Margo Bernard Singer Songwriter from Australia

Let me introduce you to a lovely lady  Margo Bernard, who is a singer / Songwriter , She also tributes other well known artists in her determination to look after animals by paying for them from her Musical talent, Not only is she a Singer, She is also a poet and she has her own website on the matter ! Please  read about her bellow .....

Margo was copying famous female singers of the day when she was only 3 years old.
This talent was put on hold all her life.. while she devoted 35 years to saving animals..
Now Margo breathes her way through Marilyn Monroe's top songs,
stomps her  way through raunchy redneck country songs, puts the "rock" back into "rock songs".
Margo takes you on a journey down memory lane, as she sings her way  through the decades a singer of songs for absolutely everyone!
https://www.facebook.com/MargoSingerSongwriter?ref=hl
Meet MARGO
Singing in the Voices of the Living Legends
Shirley Bassey "Hey Big Spender"
Patsy Cline "Crazy"
Tina Turner "Simply the Best"
Steppenwolf "Born to Be Wild"
Marilyn Monroe "Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend"
Gretchen Wilson "Redneck Woman"
Jeannie C Riley "Harper Valley PTA"
AC/DC "Long Way to the Top if you Wanna Rock'n'Roll"
Dusty Springfield "Son of a Preacher man"
Janis Joplin "Mercedes Benz"
Patsy Cline "Cheating Heart"
Shirley Temple (4 year old voice) "On the Good Ship Lollipop"

I must say that after listening to her demo of facebook, I am impressed with the voice of this lady, She has a smooth and sometimes sexy voice that you just have to listen to once you have heard her sing !  Good luck with your venture Margo and keep up the good work ! 

Please support this lady as all money collected from her music and poems goes to provide for animals that may need great help to survive.

Above  is a video of Margo's animal sanctuary with various music clips of her to let you see her wonderful work with animals and also how talented she is with her voice ! I Know that I have said this before, But, Thank you Margo and keep up the good work x .

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This is Margo's Work with animals .

Lady GAGA on the X Factor

Wow ! Did you see Lady GAGA on the X Factor, She really showed them how to perform with her electric gyrating dancing and singing LIVE , She was absolutely fabulous as she always is ! Now Gary Try to find fault in her ! ( not ) , Lady GAGA Always has me on the edge of my seat as her performances are second to none !

Lady GaGA has always been my favourite female singer ever since I first saw her Let's Dance Video, Fabulous Singer !



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1960s Singer Cathy Kirby

Is,nt it funny how sometimes you are listening to the radio when an artist comes on that you have not heard for a long time, Suddenly makes you realise that how great they were, Well , While driving back from dropping off my daughter & Grandson home, I Turned on my car  radio to hear Paul O'Grady introducing Cathy Kirby singing Secret Love ! So let me introduce to you the late great  Cathy Kirby...

 

..Kathy Kirby (born Kathleen O'Rourke; 20 October 1938 – 19 May 2011 was an English singer, reportedly the highest-paid female singer of her generation. She is best known for her cover version of Doris Day's "Secret Love" and for representing the United Kingdom in the 1965 Eurovision Song Contest, finishing in second place. Her physical appearance often drew comparisons with Marilyn Monroe. She peaked in popularity in the 1960s.



Kirby was born in Ilford, Essex. She was the eldest of three children of Irish parents. Her mother Eileen brought them up alone after their father left early in their childhood. Kirby grew up in Tomswood Hill, Barkingside, near Ilford and attended the Ursuline Convent School in Ilford, where she sang in the choir.


Kirby's vocal talent became apparent early in life, and she took singing lessons with a view to becoming an opera singer. She became a professional singer after meeting bandleader Bert Ambrose at the Ilford Palais in 1956. She remained with Ambrose's band for three years and he remained her manager, mentor and lover until his death on stage in Leeds in 1971.
She adopted the look of a "blond bombshell", and was compared to Marilyn Monroe. Kathy had a hit called "(He's a) Big Man" in Vancouver's CFUN in January, 1963. She had five Top 40 hits between 1963 and 1965, the best known of which is her cover version of "Secret Love". In Australia she reached number one with her version of Dance On!. In 1963 she won Top British Female Singer in the New Musical Express poll.
Kirby became one of the biggest stars of the early to mid-1960s, appearing in the Royal Command Variety Performance and three television series for BBC TV. She represented the United Kingdom in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965, and came second with the song "I Belong". Author and historian John Kennedy O'Connor describes Kirby's "I Belong" as being far more representative of current musical tastes than other songs from the contest, but she was beaten by France Gall from Luxembourg, singing an even more contemporary song written by Serge Gainsbourg. She also sang the theme tune of the BBC television series Adam Adamant Lives!.
In September of 1965 her single "Way Of Love" charted at 88 on the US Billboard Top 100. The song also charted in some of the regional charts, such as 25 in New York, 16 in Philadelphia, 39 in Detroit, 39 in Washington, and 38 in Los Angeles.
After the chart success of "I Belong", Kirby recorded more than a dozen singles between 1965 and 1967, but they all failed to chart. She continued to make television appearances, and her 1974 appearance on The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club TV variety show is available to watch on YouTube.
During the 1970s Kirby's singing career was eclipsed by a turbulent personal life, but she made occasional television appearances and performed a few live concerts on the "nostalgia circuit". On 31 December 1976, she performed her hit song "Secret Love" on BBC1's A Jubilee Of Music, celebrating British pop music for Queen Elizabeth II's impending Silver Jubilee.
In December 1983 she gave one last concert in Blackpool, then retired from show business altogether.


She did not perform in public after her retirement, but an amateur recording of Kirby singing the song "He", made in about 2005, is available online.
Interest in Kirby and her work continued long after she stopped performing, particularly among gay men, for whom she was something of an icon. In her last decade, she recorded short greetings for her official website. A biography was published in 2005, and there was a 2008 stage show about her life, written and produced by Graham Smith, called Secret Love. Smith re-wrote the show for the 2012 Haworth Festival, entitling it: Dance On: The Kathy Kirby Story.
The Daily Express reported in 2008 that plans for a new filmed interview had been abandoned, but later reports confirmed that the interview had been filmed, and it was subsequently included on a DVD compilation released the following year. She also gave an interview to the Express in 2009, which included recent photographs and was billed as her first in 26 years.
Following the 2009 interview, the Sunday Express reported that some previously unreleased recordings would be made available on CD in 2010, and that Kirby had been approached to appear on Desert Island Discs, although neither the programme nor the CD has been released.

Her Personal life.....

