Harvey Lisberg

Harvey Lisberg was the manager of Herman's Hermits, 10cc and more. Harvey tells a good story, you'll enjoy this.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Said Podcast.
My guest today is manager Harvey Lisper, who's got a
new book, My Life managing TENCC, Berman's Hermits and many more. Harvey,
you started out as a songwriter. Tell us about that.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
I started out very young learning the piano traditionally, got
very fed up of that, and then started to learn
how to vump. My auntie, Sylvia, my mother's sister, was
very efficient at playing music on me by ear. She
could play any song you liked, and I was always
envious of her, and I started to play by air

(00:50):
and I learnt. I decided, I'm not going to do
scales all day and night. I'm going to try and
do my own thing. So I started to play a
little bit of music because I could read music. And
my first song that did was a Smile in F
one flat and it was quite good actually. And then
later on I played the piano. Always played the piano
as a piano in the house. It was part of

(01:12):
the house, and that right piano in the kitchen teeny
Roombert had a big piano. And then when skiffle came
into England much later, there was a skiffle group that
played in a jazz club that I went to, and
I got friendly with the leader called Paul Beatty, who
now lives in Canada, and he had a skiffle group

(01:33):
and he came back to a party in my house
and he taught me some chords on the on the guitar.
With one finger, I could play Takes a Worried Man.
You just fit one finger around and you play all
the blues chords. And then I started playing a bit,
and I started writing songs, trying songs myself. This is,
you know, about sixty two before anything had happened as

(01:55):
far as the Beatles or anything like that, and I thought, right,
I write these songs and I'm going to try and
get them to artists. There were songs that were like
how do you do It? Or Freddie's do the Freddy?
They weren't masterpieces, they weren't any good at all. But
I wanted to get them to somebody and to do it.
And that's how I started writing songs, and ultimately I

(02:17):
got one, which was the B side of I'm Into
Something Good with Herman's Hermits first band, and that was
very lucky. But that's a long story. To get to that.
But so that was really it. I just wrote songs.
I love music. I loved all the sixties music. We
were inundated with American trash and English singers with American accents.

(02:37):
It was just dirdhit music. We were inundated with.

Speaker 3 (02:43):
Okay, the Beatles broke almost two years earlier in the UK,
before the US. When you talk about skifful et cetera.
What was music like and what did it mean in
the early sixties in the UK.

Speaker 2 (03:01):
Well, it was American crooner. Well, no, we had known
that's not true. In the mid fifties we got Bill Haley,
and then from Bill Haley we had rock and roll.
We had Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, you name it. All.
Those are all the greats of that little Richard. We
had lots of rock and roll. But before that, the
last twenty years, prior to that, we had Moon and

(03:21):
June and Crooner's and Love and June and you know,
awful songs. But there was Frank Sinatcha. There were a
few exceptions with some very good songs. But the English
people in the early sixties were listening to We listened
to all the doop from America. Then it was mostly
the Chuck Berry and rock and roll sort of thing.
Inundated the airways. When I say airways, that was a joke.

(03:45):
There was only one station, Radio one on the BBC
before all the commercial radio had started, So when I
was young, I had to listen to Radio Luxembourg, which
was two oh eight on the crystallized little radios that
we had to fiddle around with, or American Forces Network
in Europe AFM, and that's where we got all our
good music from America from as opposed to just the

(04:08):
crooners and all the Johnny Rays and Frankie Lanes and
everything else that was poured into the radio. So there's
a concoction of music. Skiffle was really because everybody could
play the instrument, and there was an artist called Lonnie
Donegan that started playing all these songs which were basically
American folk songs. Cumberland Gap, it wasn't Cumberland in Cumberland,

(04:31):
it was something else. Midnight Special doesn't mean anything to
anybody in England because there's no midnight specials in England.
It's a train in America. And we were inundated with
all these songs and they were really good and very
popular and everybody could be in a skiffle group because
they didn't have to play an instrument. They played a
washboard for a drum sound and they all sang together

(04:54):
and it was quite exciting. And there's a Rock Island line.
There's about twenty bring a little wad of Sylvie. All
these songs were basically American folk songs, so maybe country
folk songs, whatever, traditional folk songs. They were probably one
hundred years old, and we all played them and that
was it. And that's how skiffle started. That's how the
guitar started. That's how the Beatles started. They you know,

(05:16):
they played skiffle, they played that type of music. Maggie
Maggie May or whatever. They played folk songs.

