ourselves. We didn't have to pretend to be cool or different - we were just Herman's Hermits, and we chose that. When we started, there was already a Beatles. We lived in the neighborhood, we watched them, we played dates with them. So we knew we weren't going to be able to write songs like that. And we'd seen the Stones and the Ravens and The Kinks and all those other bands. And the best blues band was the Manfred Mann Band, and we knew we weren't going that way. So we chose to be specifically like this sort of romantic, comedic kind of band, really. There's an element of tongue-in-cheek in every one of our songs. Walking off into the sunset, holding hands, and being married forever was not exactly a brand new idea. Our songs were like "I'm Into Something Good" and "Wonderful world" and "There's a kind of hush all over the world, people are fallin' in love every minute." But that's who we were. If we were to do a Beware of the Brown Acid song, that would have been the joke record of the lot, y'know what I mean?
Barry Whitwam (drummer, Herman's Hermits) : On both Mrs Brown and I'm Henry VIII I Am, our producer, Mickie Most, told MGM Records, 'Let's wait for advance sales of a million before we put the single out.' When the record came out it went straight to No1. Both records were originally just album tracks that got played on radio.
Mickie Most (producer) : Of all their records, the one that will always be best-remembered is Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter, which is probably the worst record ever made … or at least the worst I've been associated with.
(Source : interview with John Tobler, 1988)
Joe Brown (UK pop idol) : I've turned down some things that became huge hits for other people. Mrs Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter was written for me by Trevor Peacock when my wife Vicky had our daughter Sam. I listened to it but I thought it was a load of shit. And of course Herman's Hermits picked it up and had a gigantic hit with it in America, where he also had a hit with Henry The VIII, which he also picked up from me.
He went to America with half my act. I didn't meet him til years later when I saw him at a function and I said hello to him but he blanked me. Then I saw him again years later when Sam was doing a gig at Ronnie Scott's in Birmingham, and he came in. That time he came up to me, I was surprised at how tall he was, and he apologized to me about Mrs Brown and Henry The VIII, but I said, 'That's all right mate. I was finished with them.' It doesn't bother me that sort of thing.
I do remember though, that one time I was in Nashville and I was invited to do a set at the Bluebird Café, so I got a little band together and we went up and I did Henry The VIII and they went mad for it, because they realized I was the bloke who'd done it in the first place.
(Source : interview with Johnny Black)