Kirby met Ambrose in her teens and, despite the 42-year age gap and his having an estranged wife at the time, began a relationship with him that lasted until his death in 1971. In the 2009 interview, she said she had had an affair with Bruce Forsyth during this time.
Kirby was married briefly to writer and former London policeman Frederick Pye in the 1970s. Following her bankruptcy in 1975, and a court case following an arrest over an unpaid hotel bill, she was referred to St Luke's psychiatric hospital in London in 1979. Following her discharge, she had a live-in lesbian relationship with a fan, Laraine McKay, and said that they intended to marry. McKay was imprisoned for fraud and forgery. In the early 1980s, Kirby had relationships with musician David Cross and lawyer Alan Porter.
Kirby was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was in poor physical and mental health for much of her life. Following her retirement, she lived in a series of apartments and hotels in West London, settling in an apartment in Emperor's Gate, South Kensington, surviving on state benefits and some royalties, and maintaining what has been called a "Garbo-esque" seclusion. Very shortly before her death, Kirby moved to Brinsworth House in Twickenham at the insistence of her niece, Sarah, Lady Thatcher, wife of Mark Thatcher. Another niece, Claudia, became Lady Rothermere after marrying Viscount Rothermere.
Kirby died on 19 May 2011, a few days after moving to Brinsworth House. According to a message posted by a relative on a fan website, Kirby suffered a heart attack. She was survived by her sister Pat, and her brother Douglas.



 Her UK Singles Chart
1963 "Dance On!" 11
"Secret Love" 3
1964 "Let Me Go, Lover!" 10
"You're The One" 17
1965 "I Belong" 36

Cathy Kirby had one charted single on the US Billboard Hot 100. "The Way Of Love" peaked at 88 in 1965; 



The headlines were, Sixties star Kathy Kirby dies, The Daily Mirror, 20 May 2011.                     


 Such a shame to see her go, A great loss to the music industry Cathy Kirby will be sadly missed !



You can read about more great Singers / Musicians / Songwriters / Music etc on this blog 
or go to Paul Burns Music www.friendburst.com/Rockhousemusicproject 
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Bring Back Real Musicians

Hi I am gonna' have a bit of a moan again 
about the music that is in the charts and on our TVs , You see Most of the so called bands Look and sound like One Direction, Now I have nothing against One Direction, It is just that every time I hear the words Boy Band, I realise that they will have 4 or 5 members and always one that looks like Harry Styles, Not that it is a bad thing to look like him, But why do they always look and sound almost the same ? Of course I blame programs like the X Factor & Britains got Talent etc for manufacturing these bands who do not play their own instruments hence they have to rely on Backing tacks to perform and a lot of them mime anyway ! The trouble is that young girls will buy their music because they are pretty boys even if they can't sing that good! What ever happened to the real bands ? Why are there no real new bands on the British music scene anymore ?. We need to bring our music back

 to a real perspective by stopping the saturation of boy bands and bringing in some female bands that play their own instruments , Perhaps that might even it up a bit!  I Have been a musician a long time now and I think it is unfair on the musicians with talent that are being replaced by these so called boy bands that all sound and look the same, Perhaps I am getting old, But I know what I like and it is real music !

 

Sorry for moaning , But I think it is time to bring back our real music !

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Sophie Ellis Bextor Singer / Entertainer

Hi people it's me blogin' again, This time I am featuring sexy pop singer SOPHIE ELLIS BEXTOR who made a big splash in the music industry in  early 2000 with a song called Take me home, It was a big hit and shot her to fame as a chart artist, Please read about her bellow !

Throughout the '90s, the U.K. music scene was filled to the brim with nerdy cockney types sporting messy threads and even messier hair. Fresh-faced Sophie Ellis-Bextor was among the first Brit-pop stars to break with this trend. She made it onto the stage in 1997 as the teenage vocalist behind new wave outfit Theaudience. Smartly dressed (often in black) and boasting a sexy, posh voice, she caused quite a stir on London's alternative circuit. Theaudience became known the world over as a groundbreaking pop act and even enjoyed success on the crowded U.K. singles chart with such imaginatively titled numbers as "I've Got the Wherewithal." Due to internal conflicts, however, the group split up and Ellis-Bextor went searching for success on her own.

The solo thing wasn't really working out and it took her a while to re-emerge on the scene. But when she did, it was in late 2000 as a major star alongside Italian DJ/producer Spiller. The 6'9" Venetian had just put together a disco house number titled "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)," and was looking for a female vocalist to add spice to the work. Though very popular in the clubs as an instrumental, the track started selling like mad after Ellis-Bextor strutted her stuff over its deep grooves. It was a number one hit on singles charts around the world. Spiller and Ellis-Bextor both starred in the now famous film clip to the track, in which the Londoner's eye-popping set of cheekbones vied for supremacy with the Venetian's imposing stature.

A year on, Ellis-Bextor was again making waves with the pop single "Take Me Home." Thanks to that effort, she beat the likes of Five to the number one spot on the U.K. singles chart. In their ongoing search for controversy, the British press even touted her as the main competitor to enormously popular Victoria Beckham, previously known as Posh Spice. That same year, Ellis-Bextor served up another chart-topper in the ultra-cool disco tune "Murder on the Dancefloor," which was a smash throughout Europe.

Read My Lips These singles anchored Ellis-Bextor’s 2001 solo debut, Read My Lips, a significant hit in the U.K. and Europe. Two years later, she released Shoot from the Hip, a record that wasn’t quite as successful on the charts but had two Top Ten singles in “Mixed Up World” and “I Won’t Change You.” As the album was churning out singles, Ellis-Bextor announced she was pregnant, and she then took a hiatus to take care of her child. She returned in 2007 with Trip the Light Fantastic, a guest-heavy record preceded by the Top Ten hit “Catch You.” Although Trip the Light Fantastic went gold in the U.K., it spawned no further big hits -- “Me and My Imagination” peaked at 23 -- and the album receded from the spotlight. Ellis-Bextor then devoted herself to recording her fourth album, resulting in Make a Scene, which appeared in the summer of 2011. We wish her well with her new album and her return  to the music world, Good Luck Sophie x



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Eddie Cochran Icon & Idol 1950s Rock 'n' Roll musician

Here is the story of a young man who became very famous for singing and playing guitar, His Rock'n'Roll sound is still played today at party's , Disco's etc, His name is EDDIE COCHRAN the man who inspired many singer / Songwriters of music today , Please read his story bellow !                                                  
Eddie Cochran


Birth name Edward Raymond Cochran

Born October 3, 1938
Albert Lea, Minnesota, United States
Died April 17, 1960 (aged 21)
Bath, Somerset, England
Genres Rock and roll, rockabilly
Occupations Singer-songwriter, musician
Instruments Guitar, vocals
Years active 1953–1960
Labels Ekko, Crest, Liberty
Associated acts The Cochran Brothers
Notable instruments
Gretsch 6120
Edward Raymond 'Eddie' Cochran (October 3, 1938–April 17, 1960) was an American rock and roll pioneer who in his brief career had a lasting influence on rock music. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "C'mon Everybody", "Somethin' Else", and "Summertime Blues", captured teenage frustration and desire in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording and overdubbing even on his earliest singles, and was also able to play piano, bass and drums. His image as a sharply dressed, rugged but good-looking young man with a rebellious attitude epitomized the stance of the 50s rocker, and in death he achieved an iconic status.
Cochran was born in Minnesota and moved with his family to California in the early 1950s. He was involved with music from an early age, playing in the school band and teaching himself to play blues guitar. In 1955, he formed a duet with the guitarist Hank Cochran (no relation), and when they split the following year, Cochran began a song-writing career with Jerry Capehart. His first success came when he performed the song "Twenty Flight Rock" in the movie The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield. Soon afterwards, Liberty Records signed him to a recording contract.
Cochran died aged 21 after a road accident, whilst travelling in a taxi, in the town of Chippenham, Wiltshire during his British tour in April 1960 having just performed at Bristol's Hippodrome theatre. Though his best-known songs were released during his lifetime, more of his songs were released posthumously. In 1987 Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His songs have been much covered by bands such as The Who, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Dick Dale & his Del-Tones, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, Rush, Humble Pie, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Teenage Head, Tiger Army, UFO, The White Stripes, the Stray Cats, and the Sex Pistols.