Speaker 3 (05:24):
Okay, So was this just a lark that you wrote
songs or you have a burning desire? Was everybody you
know writing songs? Or were you like the only one?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
No. I had a few friends and we were just
playing around on guitars. We were just harmonizing with each
other and playing stop playing the music of the day,
you know, whatever it was. Where the Italian musician it
was very popular in England at the times. We played
for Lry Marina Marini all that sort of Italian stuff
was popular, and I just and folk songs, and of

(05:57):
course I was the party jester. I love collect and
I could make any song up lyrically. I could really
get clever with the lyrics, so I could go to
a party and start talking about all the people in
the room. And at Calypso, and I was pretty pretty
adept at Calypso. For some reason, maybe I've got roots,
but I don't know.

Speaker 3 (06:18):
Okay. So one of the big points in the book
is you talk about the rivalry between Manchester and Liverpool.
Now in America, we first hear the Beatles, we think
of Liverpool in London. So what was the landscape in
the UK in the early sixties.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Like well, Manchester was the biggest club town in England,
so the more live music in Manchester and London as well.
I mean Liverpool was third. I mean Liverpool was not
really in it as far as live music was concerned.
In those days. There was lots of clubs in Manchester

(07:00):
and the Rolling Stones would come and play at their
Wasis or all the bands that subsequently became enormous played
at the clubs in Manchester. So there's a very healthy
club scene in Manchester, Liverpool happened when the Beatles started.
It was they'd worked at this Star club in Hamburg

(07:21):
for a while and they were getting their own following.
Before they met Epstein or anything. They were working very
hard getting their band together. I believe that's correct, and
they just when they happened. It was the most magical
thing that ever happened in the sixties. Probably it was
just incredible. All of a sudden we had great music.

(07:44):
It was English, it was humorous, it was brilliant, and
we all fell in love with it. I mean I
never every time a Beatles album or record was released,
I got it on the first morning of release and
I wore the album out before it anybody probably had
heard it, which just was berserk on the Beatles. It
was just appeal to me. I mean. My background in

(08:04):
music was Italian opera, which has paddled through my house
from my father who loved opera. He was a violinist
and also a saxophone player in the band. During the war.
I was just had that in My next door neighbor
was mad on classical music. And then I went to
synagogue and the beautiful music from the synagogue all the

(08:26):
school music and the fantastic choirs they had their So
I had all that music going around my head, and
I just I love music, and it wasn't just specifically
any brand of music. Even up to today, I still
can like a good song or if something's good, it
appeals to me. I don't say, oh, well, it's always
better in the older days, because new things are great,

(08:46):
sometimes rarely but sometimes.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Okay. You mentioned synagogue and you go into your Jewish
roots in the book to what degree was anti Semitism
prevalent at that point in the sixties and how did
that affect you both personally and in business.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Well, growing up, there was a tremendous amount of resentment
lack of knowledge about Jewish people. I mean went through
all my school days and everything whereever school I was at,
because I started off going to really orthodox Jewish schools
when I was like six, So I've got a tremendous
grounding in Orthodoxy and I know all the prayers and everything.

(09:27):
But when I went to the non Jewish schools Cheatamil
Methodist School sold for Grammar School, there was avert anti
Semitism because basically the people there are conditioned to believe
that all Jews were rich, and comparatively speaking, yes, maybe
I was more wealthy from a middle class as opposed

(09:48):
to the working class, which was the schools inundated with
really low working class people, very low wages. And they thought,
all you Jews have got everything. But of course that
isn't true. I mean, there's millions of Jews that are starving,
and you know, there were lots of working class Jews
at that level. But as far as anti Semitems were concerned,

(10:09):
these kids believed all Jews are rich, all Jews did this,
all do that. And I was a minority in England.
I had to be on my best behavior all the time.
The only time I evolved out of my I don't
call it an inferiority complex, an awareness of being Jewish,
was when I went to Israel, and it was just

