From his home in California, Harvey Lisberg, one of the greatest figures in Greater Manchester's pop years, looks back on an extraordinary career. The M.E.N's Neal Keeling reports.
It was at the Hartford Community Centre in Davyhulme in July 1963 that Harvey Lisberg realised he was into something good. He and a friend, Charlie Silverman, had been writing "pretty rubbish" pop songs that no one wanted to record.
He was about to set up a talent contest through the Manchester Evening News to find a local unknown band who would record them when a friend of a friend mentioned a local group he should check out. As Harvey now recalls: "That night in July 1963 changed my life."
At the time he was working for Binder Hamlyn, one of the biggest accountancy firms in Manchester for a "pittance" of £10 a week compared to the £70 a week he had been making grafting 80 hours a week at the Wall's sausage factory as a summer holiday job - the equivalent of £1,450 a week today.
But the band he went to see - Herman and His Hermits - as they were called then, would be his route to a fortune. For the Jewish lad from Salford with a BA in Commerce from Manchester University, his ambition of being a stockbroker would soon being extinquished for rock n roll excess and all the financial clout it can bring.
During three tumultuous decades he would also be manager to two snooker bad boys, and one of Manchester's finest bands of the 70s - 10cc.
That night in Davyhulme the group did covers and a bit of music hall. Harvey thought they were okay, but the 15-year-old singer, who had played Len Fairclough's son, Stanley, from the age of 12 in Coronation Street caught his eye.
It was Peter Noone. Speaking to the Manchester Evening News from his second home in Palm Springs, California, Harvey, who has published a funny, self-deprecating, book of his life as a band manager, this week said: "We got there and it was absolutely heaving. Which was weird. What did I like about Peter?
"He was cheeky, he was young, good-looking, loads of personality. He was a character, he was messing around with the audience. It wasn't a great singing performance, and they were doing things like 'I Saw Her Standing There' by The Beatles, 'Bye Bye Love' by the Everleys, a bit of Chuck Berry.
"The crowd went berserk. That's the other reason I liked Peter. He was mobbed, it was ridiculous. I found out afterwards that the band had actually set some of these girls up to charge the stage and everything. They knew a possible manager was coming down to see them. They had probably set up their brothers and sisters too to get everyone there. I was watching a Beatles-like performance."
In November that year Harvey signed a three-year contract to be their manager, his dream of becoming 'a fat Brian Epstein' with his own band had come true.
With his nous he got them a gig at Liverpool's Cavern Club, and on TV. Then EMI producer Mickie Most travelled from London to see them perform at the Beachcomber in Bolton.
He offered to record them on condition they sacked the drummer and the bass player. In September 1964 the group's first single, the Goffin and King penned 'I'm Into Something Good' went to Number One in the UK. By December it was Number 13 on the American Billboard Hot 100.
Harvey said: "To be honest, I don't think I couldn't possibly have participated the success we were going to have. I had had load of rejections by everybody and insults - you know what Manchester people are like, they don't mince words. - 'what a load of s...what are you messing with that lot for'.
"This went on for a year, so getting a record deal was heaven. Peter to me was like a Tommy Steele, he had the image of the boy next door. He would always have been a star I think. "
As Herman's Hermits were rising up the charts in America, Harvey was still working for Binder and Hamlyn and taking the finals of his accountancy exam in a town in the Welsh hills.
Armed with a fist-full of coins he would call from a phone box there to check the sales figures for the band in the US. He failed the exam "dismally".
He told his parents he wanted to go full time as a band manager. His dad, Judah, was skeptical, but one thing persuaded him Harvey could be making a smart move. Harvey and Charlie had written a B-side for the Hermits first hit, called 'Your Hand in Mine'.
The royalties for a B-side are the same as the A-side. In his book Harvey writes: "Before the year was out I received a cheque for £6,000 (£105,000 today). I was able to buy my parents a beautiful house in a nice road. But actually my father was right; my songs were crap."