Cochran was born in Albert Lea, Minnesota, as Edward Raymond Cochran. His parents were from Oklahoma and he always said in interviews that he was from Oklahoma. He took music lessons in school but quit the band to play drums. Also, rather than taking piano lessons, he began learning guitar, playing the country music he heard on the radio.
His Music career

Early career (1953-1956)
In 1953 Cochran's family moved to Bell Gardens, California. As his guitar playing improved he formed a band with two friends from his junior high school. He dropped out of Bell Gardens High School in his first year to become a professional musician. During a show featuring many performers at an American Legion hall, he met Hank Cochran (later a country music songwriter). Although they were not related, they recorded as The Cochran Brothers and began performing together. They recorded a few singles from Ekko which were not successful but helped to establish them as a performing act. Eddie Cochran also worked as a session musician and began writing songs, making a "demo" with Jerry Capehart, his future manager. In July 1956 Eddie Cochran's first solo single was released on the Crest label. It featured the rocking "Skinny Jim" which is now regarded as a rockabilly classic. In the Summer of 1956 Boris Petroff asked Cochran if he would appear in the musical comedy film The Girl Can't Help It. He agreed and sang a song called "Twenty Flight Rock" was featured in the movie.
Later career (1957–1960)

In 1957 Cochran starred in his second film, Untamed Youth, and also had his first hit, "Sittin' in the Balcony", one of the few songs he recorded that were written by other songwriters (in this case John D. Loudermilk). "Twenty Flight Rock" was written by AMI staff writer Ned Fairchild (a pen name, her real name is Nelda Fairchild). AMI granted Cochran a co-writer credit but no royalties, a common arrangement by which publishers move songs from demos to commercial recordings. This allowed Cochran to rewrite or add to the song to turn it into a rock and roll song. Fairchild, who was not a rock and roll performer, merely provided the initial form of the song, and the co-writing credit reflects Cochran's changes and contributions to the final product.
In November 1957 Liberty Records released Cochran's only album released during his lifetime, Singin' to My Baby. The album included Eddie's first hit "Sittin' in the Balcony". There were only a few rockers on this album and Liberty seemed to want to move Cochran more into the pop music direction. In 1958, however, Cochran seemed to find his stride in the famous teenage anthem "Summertime Blues" (co-written with Jerry Capehart). With this song Cochran was established as an important influence on music in the late 1950s, both lyrically and musically. The song, released on Liberty recording No. 55144, charted at No. 8 on August 25, 1958. Cochran's brief career included only a few more hits, such as "C'mon, Everybody", "Somethin' Else", "Teenage Heaven", and his posthumous UK number one hit "Three Steps to Heaven." Eddie Cochran remained popular in the UK throughout the 1960s and scored more posthumous hits such as "My Way", "Weekend" and "Nervous Breakdown".
The other fascinating aspect of Eddie's short but brilliant career is his work as backup musician and producer. He played guitar on tracks by Ray Stanley, Lee Denson, Baker Knight, Bob Denton, Galen Denny, Don Deal, Troyce Key, Mike Clifford, Paula Morgan, Jody Reynolds, Johnny Burnette, Wynn Stewart, Ernie Freeman, Elroy Peace, Derry Weaver, Eddie Daniels, Jewel Akens, John Ashley, Jack Lewis, Lynn Marshall, Jess Willard, The Holly Twins, Barry Martin and Al Casey. In 1959 he played lead for Skeets McDonald at Columbia's studios for "You Oughta See Grandma Rock" and "Heart Breaking Mama". In a session for Gene Vincent in March 1958 he contributed his trademark low bass voice as heard on Summertime Blues. The recordings were issued on the album A Gene Vincent Record Date.
In early 1959 two of Cochran's friends, Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, along with the Big Bopper, were killed in a plane crash while on tour. Eddie's friends and family later said that he was badly shaken by their deaths and he developed a morbid premonition that he would also die young. It was shortly after their deaths that he wrote, and recorded a tribute to them called "Three Stars". He was anxious to give up life on the road and spend his time in the studio making music, thereby reducing the chance of suffering a similar fatal accident while touring. However, financial responsibilities required that he continue to perform live, and that led to his acceptance of an offer to tour the United Kingdom in 1960.


His UK tour and death



Memorial plaque at Rowden Hill, Chippenham
On Saturday, April 16, 1960, at about 11.50 p.m., while on tour in the United Kingdom, 21-year-old Cochran died as a result of a traffic accident in a taxi (a Ford Consul, not, as widely reported, a London hackney carriage) traveling through Chippenham, Wiltshire, on the A4. The speeding taxi blew a tire, lost control, and crashed into a lamp post on Rowden Hill, where a plaque now marks the spot. No other car was involved. Cochran, who was seated in the centre of the back seat, threw himself over his fiancée Sharon Sheeley, to shield her, and was thrown out of the car when the door flew open. He was taken to St. Martin's Hospital, Bath, where he died at 4:10 p.m. the following day of severe head injuries. Cochran's body was flown home and his remains were buried on April 25, 1960, at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Cypress, California.
Songwriter Sharon Sheeley and singer Gene Vincent survived the crash, Vincent sustaining lasting injuries to an already permanently damaged leg that would shorten his career and affect him for the rest of his life. The taxi driver, George Martin, was convicted of dangerous driving, fined £50, disqualified from driving for 15 years, and sentenced to prison for six months (although by some accounts he served no prison sentence).His driving licence was reinstated in 1969. The car and other items from the crash were impounded at the local police station until a coroner's inquest could be held. David Harman, a police cadet at the station who would later become known as Dave Dee of the band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, taught himself to play guitar on Cochran's impounded Gretsch. Earlier in the tour, the same guitar had been carried to the car for Cochran by a young fan, Mark Feld, who would later be known as Marc Bolan of T. Rex and would also die in a car crash.
A memorial stone to commemorate Eddie Cochran can be found in the grounds of St Martin’s Hospital in Bath. The stone was restored in 2010 (on the 50th anniversary of his death) and can be found in the old chapel grounds at the Hospital. A memorial plaque can also be found next to the sundial at the back of the old chapel.





A posthumous album, My Way, was released in 1964.
Cochran was a prolific performer, and the British label Rockstar Records has released more of his music posthumously than had been released during his life. The company is still looking for unpublished songs.
One of his posthumous releases was "Three Stars," a tribute to J.P. Richardson, better known as The Big Bopper, and Eddie's friends Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens, who had all died together in a plane crash just one year earlier. Written just hours after the tragedy by disc jockey Tommy Dee, it was recorded by Cochran two days later (Dee recorded his own version several weeks later). His voice broke during the spoken lyrics about Valens and Holly.
In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His pioneering contribution to the genre of rockabilly has also been recognized by the Rockabilly Hall of Fame. Several of his songs have been rereleased since his death, such as "C'mon Everybody," which was a number 14 hit in 1988 in the UK. Rolling Stone ranked him number 84 on their 2003 list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time.
Cochran's life is chronicled in several publications, including Don’t Forget Me—The Eddie Cochran Story, written by Julie Mundy and Darrel Higham (ISBN 0-8230-7931-7), and Three Steps to Heaven, written by Bobby Cochran (ISBN 0-634-03252-6).
On June 2, 2008, The Very Best of Eddie Cochran was released by EMI Records.