(10:30):
it was like a breath of fresh air to me.
All of a sudden, I was I didn't have to
be quiet, I didn't have to watch my p's and
q's on Friday night. I didn't have to stay in
like a lunatic and not be allowed out because then
my uncle there had a meal, a Friday night meal
with the candles and everything, and after it's finished, lo
and behold the cards came out, poker gambling, god knows

(10:50):
what's smoking things that didn't my house in England because
it was Friday night and you didn't do that. You
just obeyed the law. And that's so. Yes, there was
a lot of anti Semitism and Semitism through. My wife
found it as well. She went to a school called
Lady Harrogate's Ladies College and she was very good at tennis,

(11:14):
really good, and they wanted her to go to Wimbledon
to play tennis. And the teacher came up to her
and said, look, I'm terribly sorry, Carol. You can't go
to Wimbled and they won't accept you. And she said
why she is because no Jews are allowed there. So
this in nineteen fifty four and this is Wimbledon, right,

(11:35):
So it was right throughout the whole country. Also, you
couldn't get a job, you know. I wanted to be
a stockbroker. That was my aim. I didn't want to
be an accountant. You know, I'm a gambler, so I
was always gambling on stocks and chairs. There were no
Jewish stockbrokers. It was my aim to become one. But
I mean it was just everywhere. The jobs weren't available

(11:55):
for you. You weren't bankers or anything. Your jobs were
limited from coming over from Europe and everything. You had
certain jobs you had to do. They were open to
you money lending whatever, you know, that sort of thing,
or peddling or working on the markets, selling stuff on markets.
There weren't that many openings for Jewish people really, so

(12:18):
a lot of them became doctors and intellectual sort of thing.
And that differentiated Liverpool from Manchester as well, because Manchester
was all the Eastern European immigrants, whereas Liverpool with the Irish,
came in an inundated. They were with an Irish background

(12:38):
and they kind of looked at each other. I mean
they kind of looked down at them, the Europeans, you know,
they're not cultured, you know. And that was the situation.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
And in your business career, to what degree did you
experience anti Semitism?

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Oh, very little. I think the Jewish people controlled the
entertain business. They controlled Hollywood from the turn of the
completely it was all Jewish people. They completely controlled all
the Broadway musical writers and everything were all Jewish. In England,
the biggest agency was the Grade agency which controlled about

(13:16):
everything in England. Every artist was a member of the Grades,
and I didn't I didn't find any anti Semetter. There
might have been anti Semetins started with a pank Era,
but that was in the eighties when I started, I
didn't find anything in the music. In fact, it was

(13:37):
possibly even an advantage to be Jewish, possibly because it
was like a network of Jewish people controlling everything for
the record label, the record companies, everybody that we had
infiltrated that Maybe that was because of the artistic side,
and it was an opening for Jews who always musical
and liked music and the culture and wanted to get
in there, and it was an avenue where they could

(13:58):
get in.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
So how did you meet Herman in the Hermits as
they were called.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Then, Well, I was writing these mediocre songs and getting
no success with anybody. Nobody wanted to know. So I thought, right, well,
I'll get my own band. I'll do't play my music.
I'm my father, who's very musical. He sort of was
rather sarcastic about my songwriting, but I took it in

(14:25):
good faith. So I arranged a arranged at something with
a manched evening news for the new groups, and I
was going to go and see this new group in
a church roll in Davy Hume and I went there
and Herman and the Hermits were appearing. They were playing
Chuck Berry sort of standing there. They actually had it.

(14:48):
Missus Brown was actually in the act at that stage.
She was played in there. And all the normal songs
that every group played, needles and pens or whatever, anything
that was American that they could but adapt they did
it do or did he did he? Whatever? And after
each number, all these girls charged the stage. I was screaming.