In America the follow up to the band's first single was 'Show Me Girl', a tale about a motorcycle crash which could not compete with the Shangri-Las 'Leader of the Pack' and bombed. It was followed by 'Can't You Hear My Hearbeat', number 3 in the US, then 'Silhouettes', 5 in the US, and 3 in the UK.
But the thirst for the band was so insatiable in the US these were quickly followed by 'Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter', written by actor, Trevor Peacock, who found fame as Jim Trott in the BBC sitcom, The Vicar of Dibley. 'Mrs Brown' was never released in the UK as a single, but it sold three million worldwide and was Number One in the US.
By now Harvey believed his group could be as big as The Beatles. "I was an incorrigible optimist." Explaining the Hermits' success in the US, he said: "It was just after John F Kennedy, the US President had been killed. Peter looked like a young JFK - Catholic, and blue-eyed, very good looking, clean, not Rolling Stones. He was neat, well dressed, every mother liked him, every mother would be happy with a daughter going with him, they would not have been happy with Mick Jagger. And of course, the accent. If you had an English accent you would have a job getting out of a room."
Harvey joined forces with Danny Betesh who was running Kennedy Street Enterprises from 'a pokey little place' above a Chinese restaurant - buying out four other partners so he and Danny became joint owners. Not long after, on a grey and wet Manchester day, he arrived at the office to find two strangers waiting for him on the pavement. One was Sam Katzman, a film producer from MGM offering £45,000 (£750,000) for the band to do two days work in the US to make a film. MGM music division got in touch with a £1m (£16.7m) recording contract.
The US mania for the Hermits continued. In June 1965 their single 'I'm Henry VIII I Am' knocked 'Satisfaction' by the Rolling Stones off the top spot, and had the ultimate gig on the Ed Sullivan Show. Peter Noone, reveals Harvey, while touring the US was in demand.
"Everybody fancied him - and not just girls either," Harvey writes.
For one US tour Herman's Hermits were supported by The Who, which led to a spot of bother in Montgomery, Alabama. "Peter and the other guys in the band were playing cards in the hotel room when I get a phone call. 'Is Mr Lisberg there? Are you the manger of Herman's Hermits? We have a problem'. He then said 'There's a toilet missing in Mr Moon's room. Put is this way, it's not attached to the wall anymore.'
"Keith Moon had dropped cherry bombs (an explosive) down the toilet and the whole thing had blown up. I think we may have got banned from Holiday Inns for a while after that."
Noone was still just 17 at the time, and Harvey was only 25. Yet in 1965 the band went to the Philippines to be greeted by a crowd of over 100,000. Harvey was getting through mountains of cash and is brutally honest about his own lavish tastes.
"I was living like a king." He had chauffeur-driven cars, a flat in Park Lane, London, next to the Dorchester Hotel and a suite at the Waldorf whenever in New York.
"It was pure self-indulgence, but the money was just pouring in and my attitude to it was, if you've got it spend it. I had no respect for money and never considered putting a bit aside for a rainy day."
Hermans Hermits' American phenomenon would eventually fade but as it did their popularity in the UK picked up, with further hits like 'Something Is Happening' and one, 'No Milk Today', written by a young Salford musician and songwriter who Harvey had been nurturing and who, he says, 'was to become the single most significant artist of my career.'
That young man was Graham Gouldman, who lived in Kingston Close, Broughton Park, off Bury New Road. Harvey put him on a retainer of £10 a week (£165) to write songs. Aged 19, Graham wrote 'For Your Love' which Harvey tried to get to The Beatles - but it became a massive hit for The Yardbirds. He then delivered the follow up 'Heart Full of Soul'. For Manchester band The Hollies he wrote 'Look Through Any Window' and, in the summer of 1966, they had worldwide hit with another of his compositions - Bus Stop.
Graham's literary gifted father, Hymie, wrote the opening lines: "Bus stop, wet day, she's there, I say 'Please share my umbrella'" and Graham wrote the rest of the song. It's perfect creation of a drizzly Mancunian day was to catch the attention of the mafia.