One of the first rock and roll artists to write his own songs and overdub tracks, Cochran is credited also with being one of the first to use an unwound third string in order to "bend" notes up a whole tone—an innovation (imparted to UK guitarist Joe Brown, who secured much session work as a result) that has since become an essential part of the standard rock guitar vocabulary. Artists such as The Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Rod Stewart, Motörhead, Humble Pie, Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen, Lemmy Kilmister, The Head Cat, The Damned, UFO (band), T. Rex, Stray Cats, Brian Setzer, Cliff Richard, The Who, The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Blue Cheer, Led Zeppelin, The White Stripes, The Sex Pistols, Rush, Buck Owens, Tiger Army, Dion, Simple Minds, Guitar Wolf, Paul McCartney, Alan Jackson, Keith Richards & The X-Pensive Winos, and Jimi Hendrix have covered his songs.
It was because Paul McCartney knew the chords and words to "Twenty Flight Rock" that he became a member of The Beatles. John Lennon was so impressed that he invited Paul to play with his band The Quarrymen. Jimi Hendrix performed "Summertime Blues" early in his career, and Pete Townshend of The Who was heavily influenced by Cochran's guitar style ("Summertime Blues" was a Who live staple at one time and is featured on their Live at Leeds album). Glam rock artist Marc Bolan had his main Les Paul model refinished in a transparent orange to resemble the Gretsch 6120 guitar played by Cochran, who was his music hero. He was also a heavy influence on the nascent rockabilly guitar legend Brian Setzer from Stray Cats, who plays a 6120 almost like Cochran, whom he portrayed in the film La Bamba. Cochran is easily one of the first musicians, alongside Chuck Berry, whom the late Rory Gallagher was always quick to mention as a strong influence on his musical taste and performance.
In 1988 "C'mon Everybody" was used by Levi Strauss & Co. in an advertisement to promote its 501 Jeans catalogue and rereleased as a promotional single, hitting No. 14 in the UK charts. The advertisement told a story of how the narrator, Sharon Sheeley, attracted Cochran by wearing her 501s.
Wayne Smith's Jamaican riddim "Under Me Sleng Teng" was an attempt to recreate a riff from "Somethin' Else". It is widely considered to have sparked the digital reggae revolution.
Guitars

When playing with Hank Cochran, Eddie Cochran played a Gibson L-4C archtop acoustic guitar with a florentine cutaway and a DeArmond 'Rhythm Chief' pickup, which can be clearly seen in the Cochran Brothers publicity photograph.
Later, Cochran moved to a 1955 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins G-brand Western model, which Eddie had modified. He replaced the neck position De Armond Dynasonic pickup with a black covered Gibson P-90 pickup. He also used Martin acoustic guitars.


 His records ...

 Billboard Hot 100.
U.S. singles
"Two Blue Singin' Stars" b/w "Mr Fiddle" (June 1955) as The Cochran Brothers
"Your Tomorrows Never Come" b/w "Guilty Conscience" (July 1955) as The Cochran Brothers
"Walkin' Stick Boogie" b/w "Rollin'" (January 1956) as Jerry Capehart featuring Cochran Brothers
"Tired and Sleepy" b/w "Fool's Paradise" as Cochran Brothers
"Skinny Jim" b/w "Half Loved" (July 1956)
"Sittin' in the Balcony" b/w "Dark Lonely Street" (February 1957) Chart no. 18
"One Kiss" b/w "Mean When I'm Mad" (May 1957)
"Drive In Show" b/w "Am I Blue" Liberty F55087 (July 1957) Chart no. 82
"Twenty Flight Rock" b/w "Cradle baby" (November 1957)
"Jeannie Jeannie Jeannie" b/w "Pocketful of Hearts" (January 1958) Chart no. 94
"Teresa" b/w "Pretty Girl" (May 1958)
"Summertime Blues" b/w "Love Again" Liberty F55144 (July 1958) Chart no. 8
"C'mon Everybody" b/w "Don't Ever Let Me Go" Liberty F55166 (October 1958) Chart no. 35
"Teenage Heaven" b/w "I Remember" Liberty 55177 (February 1959) Chart no. 99
"Somethin' Else" b/w "Boll Weevil Song" Liberty 55203 (July 1959) Chart no. 58
"Hallelujah I Love Her So" b/w "Cradle Baby" (November 1959)
"Cut Across Shorty" b/w "Three Steps To Heaven" (March 1960)
"Lonely" b/w "Sweetie Pie" (August 1960)
"Lonely" b/w "Weekend" (December 1961)
U.S. albums
Singin' to My Baby Liberty LRP-3061 (November 1957)[19]
12 of His Biggest Hits Liberty LRP-3172 (April 1960) reissued as The Eddie Cochran Memorial Album (May 1960)
Never to Be Forgotten Liberty LRP-3220 (January 1962)[19]
Summertime Blues Sunset SUS-5123 (August 1966)
Legendary Masters Series United Artists UAS 9959 (January 1972)
The Very Best of Eddie Cochran (1975)
Great Hits (1983)
On The Air (1987)
The Best of Eddie Cochran (1987)
Greatest Hits Curb Records (1990)
Singin' to My Baby and Never to Be Forgotten EMI Records (1993)
His UK albums
Singin' To My Baby (July 1958)
The Eddie Cochran Memorial Album (September 1960)
Cherished Memories (December 1962)
My Way (September 1964)
The Legendary Eddie Cochran (June 1971)
The Many Sides of Eddie Cochran (1974)
20th Anniversary Album (March 1980)
The Best of Eddie Cohran Liberty-EMI U.K. (1985) (The mono 16 track LP/cassette is from the Rock 'N' Roll Masters series.)
The Very Best of Eddie Cochran (June 2008)
Eddie Cochran Story (6 July 2009)





You can read about more great singers / Musicians / Music etc on this blog
or go to Paul Burns Music at  www.friendburst.com/Rockhousemusicproject .
or go to The Rockhouse Music Project page on facebook ( Please like my page )
Thanks for your suppoert and for reading this blog.

Hermans Hermits 1964

Remembering a band from 1964  HERMAN'S HERMITS with their massive hit I'm into something good, A band that made a big splash on the music scene with PETER NOONE as the lead singer ! What a fab band , Although the band is still about today , The line up is different, Please read info bellow ...Herman's Hermits Biography

Herman's Hermits When the Beatles first soared to the top of the American music charts in early 1964 they opened the gates for dozens of British bands to follow. But missing from that first wave was a band that would rise to become one of the biggest-selling “British invasion” groups—Herman's Hermits—initially left behind because of lack of a recording contract.
Unlike the Beatles, who did their best to disguise their accents while singing, Herman's Hermits took delight in their decidedly working-class dialect that was evident in their first hit, “I'm Into Something Good,” a Gerry Goffin/Carole King song that had been a minor hit in the United States for Cookies' vocalist Earl-Jean McCrea. The Hermits'single was released August 7, 1964, and quickly reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom, and No. 13 in the United States.