(15:10):
I thought it was like a Beatles concert. I thought, God,
I won the National lottery here. This is fantastic. I
subsequently found out that they'd planted in the audience lots
of their friends and asked them to scream and shout,
telling them that an American manager was coming to see
the band. I went back to Peter's house after the
concert and I started fiddling on the piano because I

(15:31):
was playing piano. He had a piano in the house,
a huge piano, and I started fiddling. Ray Charles, tell
me what I say, And Peter said, would you like
to join the band? I said no, I don't want
to join the band. I want to manage the band,
and I want you to do my songs. So they
did your hand in mine as a B side, as
I say, And I got a huge check at Christmas,

(15:53):
and I showed it to my father and my father said, well,
maybe I was wrong, but he wasn't wrong. He was
that's right. It was just a stupid way that people
that wrote B sides could get half the mechanicals, which
is a nonsense. So I got the same for mechanicals
as Carol King, and I can't claim to be in
the same light years as her as far as the

(16:15):
songwriters and goffin of course.

Speaker 3 (16:17):
Okay, let's go a little bit slower. You're working as
an accountant, you're writing songs. How do you decide to
be a manager? Was it something you just saw the
being and said, hey, I'm a manager. How did that happen?

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Well, I think that happened basically because of the Beatles
and next scene success. I mean, I think I was
writing the songs and trying to do all the things
I was doing, But then I don't know what ye're
The Beatles started, was it sixty three? They had few hits,
and Brian Epstein, who was a Jewish boy from Liverpool,
started to get a lot of press, and certainly in

(16:55):
the Jewish community, it was like an icon. And I thought, well,
he's had no background in music, he knows nothing about
management of acts or anything, but why can't I do that?
So that was that was the thing that sparked me
into wanted to be a manager. It wasn't the original
intention at all. The original attention was to write songs,
have loads of hits and earn the royalties. My envy

(17:18):
was always book writers who just thought, God, they write
a book, they go to bed and they're hemingway and
you know that the roatis come in. You don't do
anything else. And I thought, and I'm like that, I'm
not very I'm a bit I know, and it's selfish
or my idea of earning money the easy way, and
it's just a it's a fault of mine. But I

(17:41):
always envied the songwriters for that reason, not the musical songwriters,
the book writers. Those are the people that were the
big things in the forties and fifties.

Speaker 3 (17:50):
Okay, you have no background in the music business. You
can play a little piano, skiffle, calypso you can write songs.
And then you said, well, Ryan Epstein is doing it,
why can't die? Is that your personality, that you're just
as good as anybody else who you can do it?
What is it about you that allows you to do this?

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Being swamped as a channel by love, from being the
first grandchild of a close knit family, always spoilt, ruined,
I was infallible. I didn't have any I had no fear.
That's why I said I wanted to become a stockbroker,
though no jeish stockbrokers. That wasn't going to bother me
when I'm at now. King Charles the Third at a

(18:35):
concert of ten CC, I was introduced to him afterwards,
and I said, oh, did you like Well, I don't
really know of ten CC, so of course you're not
meant to ask royalty any questions. But I didn't take
an notice of that. I said, but you never heard
I'm not in Love. You know it's on the It's

(18:56):
on the radio all the time. And he said, well, no,
I don't really. I don't really get a chance to
hear that very much. I do listen to Radio four
sometimes on my way to Ascot and I thought there's
the future King of England that didn't know the first
thing about the pop music business. And I was shocked,
and I think Princess Diana sorted him out. And no

(19:18):
doubt now is an expert.

Speaker 3 (19:27):
Okay, a little bit slower. You go to the gig,
you go to Peter Noon's house. How does it end
up that you progress and get a record deal?

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Right? Well, the first thing the manager had to do
in those days was to get a record deal. That
was the golden rule. You've got a band, you get
a record deal, you have a hit and so forth.
So I filled the date sheet completely. I mean Herman
Summit's are working seven nights a week, sometimes three times
a night, ending up in some drunken Irish club at

(19:59):
two o'clock morning to do that set very wealthy because
they had no mortgages, no two ferraris in the garage,
no wives, no nothing. They were all single, fifteen sixteen
seventeen and at the end of the day they split
a pounds they got about thirty forty pounds cash, which
is a lot of money in those days. So that
was that was really exciting. And with a full date

(20:23):
sheet it helped because I knew that if I got
somehow to EMI or somebody I could, I could get
a record deal, or I can get them to see
the band working and see the date sheet, et cetera.
And I was We did a lunchtime session at the
Plaza Ballroom and I went to the manager's office, a
gentleman called Terry Devine and on the table there was