Harvey was asked to attend a meeting while in New York with a music mogul named Morris Levy, the head of Roulette Records. Years earlier a hitman had been hired to murder him, but accidentally shot his brother, whom Levy had sent in his place to a meeting. Harvey writes: "He also had some happy little aphorisms, like 'The pen or your brains will be on the table' - in other words, either you sign with me or I'll have you shot."
"While I'm there he says 'you've got this track called Bus Stop, well we'd like to publish that.' I said I'm sorry we've already done a deal with EMI. He then pushed a briefcase across table and said open it. Inside there was $30.000. It's like Breaking Bad at that moment. He said 'that's yours if we can publish it'. I pushed it back, I knew that's all we would see, and I wasn't going to work with the mafia either."
Harvey was then invited to lunch by Levy, who revealed the true reason for meeting him - he wanted Herman's Hermits to perform at the famous Apollo venue in Harlem - normally a cradle for the greatest soul singers, like Sam Cooke, James Brown, and Marvin Gaye.
Harvey agreed, to the fury of US agent who was organising the band's tours. In the end they never appeared at the Apollo as it closed for refurbishment. In 1988 Levy was jailed for ten years for extortion.
"Gangsters used to go 'round to radio stations in the US with guns - 'here's the new record - play it'. The other trick they had was the payola, where they would play cards with the DJs, and always lose - a very subtle way of getting what they wanted."
After the demise of Herman's Hermits in 1971, Graham Gouldman would become a member of Harvey's "next big thing". 10cc began as session musicians at Eric Stewart's Strawberry Studios in Waterloo Road, Stockport. In 1973 they were the artists performing on a comeback album recorded there by Neil Sedaka. It proved to be the genesis of a band that would grace the British and US charts.
"In the 60s groups did other people's material. The beauty for me of 10cc was I didn't have to go looking for material. We had a Manchester studio, whereas with Herman's Hermits we had to go to London all the time.
"I had managed Kevin Godley, Lol Creme, and Graham Gouldman from the sixties before they happened. Graham was ina band called The Whirlwinds and I paid them all a weekly retainer. We were in the right place at the right time eventually and the whole world was candy.
"I wouldn't demean the Herman's Hermits thing in America, because they were so big. They had five records in the top 30 at one stage. When I went to Manchester United's ground about five years ago, I took my grandson, Eddie, on the opening day of the season and the whole crowd started singing "I'm Into Something Good". I said to my grandson, 'you know, I was partly responsible for that'. That was a special moment."
Does he have any regrets? Just a few. He kept two other young songwriters on a retainer for several years, but then had to let them go as the hits just didn't come. They were Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
"I do regret not publishing Joseph's Technicoloured Dreamcoat. Everyone was against that, but I wasn't - I wanted to get into theatre. I saw Joseph as a slam dunk, but it never happened for 28 years."
He describes as "a nonsense" a decision by the band, Queen, not to employ him and Peter Grant, at the time the manager of the biggest band in the world, Led Zeppelin, as their joint managers.
Harvey also manged Tony Christie, Julie Driscoll, Oldham's prog-rockers, Barclay James Harvest, Manchester City footballer Gary Owen and cult Middleton band The Chameleons. He also dipped his toes into the world of snooker in the 1980s. For three chaotic months he was manager of Alex Hurricane Higgins, during which time he got him into a Rochdale care home to dry out. He also signed up Jimmy White for a much longer duration, also punctuated by scandals and scrapes, as he made him a superstar.
Harvey, who now also has a home in Altrincham, previously lived for several years in Singleton Road, Broughton. Laughing at himself he said: "I once had a palatial house in Bowdon with a swimming pool - the whole Jewish capitalist thing - a load of b....cks."
And what about the sex drugs and rock n roll while on tour with his bands? "Sex, there was over abundance; drugs not for me, but for everyone around me; the music, it was only rock n roll but I like it."
In order to get a Green Card to live part of his time in the US Harvey needed references. He got one from that other Mancunian music impresario, Tony Wilson, who wrote: "He virtually invented modern management. In terms of the UK's music history, there really is no one like Harvey."
"I'm Into Something Good. My Life managing 10cc Herman's Hermits and many more" is published by Omnibus Press.
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