American audiences couldn't get enough of this new sound from across the sea, and Hermans Hermits were enamored with American pop music. Capitalising on their British accents, Herman's Hermits travelled to America for the first time in December 1964. They had just released in the United Kingdom their first EP (extended play) 45 RPM disc, Hermania , which featured American hits “I Understand,” a song first made popular in 1954 by the Four Tunes and later by Freddie and The Dreamers; Frankie Ford's No. 14 hit in 1959, “Sea Cruise;” and Ernie K-Doe's 1961 No. 1 hit “Mother-In-Law.”

While in America, the group was invited to make a cameo appearance in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's (MGM) teen movie When The Boys Meet the Girls, starring Connie Francis and Harve Presnell. Hermits Peter Noone, Karl Green, Keith Hopwood, Derek “Lek” Leckenby and Barry “Bean” Whitwam joined the likes of Louis Armstrong, Liberace and Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs—who, like the Hermits, had recording contracts with MGM—and introduced their “Listen People,” which hit No. 3 on Billboard's Hot 100 singles chart in February of 1966.

With seven consecutive hits—“I'm Into Something Good; “Can't You Hear My Heartbeat?”; “Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter”; “Silhouettes”; “Wonderful World”; “I'm Henry the Eighth, I Am” (a 1911 music hall song); and “Just A Little Bit Better”—Herman's Hermits records sales in 1965 exceeded record sales by the Beatles' receiving Billboard magazine's award for most sales.

Peter Noone was fascinated by the giddy tune “Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter,” written by actor-playwright Trevor Peacock and first recorded and sung by British actor Tom Courtenay. The Hermits featured the song in their stage performances as a novelty number, recording it only reluctantly. Hermits' producer, Mickie Most, rejected the idea of releasing it as a single, but when advance orders approached 1 million, he relented.

Three days after an American DJ began playing “Mrs. Brown,” MGM received 70,000 requests for the single, which was released in early 1965. The song spent three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, topped Australian charts, and sold more than 14 million copies worldwide.

Fuelled by the success of “Mrs. Brown,” Herman's Hermits selected songs for United States release with a Vaudeville flavor, including “I'm Henry The Eighth (I Am),” distinguishing them from other British Invasion acts of the time.

Herman's Hermits began in Manchester, England, as an outgrowth of a group called the Heartbeats, which originally was named the Cyclones and consisted of guitarists Karl Green and Alan Chadwick, bassist Alan Wrigley, and drummer Steve Titterington. When the group's vocalist failed to show up for a gig, 15-year-old Peter Noone filled in and joined in 1963 using the name Peter Novak. The Heartbeats became Pete Novak and the Heartbeats until Peter changed his stage name to Herman after band members said he resembled Sherman in the “Mr. Peabody” segment of the TV cartoon The Bullwinkle Show . He misheard the name as Herman and adopted it.

But that version of the band they called Herman and His Hermits didn't last long. Karl Green recalls, “Al Chadwick left, because his girlfriend didn't like him being in a band, so Keith joined. Then we went for a couple of recording tests with different people, and everybody seemed to be saying, ‘The band's all right except for the bass player and drummer.' But we didn't have enough balls to say to them, ‘You're out of the band. We want someone else.' So the whole lot just split up.”

Harvey Lisberg, who had been manager of the dissolved Herman and His Hermits, decided to salvage the group by consolidating it with another band. He sought out a group called the Wailers, which included members Barry Whitwam, Derek Leckenby and a bass player who went by the name of Big Wal. “We said we didn't fancy it, really, because we'd seen the band once before, and we didn't really like them,” says Whitwam. “But then Harvey showed us their diary, their date sheet, and they were actually working seven nights a week. So we thought about this—‘well, it's not too bad after all.' So then we auditioned for Harvey Lisberg and his partner, Charlie Silverman, in the basement, and we played a few numbers there.”

One of the songs that impressed Lisberg was the Wailers' version of the Jewish celebratory song “Hava Nagilah.” “We did a great version of it, slowly started it, then we'd speed it up to a frenzy,” says Whitwam. “So we played this, and they were over the moon. So we got the job. Thank God for ‘Hava Nagilah'! But Big Wal's father wouldn't let him become a professional musician.”

The group re-formed in the spring of 1964 with Karl Green on bass, rhythm guitarist Keith Hopwood, lead guitarist Derek “Lek” Leckenby, drummer Barry “Bean” Whitwam and lead vocalist Peter Noone. Harvey Lisberg then booked some time for the reconstituted band in a recording studio. He sent a demo of the recording to Mickie Most, producer of hits for the Animals and the Nashville Teens. Most had previously auditioned the early version of the Hermits and was unimpressed, but he was interested in recording the new group. “Mickie liked the new sound,” said Whitwam. “It was a lot better musically.”

The band members decided they needed to separate themselves from the crowd. “Lek and I suggested we change the name from Herman and His Hermits to Herman's Hermits the day we joined, so the fans would know it was a different band with two new members in it,” said Whitwam. “Herman's Hermits was a more modern name, because there were a lot of bands at that particular time—Freddie and the Dreamers, Gerry and the Pacemakers, and so on. And that was the arrangement. I think it was the beginning of April 1964 when we changed the name.”

When Keith Hopwood first joined Herman and His Hermits, the group was working four or five gigs a week. He recalls, “Television producer Johnny Hamp of Granada TV in Manchester gave us a TV spot on a little local program. And we did that one, and then he sort of took a shine to us and gave us about four more TV slots. We hadn't had a record at this point. We were still a local band. And not only did he give us the TV slots, but he used to send in an outside broadcast unit to film us. We were playing at the Cavern in Liverpool, and he'd sent the crew down there to film us all day. So we built up a very big following with all this television exposure. The local shows were going fantastically well, although our name didn't mean anything once you got 50 miles from Manchester.”

Most, who managed to land a deal with EMI's Columbia label, thought Peter resembled the late President John F. Kennedy and wanted to make him the group's focal point. In July of 1964, Most brought the band into the studio to record “I'm Into Something Good.” In September the song spent two weeks at No. 1 on the British charts, and by October of '64, after its release in the States on MGM, “I'm Into Something Good” earned the No. 13 spot in America on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, which was already crowded with “British invasion” acts.

Herman's Hermits spent most of 1965 in the United States. Karl Green recalls the exhilaration he felt being a young pop star traveling to America for the first time. “The mayhem of arriving at Austin airport, or Ft. Worth, or Dallas, and having hundreds and hundreds of people invade the tarmac at the airport, and having to be taken from the airplane straight into cars and taken off to wherever we were going. It was just complete enough mayhem,” says Green. “And for a guy 17 to have all these gorgeous girls after him, it was an unbelievable ego boost!”

But all of the traveling and exposure had its price, according to Green. “During the '60s the bands would earn the least money because they were on the road doing all the work while the managers sat in their comfortable offices earning 25 percent with no expenses,” he explained. “I mean, when we were on tour, we were paying for all the airplanes that the managers and agents were traveling on, and paying for all the hotel rooms. They had no outlay. We were paying for everything.”