(20:45):
a piece of paper with EARI headliner. Could I borrow
that letter a second? And I looked at it had
Derek Caverett at the bottom. So I decided, okay, let's
do it. Let's write to Derek Caverrett. And I wrote
to Dereka, We've heard all about you and we'd like
to come and meet you. I've got this band. Would
you be interested in meeting me? And very kindly wrote

(21:07):
back the next day and said, yeah, I come down
to London. I ran down to London as quickly as
I could, and I went into EMI's office as a
Manchester Square, where I saw Derek Everett and as I
walked through the door and says, you know, I've got
nothing to do with A and R. I don't have
anything to do with the artistic side of the bands.
I just put physical records into dance halls. So I

(21:29):
was really totally totally shocked. So I'm sitting there and
I'm depressed and my chins down. I thought, what an
idiot I've been. I've written this letter to him telling
them how wonderful it is, and he's a completely nonentity.
But just as I left, though, he said, by the way, though,
I know there's a new producer called Mickey must and

(21:51):
he's just having some success with a group called The Animals.
Would you be interested in meeting him? So I thought, yeah, well,
while I'm in London, I might as well make some
use of this journey. And I went to see Mickey
Mos and I presented him with the photograph of Herman
and the Hermits as they were when I first saught them,
and he looked at them and he said, yes, looks

(22:12):
quite looks quite interesting. And then I went back to
Manchester and I kept phoning his office. Would he come
up and see the band? Nothing happened, Nothing happened, and
I decided to have a brainwave. I'm going to send
him two first class there tickets and I'm going to
put him at the best hotel in Manchester in the
Middland overnight and see if he'll come up. So I
sat in them and he got the envelope with the

(22:33):
tickets and he came up and I took him to
see Herman and the Hermits at the Beach Comba in Bolton,
and he said, yeah, they're quite good. They're all right.
And I had a really clapped out core in those days.
It was my mother's. It was kind of I think
it was a Ford Prefect or a Triumph Herald. It
was just a little piece of tin. But I'd had

(22:56):
the I was so mad on music that I'd invested
a four in this record player for one of the
Phillips record players. I don't know whether they had them
in America. You could put a forty five in it
and when you went over a bump, the suspension didn't
affect the record. It still played. And on the way
back to the hotel, g so, by the way, I've

(23:16):
got a song here you might be interested in. And
I had very good ears. I mean I could always
pick hits, even from early days. As soon as I
heard something, once I knew whether I had a feeling,
I knew it was it usually it was. And he
put on this song. It was Earl Jean's I'm Into
Something Good, which apparently just entered the American charts at
about ninety two, and I thought, that's fantastic. Can we

(23:41):
do it? Can we do it? He says, yes, if
you get rid of two members of your band. I thought, so,
I've had the good and the bad, you know, the good,
bad and the ugly. Has got to be getting rid
of them. But so it wasn't very It was the
mixed thing where the song was so great. I went
back to Peter's house. I told Peter, look, we've got
to get rid of two of the group. And it's

(24:03):
very hard because they were an integral part of the
early group and it's not easy. But we said to
the guy, look, Alan, you've got to leave the band.
It's nothing we can do. If we want to get
a record doing, and we don't get a record deal,
we're not going to get anywhere. And Alan knew he
wasn't that great as a bass player. He went with

(24:23):
Peter to the cavern to see the Beatles and his
only comment was, oh God, we're fucked. You know, he
could have played me played the bass like that. So
he was depressed even then. Which was six months earlier.
So anyhow, he walked out of the room in a storm,
and I was a bit sad and Peter and also

(24:44):
I was scared. I mean, his father had been convicted
of some capital crime and was in jail, and he
was a fierce looking guy. You don't want to mess
with him. And I thought, It'by's coming with a knife
for the next two weeks. I'll have to protect myself,
keep my eyes over my head. So anyhow, I I
got in the car, which was a van. We had

(25:05):
a van which took all the equipment round in with Peter,
and we drove out of Peter's house and as we
went in the road going Alan Rigley was lying across
the middle of the road and had to swerve to
me to miss him. And so it was so it
was so awful. I mean, at the time it was
a relief getting it done, but it was it was