While other British groups were striving to sound like Buddy Holly, the Everly Brothers, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley and other American recording artists, for five years Herman's Hermits turned out hit after hit capitalizing on their heritage and cockney dialect.

“Herman's Hermits was different from all the other groups,” says Peter Noone. “If you want to know about Herman's Hermits, ask the Beatles, and they'll tell you that it was a great, fun idea that we did the opposite kind of songs of everybody else. Nobody was doing songs with English accents like ‘Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.' We went to a place where no one else wanted to go. So the perception might be that we were just one of those bands from the '60s. Well, we were, but the reason that we sold 50 million records is because we didn't attempt to compete with the Beatles, or the Stones, or anybody else. We made our own style.”

Herman's Hermits' first visit to the United States in the fall of 1964 coincided with the release of “I'm Into Something Good.” The group spent a week in New York visiting various radio shows, including an appearance on the influential Murray the K show on WINS. The following spring of 1965, Herman's Hermits joined the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, a touring ensemble of emerging pop stars on a grueling schedule of one-night appearances.

Keith Hopwood recalls, “It was a bus tour, but not what you'd call a tour bus nowadays. It was like the No. 33 school bus. It was structured so that every other night you got to sleep in a motel, and every other night you had to drive all the way through the night to the next gig. So it was pretty uncomfortable.”

Barry “Bean” Whitwam agreed. “If you pulled the short straw and had to sit next to Billy Stewart or Round Robin, there wasn't much room, based on the spillover from that seat to yours,” he laughed. “We were so thin in those days, we could actually sleep in the overhead compartments where you put the baggage. We squeezed up in there so we could lay out.”

Most Caravan of Stars performers had scored only one or two hits—sufficient to appear on a multi-star bill, but not to draw audiences of their own. But by the time the Caravan reached Philadelphia, Herman's Hermits had four top-five records on the chart—“I'm Into Something Good,” “Can't You Hear My Heartbeat,” “Silhouettes,” and “Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter.” The tour had been booked months prior when the group had only one hit record. Keith Hopwood recalls, “So this promoter, in his wisdom, had obviously booked the Dick Clark thing and then got cold feet about filling this theater. Unbeknownst to anybody, he booked the Rolling Stones as well. But he didn't tell anybody. So we all turned up, and it was quite an entertaining afternoon, because backstage and up the stairs you've got us camped out on one side, and on the other side you've got the Stones, and there was this huge argument about who was going to close the show.”

Accompanying Herman's Hermits on the bus tour were Freddie Cannon, Bobby Vee, Reparata and the Delrons, Billy Stewart, Round Robin, and Little Anthony and the Imperials. “The bus was quite full,” says Hopwood. “You've got Round Robin, who was 22 stone [equivalent to 308 lbs.]. And Billy Stewart, who was 22 stone. And Reparata's manager was 25 stone [350 lbs.]. But what prompted us to say that we're not going on the bus anymore was we came out one morning, and there had been a bit of an altercation in the motel and a gun appeared at the front of the bus.” So we said, ‘Excuse me. I think we're going to travel by car.”

Whitwam also recalls the incident. “About halfway through the tour, Billy Stewart and Round Robin had a disagreement over a woman, I believe, and pulled guns out at each other. Billy Stewart was at the front of the bus and Round Robin was at the back. It was like the wild West. They were pointing guns at each other, and we were in between this,” he said. “So we got off the bus and we rang Dick Clark and said, ‘We don't mind doing your tour, but we're not getting involved in gunfights.' So he provided us with a station wagon and a driver. It wasn't much better. There was the six of us and all the bags in a station wagon.”

While Whitwam enjoyed the excitement of being in a different city every night, at times he found the traveling to be a grind. During a two-week break in the Dick Clark tour, Herman's Hermits performed some shows of their own in Texas, “Just as we were doing those shows, ‘Mrs. Brown' went straight to number 1, and all a sudden we were playing to thousands and thousands of people, overnight,” said Whitwam. “We had to go back and finish the Dick Clark tour. And we still had the overnight traveling in the station wagon. The distances were quite far apart. So we finished that tour, and then we started doing tours of our own.”

The Hermits continued to churn out hits through 1966 and 1967. But along with music-hall flavored ditties such as “Leaning on the Lamppost” in the spring of 1966 and “Dandy” (written by Ray Davies of the Kinks), that fall they began recording more sophisticated material. They made memorable recordings of three ballads by British songwriter Graham Gouldman—“Listen People,” “East West,” and “No Milk Today,” as well as “This Door Swings Both Ways,” a mature portrait about contrasts in life—the jubilance and agony of life and the choices that must be made. But the band members were perhaps at their best in 1966, when they recorded the lovely Geoff Stephens-Les Reed ballad “There's a Kind of Hush All Over the World.” The song, which rose to No. 4 on the American pop charts, earned the Hermits their third and final gold single—a double-sided hit backed with “No Milk Today.”

Peter Noone has many fond memories of performing in the '60s. “The whole thing was actually quite a very good time. We were young guys, so everything was a new experience. We played in Hong Kong, Israel, America, the Philippines, France. Every day was a new experience,” he says. “We had some of the greatest experiences that any kid could possibly have. So whether we got paid or not, the experience is worth billions of dollars, and I'm grateful for it. If money is the item in the music business, then you'd never make it anyway. If it had been for money, we'd have never been in show business. We would have become doctors.”

Peter Noone left the group in late 1970 and starred in numerous stage, TV and film productions, during which time he had met David Bowie. Bowie had written Noone's first British solo hit “Oh You Pretty Thing,” and played piano on the recording. During the '80s, Noone fronted a new-wave band called the Tremblers, and released a solo album called One of the Glory Boys .

Following Peter's departure, Green, Leckenby, Hopwood and Whitwam carried on as Herman's Hermits. Says Green, “And then we were offered to get back with Peter for a tour in the states with Gerry and the Pacemakers and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas, the Searchers, and various other bands. And we said, ‘yeah.' And it was good fun at the time.”

But then things began to sour. Following the reunion tour, Noone decided to form another band and call it Herman's Hermits. Karl, Lek and Barry, who had been performing as Herman's Hermits throughout the 1970s, filed a lawsuit to gain legal ownership of the name. The initial judgment came on behalf of Green, Leckenby and Whitwam. Even though a legal settlement had been handed down, the disagreement at the root of the lawsuit continued to generate animosity among the Hermits and Peter.

After performing for three decades with the Hermits, Derek Leckenby died on June 4, 1994, of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer. He left his wife, Leonie, who was at his side when he died, and their two children.

Two version of the band: Whitwam's Hermits and Herman's Hermits with Peter Noone continue to perform concerts worldwide.

Herman's Hermits has sold more than 60 million records since 1964.

singles by HERMAN'S HERMITS

Debut Peak Title Label

10/64 13 I'm Into Something Good MGM

1/65 2 Can't You Hear My Heartbeat? MGM

4/65 5 Silhouettes MGM

4/65 1 Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter MGM 
(Certified Gold)

5/65 4 Wonderful World MGM

7/65 1 I'm Henry VIII, I Am (Certified Gold) MGM

9/65 7 Just A Little Bit Better MGM

12/65 8 A Must To Avoid MGM

2/66 3 Listen People MGM

4/66 9 Leaning On The Lamp Post MGM

7/66 12 This Door Swings Both Ways MGM

10/66 5 Dandy MGM

12/66 27 East West MGM

2/67 4 There's A Kind Of Hush (Certified Gold) MGM

2/67 35 No Milk Today MGM

6/67 18 Don't Go Out Into the Rain MGM

8/67 39 Museum MGM

1/68 22 I Can Take Or Leave Your Loving MGM

5/68 61 Sleepy Joe MGM

Epilogue: Barry Whitwam

Barry “Bean” Whitwam is proud to say that one of his finest achievements has been “staying power”—the ability to remain with one band through all of its trials and tribulations for well over three decades. And one of the bonuses he recognizes is the realization that audiences today are as excited about seeing Herman's Hermits as they were during the 1960s. With all those years of experience under his belt comes excellence in his craft. His precision drumming reflects the refinement of all those years of practice.

Barry picked up his nickname “Bean” in 1950. “I was always inventing and building silly things, so a close friend of my father's, Frank Evans, christened me Billy Bean after a cartoon called ‘Billy Bean and His Funny Machine.' A few years later, it was shortened to ‘Bean.'”

Barry recalls becoming interested in music at about the age of 10, after hearing Buddy Holly records. “A friend of mine had the records, and he played a guitar and he sang,” recalls Whitwam. “At about 12, I had the opportunity to join a group of local boys playing in a band. But they wanted a drummer with a drum kit, and I couldn't play the drums and they didn't have a drum kit. And so I persuaded my mother to buy me a secondhand drum kit, which came to about $60 in those days, which was quite expensive. And I joined the band, but I couldn't play the drums. Eventually after about six months I got some kind of rhythm together. After struggling for about two years I took some lessons for 18 months when I was about 14.”

Eager to learn popular music, Barry would listen to a record and copy the drumming in it the best he could. “It worked out pretty well in the end,” he says. “It's like riding a bike, really. Once you've got your balance and you can separate your feet from your hands, it becomes a lot easier. It's just getting over that first barrier, separating your limbs.”

His drum lessons proved to be a very valuable experience, especially in discipline. “Most of the time I played just on a rubber pad. I wasn't on the drum kit. I was studying the Buddy Rich snare drum rudiments. And that was very good, indeed. I still use that book. I've still got the original I had. It's real beat up, but I've still got it, and I go back to it every now and again, just for fun, because it is enjoyable playing these patterns on a rubber pad.”

Barry's first band was a five-member group called the Demons. “We first started playing instrumentals—songs by the Ventures and the Shadows and things like that, and old classical instrumentals revamped. Then we got a singer, and we were called Danny and the Demons, and we were doing copies of American singers—Elvis, Buddy Holly, and Dion.

Fifteen-year-old Whitwam was performing two to three days a week with the Demons for youth clubs and workingmen's clubs. “Nobody ever asked us how old we were,” he laughs. The band, which retained the same members, changed its name from the Demons to the Hellions, and then to the Wailers.

Born Jan Barry Whitwam on July 21, 1946, in Prestbury, Cheshire, Barry says, “Prestbury is in the country. It was sort of a place used in the war so no babies were born in Manchester in case they were bombed. It's a very nice house. It's still there.” He grew up in Didsbury, a suburb of Manchester, and graduated from Ladybarn Secondary Modern in Manchester. He then entered into a college for women's hairdressing in the center of town.

“I didn't want to go into a factory or be like everybody else. I wanted to try to get into a career where there was hardly any competition. My mother fancied me going into it as well because she could get free haircuts,” he laughed.

Barry took a six-month course in hair styling. The owner of the college, who had several shops in Manchester, thought having a male hair stylist would help to increase his business since there weren't many men in that profession at the time. “He took me aside, and I was supposed to be the whiz kid in the shops. So he gave me an extra three months' training at no cost.

But Whitwam's hair styling career proved to be short-lived. He worked as a stylist at a shop in Manchester for almost two years, before deciding it wasn't a career he wanted to continue. “It was hectic, really,” he says. “It's like cooking seven different meals at the same time—one woman's got the color on, another one's got the perming lotion on, another with bleach. If you get the timing wrong, you can lose somebody's hair.”

Whitwam decided he'd much rather pursue a career in music and asked his father if he could spend some time concentrating on becoming a professional drummer. “My father said he'd think about it, and I didn't know this 'til 20 years later, but he'd had a word with my boss. He asked him if I could take some time off to get this drumming out of my system. And if it didn't work, could I have the job back? So the two of them made an arrangement,” says Whitwam. “There was one condition: When my father went out to work at about 8 o'clock in the morning, I took practice for four hours, had a good lunch, and practiced for another four hours. So I wasn't just sitting at home. I was actually practicing the drums for eight hours a day. The next-door neighbor didn't like that, really.”

Barry's father George Vincent, who died in 1985, had made a living as a refrigeration engineer. His mother Elsie, who had worked as a seamstress, died in 1992. Both parents were very proud of Barry's musical success. His only brother, two years his senior, died of electrocution at the age of 14. He had been playing a record while taking a bath.

In coping with stardom, Barry recalls, “We were sort of brought down to earth very quickly with our second record. It only got to No. 20 in the charts in England, and the press really went to town on us. You know, ‘we're a flash in the pan,' ‘one-hit wonders,' ‘you will never see Herman's Hermits again.'”

But the band carried on, and it wasn't long after the negative publicity the Hermits returned to the studio and recorded “Silhouettes,” which quickly reached No. 2 in England and No. 5 in the United States. The next four years would be spent touring the world.

“Stardom really doesn't affect you individually;” says Whitwam. “It affects your friends more than anything. You go back into the local bar and have a drink and your friends all seem to be saying ‘you've changed' because you can afford to buy a drink and they expect you to buy them one. Your friends sort of disappeared slowly. And you really didn't make any, because you were always on the road. You'd make friends with other bands, then, who were in the same situation.”

Some of Barry's fondest memories of performing with Herman's Hermits during the 1960s include a Royal Command Performance show in London in front of the Queen Mother and Royal Family, and meeting and talking with Elvis Presley while in Hawaii. “We had just finished one of our U.S. tours in Hawaii, in 1966 or '67. Elvis was making a film, Paradise Hawaiian Style. We were due to fly out, and the night before Elvis' manager, Col. Tom Parker, phoned us and said Elvis was filming, did we want to meet him. And we said, ‘dead right, yeah!' But three of the boys went home, and just Peter and I stayed behind. And that was something the rest of the boys truly regretted,” he says. “We talked with Elvis about nostalgia music, the different way our hair was, and how we liked his songs and films. He was real cool. I have a picture of myself and Elvis on my wall of fame, as it were, at home.”

Today, Whitwam tours with his Herman's Hermits band for about 12 weeks a year in America and around the world, including Japan and the Middle East. The rest of their time is spent touring Europe and Scandinavia. Whitwam's Hermits include Gary Powell, Graham Lee, and Geoff Foot, who wrote the first single for the band after Peter Noone left in 1971.