(25:26):
an awful, awful experience. And then we evolved into getting
new members of the band, and everybody we put in
was an excellent musician, and the music improved tremendously as
far as the actual physical playing was concerned. And some
of the band didn't people like Derek Leckenbye and Barry

(25:47):
whitwom who came later on to be drummer and a
lead guitarist, that they didn't want. Everybody had heard about
Herman and Hermits because they were working everywhere and nobody
was impressed at the time, But when they saw the
date sheet, Lex said, well, you know this is good,
this looks all right, so they joined. Because of that,

(26:09):
all my friends kept telling me what a load of
rubbish this bout is. Why don't I get a proper job,
get an accountcy job, start messing around with all these people.
Then we had a number one hit with them and
something good and they said, oh, well there's only be
a one hit wonder you know the really happy Jewish background.
Sarcasm was rife at the time because they weren't impressed

(26:31):
with Herman and Ermits musically okay, and then Show Me
Go it was a miss, and I thought, well, maybe
they're right. But after that, after ten hits, they stopped
telling me they were a load of rubbish.

Speaker 3 (26:43):
Okay. In the interim after finding the band, you raise
some money, tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yes, I needed money, I'm not sure. Yeah, we just
needed money originally for clothes, and things like that. Four
people put up fifty five pounds each and they were
all wealthy businessmen, and I worked the band, had a
full date sheet, and they were all lovely people. He's

(27:12):
been my cousin, Jeffrey Greenberg, Raymond Abrinson and Brian Joseph.
They were the partners and they were all wealthy in
their own right from really successful businesses. And I needed
I think one thousand or two thousand pounds ultimately to
get a new van because the van disintegrated. It was
doing so much work and they didn't want to really

(27:36):
put any more money into it, okay, because as I say,
everybody was laughing at us sort of thing. And that's
when I got involved with Charlie Silverman, who was also
very wealthy father who made money going on the gold
Trail of the Yukon or something. Vastly wealthy, flew planes
and god knows what. In the forties, my grandmother used

(27:57):
to go mad because of Charlie's father used to fly
over in one of these single engine planes and flip
it over the back garden, and she trying to impress,
you know, and she was really fed up with him anyhow.
So I went to the boys. I said, look, if
you're not going to if you're not going to carry
on or put more money in, would I be able

(28:19):
to buy you back? And they will agreed to take
the money back that they put in, and they were happy.
There was no resentment. So I moved in with Charlie
and then we wrote songs with Charlie as well.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
Okay, a little bit slower, Mickey Mose comes up. You
play the song in your record player in the car.
How long soil you record on into something good? And
what was the recording session?

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Like one incidental thing was everybody I had touched in
those days turned to gold. So although Mickey most have
had some success as soon as we got together with him.
How the Rising Sunwhere was the record that came out
which made him the biggest thing in the world, which
was lucky for us and lucky for him. Probably three

(29:10):
or four months for us to get We recorded it,
I think in July, and it came out in August,
and I met Mickey for the first time the November
before and probably by the time I got him. Yeah,
it's probably all within six or eight months this happened.
All this happened. What was the second part of your question.

Speaker 3 (29:33):
So what was the actual session, like, what was Mickey's
magic if anything?

Speaker 2 (29:38):
Oh, it was a very he was completely dictatorial about
the session. The boys went in. It was three hours.
I don't remember anything about it because I was outside
the studio. But they went in, they did it. The
B side was knocked out. I mean, everything was done
very quickly. Had a very good pianist that played the

(29:58):
piano part called I think Joe Webb was very good,
and it was and the boys sang very well and
they played I thought it was okay. It was a
very nice record. And after three hours everybody went back
to Manchester. I mean there was like, drove down into
the studio three hours by out gone and that's it.
And then the rest is all taken over by Mickey

(30:20):
mosten Emi or whatever they do with the records to
get it out. We'd done our bit, we'd driven down,
spent three hours, very little. I don't know, it's little
preparation in a way, I don't know what preparation Mickey
did in the background, whether he used I can't remember,
and I'm in something good. I really can't remember what

(30:40):
sort of arrangement, So what sort of instrumentation he used
on top of everything, I don't know, but subsequently on
future records he used Jimmy Page. John Paul Jones arranged everything.
Every orchestral bit for Herman Sermons was arranged by John
Paul Jones. Big Jim Sullivan played on things. Katini played that.

(31:01):
I mean, Mickey only used the best people, which was
a shame for Herman Sermits, who weren't allowed to develop musically,
although potentially they might have been tremendous. But because every
time Mickey used this session man, because of the way
he did it, and that's the way you couldn't really
argue with it. Because while he's giving you hit after

(31:21):
hit after hit, what do you say you don't want
to change? Change the boat?

Speaker 3 (31:28):
Okay, the record comes out in August. Tell me about
your experience of its success.

Speaker 2 (31:35):
It came in the chart iving in the forties. I
went for twenty three to eight to three to one,
and I was kicked off by pretty woman, I think
by Roy Orbison. Oh, Peter became very, very photogenic, very

(31:56):
in every newspaper. It was a very big thing at
hermanermits were really, you know, the flavor of the month.
And I'm into Something Good, which just such a wonderful song,
such an uplifting song, and you know, it's one of
those songs like in the Summertime by Mungo Jerry. You
knew first time you hear it, it's an absolute smash.

(32:16):
And so as I'm into something good, it was like
a one above what you know, one's a one, a
real one, and we were in heaven. Obviously, all our
bookings went up, the prices went up, money went up,
and we had strange things happen. You know, it's perhaps
that did happen in America, you know went out on MGM.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Well a little bit slower. When do you get the
MGM deal? And why MGM? At the time, MGM had
a couple of other hit acts, but it was really
a tertiary label compared to the other ones.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
We had no control over that whatsoever. Everything we did
was guided by Mickey Most. Mickey Most was guided by
the infamous famous Alan Klein, and anything that happened there
would have been done probably initially by Alan Klein, subsequently
through Mickey Most and whatever happened all the huge deals

(33:13):
we did, Alan Klein was kind of somehow involved. So
we didn't do very much.

Speaker 3 (33:22):
So how long after the record comes out in the
UK it is to come out in the US, and
then when it's successful, how do you decide to go
to the US and capitalize on that.

Speaker 2 (33:35):
I'm trying to work out whether it seems to me
that when I went into the office one morning, which
is a smelly office in Manchester on the second floor
above a Chinese restaurant with curry going right through the
smell of curry, it was awful. It was an embarrassing office,
about very small. There were two men standing in the

(33:57):
doorway on a Monday morning, one hand a sigo which
is about two feet long, and the other one had
to see a second suit on. And you, Harvey Lizberg, Yeah,
I'm Harvey Lisbeg, and we've come to give you a
film offer for peterter noon. And we got and I said,
there's no way we can't. We fully booked, we haven't

(34:17):
got time to do it. There's no way we can
do this. And they said, well, can we come into
de Elvis? So I invited him in the office. Very embarrassing.
It wasn't a Santa Monica Fifth Glory office with huge
windows overlooking the sea. It was an office with no
windows in it, with the cassettes all over the room, cigarettes,

(34:40):
god knows what cars. It was just embarrassing. And I
sat down with him and said, there's no ways. Look
at the date sheet. There are no way. And he
looks at the date sheets and he says, well, you've
got a week there. I said, yeah, but a week.
I said, no, there's no way. All right, we'll give
you twenty five thousand dollars for the no, well, we'll

(35:01):
give you forty five thousand dollars for the two two
for the two days. Jute and the film was with
Connie Francis and it's where the Boys Meet the Girls.
It was completely controlled by the Gershering estate. As far
as the music was concerned. I think liber Archie was in.
There were some very were sort of poppy names of

(35:23):
the time. We're in this film. And he says, there's
there nothing I could do to entice you into it.
I said, all right, Cadillac, you got it. Before I
had finished the sentence, I got it. So I ended
up with this huge Cadillac. The boys went over and
then they had to do two songs. Well, the first
song was where the Boys Meet was a Gershwin number