“Geoff Foot joined the band in the '80s after the Hermits recorded one of his songs ‘She's a Lady.' Geoff toured with the Hermits in the U.S., Germany and Scandinavia before leaving to raise his family, and now he's been back in the band,” says Whitwam. Foot had been a member of Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, and Mike Sweeney and the Thunderbirds.

A friend of the band for more than 30 years, Graham Lee played lead guitar with Herman's Hermits on a five-week tour of Sweden in 1992 while Derek Leckenby was undergoing chemotherapy. Lee had been a member of the Scorpions in 1965 and moved to Holland where the band had a No. 1 hit with “Hello Josephine,” and went on to make four albums and seven chart hits.

Whitwam's Hermits regularly tour the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Holland and Scandinavian countries, the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Although a large part of their show is made up of the ever-popular “oldies' tunes, they throw in a few of their more recent creations.

Barry has made Herman's Hermits his sole career since 1964; however, he says, “Business slowed down in America after about 1969, when MGM was putting out the records, and we got into a litigation with them. During that 18 months of litigation the Monkees replaced us. Our fans were young teenagers. They got straight stuck into the Monkees. They liked them. I liked them too. But we carried on doing songs and tours in Europe, up until Peter Noone left. Then we continued onwards without him, and we've never stopped.”

Whitwam believes that Herman's Hermits fared financially better than most '60s bands, whose profits were mishandled or scooped up by greedy managers. “Our money wasn't handled by management. It came in when we did a tour and it was just split up into individual bank accounts. They had managed projects or investments. Management helped organize insurance and endowment policies and introduced us to people in very reputable companies, and we invested our money with them,” he said. “Once we made a bit of money, we all bought our parents houses.”

Whitwam lived with his parents for about three years while the band was touring. “But I was hardly ever there. I was always on the road, traveling,” he said. “We upgraded the house. We used to live in a semi, which is sort of a house you add on to another one. We bought a big detached house, about a six- or seven-bedroom house. And then I got stuck into cars. I used to love cars. I'd buy a car for three months and change it. I think up to now I've had about 60 cars, but between 1964 and '70 I must have had about 30 cars. We used to say, when the ashtrays were full, you'd change it and get a new one. I used to have Jaguars, Aston-Martins, Daimlers, sports cars. I used to love them.”

Barry was married to his first wife in 1967. His daughter, Emma, was born in 1969, and son, Richard, was born in 1974. Both of his children are married and have children of their own. Emma has two sons—James was born on Christmas 1998, and Harry was born January 2001. Richard has a daughter, Meghan, who was born during the summer of 1996, and a son, Sam, who was born in 2000.

When Emma was born, Barry was on the road a lot. “I remember coming home and my daughter was sort of hiding behind my wife's legs—you know, like, ‘Who's this man?' ‘It's your father.' After you've been away three months, it was a strange feeling. I had to sort of break the ice again.”

Both children have dabbled in music, but made their careers in other areas. “Richard plays the drums but he is also manager of a Quick-Fit—a big exhaust and brake franchise. My daughter is a teacher, and she played the violin and piano very well as a teenager,” said Whitwam.

Barry met his current wife, Patricia Prendergast, when their children were going to the same school. The couple has been married since 1987. “I had a golden retriever and she had a big German shepherd. And we'd take the kids to school. On my way back there's a big park, and I'd take the dog for a run, and the two dogs met first fighting. So we separated them, and got to know each other. Then eventually I got divorced and married Patricia.”

Patricia, who has a son named Jonathan, born in 1974, owns her own air cargo business, arranging for air shipment of animals worldwide. “We have two cats,” said Whitwam. “We didn't have any animals after the dogs passed away. Then we had a house cleaner and she got sort of involved with distressed and abandoned animals. And she said, ‘I've got this fabulous cat,' so she brought it 'round, and it was the ugliest thing you've ever seen. It had obviously been badly treated, so we took it on. It was about two years before you could even stroke the thing. It was wild. It's good now, though. And we've got another one from a rescue center. They're great. But I think we'll end up with another dog, though, a German shepherd. Cats are a bit distant. They only come around when they want some treat. And they don't fetch sticks or anything. You can't take them for a walk.”

When he's not on the road, Barry enjoys playing golf. “I've just joined a club for the first time,” he says. “I've been playing for many years, but I've never been around long enough to join a club.”

Patricia accompanies Barry when the band plays resort areas or when he expects to be away for a week or more. “Patricia came to San Diego when we were playing there for two weeks. In 2001, she actually won the air travel on a TV show phone-in. She was asked to pick a number between 1 and 5, and that represented how many you think the panel will score, and I think she picked none. The panel was hopeless,” laughs Whitwam. “We also went to Death Valley, and that was fabulous!”

Whitwam still hopes to achieve another hit record. He says, “We're still writing new songs, and we've had one released in Europe in early 2000.”

The group members collaborate on songs while they're on the road. “It works well,” he says. “We've written some great songs together. It's difficult getting a record company to back Herman's Hermits, but we're hopeful.”

Herman's Hermits made two films during their career. The 1966 movie Hold On! was filmed in America. Barry explains, “The space program, NASA, decided to let the children of America name the next rocket to go up, and the kids chose the name Herman's Hermits. So then the FBI and special agents had to follow the group around to make sure we were worthy of our name going on a rocket.” The group also made a movie in England in 1968 called Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter.

“Basically, we had to act like ourselves. The director said, ‘here's your lines. Just do them the best you can,' and we had a good laugh with it.” said Whitwam. “ Mrs. Brown was probably better than Hold On! It was about a greyhound dog. The dog was called Mrs. Brown. And the puppy was Mrs. Brown's daughter. I get the movies out for a laugh every now and again. Basically MGM wanted to make the films. It was in the contract so they'd sell more records, soundtracks.”

Barry says he feels his greatest enduring talent is playing the drums. “It's probably the best thing I do. I think my best ability is to look at the world and take it with a pinch of salt. Don't take it too seriously, or you'll worry yourself to death in this business.”

Any misperceptions? “No. Everybody knows that Peter Noone is not in the band. People who come see us expect not to see him, because Peter's done a good job saying he left the band by 1971, especially when he did his VH-1 TV show. So everybody knows that Peter's not in the band and everyone has a great time enjoying the music.”

Barry says the individual who made the biggest influence on his musical career was Elvis Presley. “When I saw Jailhouse Rock, the video clip of that was incredible. That changed my whole way of looking at music. It was incredible. It was like three rows of cells, and they were dancing along it. That was brilliant.”

Whitwam observed there are three generations of Herman's Hermits fans. “When we do a state fair, where there's no alcohol served and kids can go in, we get a lot of young kids, from 5 years old, upwards.” With them are their parents, who are typically the children of baby boomers. “And then we obviously get the old fans who want to see us again. But it's really good to see like 5-year-olds that know the words to ‘I'm Henry VIII, I Am.'”

When asked “What kind of person would you say you are?” Barry responds, “I'm a typical Cancerian, I think. I was born on the 21st of July, so I'm nearly a Leo. So I'm a bit of an extrovert. I think I approach excess with caution, shy sometimes. My wife would say I'm a safe old dog. Always by the side. I don't cause any trouble. I have a wonderful sense of fun.”




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