(35:44):
I'm Biding My Time, which they did, and the second
number I think that was offered to them was that
I think it was a Liberarchie song or something. It
It was absolutely appalling apparently, and the book and the
boys refuge used it, can't we do one of ours?
And they happened to have Listened People, which is a

(36:04):
Graham Gooman song, which I was involved with at the time,
so they put that on and that became a huge
hit in America. I think that might have been our
second hit. And then Mickey did can't You Hear My Heartbeat,
which was a hit in England for a band called
a girl band called Goldie I think, who was managed

(36:25):
by Mike Jeffries, who managed The Animals. Everything is interconnected.
Everything is no doubt that publishing was with Alan klin
or There's always something weird was going on in the background.
But I was very I'm trying to say I accepted
the fact that everything was not correct. My aim was

(36:48):
to get the band to be the biggest band of
the world, and if the attorney was shaving off five
percent or this, that and the other, it didn't really
concern me as long as I got to where I
wanted to get. So everybody said, what're you using him for? He?
Why is Alan Kline? What are you crazy? You know?
But I used Alan Kline knowing that it might not

(37:09):
all be good. But I was using him as much
as he was using me.

Speaker 3 (37:13):
Tell me more about Alan klin horror story.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
I went to his office, his small man, small man complex,
very self opinionated, and he has his office. His desk
is elevated by about four feet, so anybody's sitting down
is looking at him, looking at God or the Buddha
or whatever. And he actually got out of the desk

(37:37):
and walked round behind me. And if I tell you,
he had the worst breath I have ever known anybody
in the world. I mean, it was horrendous to such
an extent that I got out a piece of chewing
him and I said, do you want a piece of
chewing him? And his reply was, I know I've got
bad breath. It's totally intentional. And at that stage I

(37:58):
know I was talking to a monster, you know he was,
and he is unbelievable. I mean, he was ruthless. I
didn't like him, particularly because I had to be careful
that he wouldn't take herman's hermits away or start causing trouble,
as he did with every band he got involved with.

(38:19):
It was never a smooth ride. There's always a problem,
whether it would be the Beatles, rolling Stones, there was
always trouble and eventually they all booting him out eventually,
So you know. On the other hand, he was an
accountant in a record company. He'd seen how the record
companies have been exploiting all the artists and it used
it and rather cleverly. But when I discussed the breath

(38:44):
thing with you, it shows to what extent he would
go to get what he wanted. I don't like it particularly.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Okay, what was your management style? I know some English
managers were there tutorial relative to the acts. What I'm
asking is to what degree were you involved in decisions
and did the band listen to you and accept what
you had to say?

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Absolutely, the band were fantastic. They did everything that was
wanted of them. I did everything, deployed agents, managers, publicity agents.
When Peter went to America, I had to go to
bow Street Magistrates Court to be their guardian in America
in loco parentis. While John Lennon was feeding the young

(39:32):
Peter Noon switching Roum and Cokes for Coca Colas in
nightclubs in London. That wasn't my job in America. I
had to look after and be very careful, and we
had a lot of I liked every one of that.
They were all from very nice backgrounds. The band, they
were nice. They're all from nice people. And in fact,

(39:53):
when they had the success, I arranged for all the
parents and then to go to Hawaii for two weeks.
We had a fantastic trip to celebrate all our success.
So I always involved the parents. I knew the parents.
They were nice, that Peter was a great boy, he
was a I mean, they were all were I mean,
they were just nice people. I don't have had a

(40:15):
problem with him. We were all in love with each
other and the business, and we were very young and
so much success and you know, more success maybe than
we deserved, but we got it and we were there.
We were number one in America, beat the Beatles in
nineteen sixty five, four weeks at number one, keeping Help
off the chart. I mean, it's ridiculous when you think

(40:36):
of it. I mean, Missus Brown was done in a
flash one take in a studio and voices and every
mixed together. It wasn't even separated. It was a throwaway
track on the end of the album, which Mickey was
adamant not to go out as a single. And the
story there was MGM said they would prepay on six
hundred thousand records if he allowed them to put it

(41:00):
out as a single. They said, no, eight hundred thousand,
No a million. Okay, if you pay me on a million,
you can put it out now. The DJs in the meanwhile,
they've been playing the back off this thing. I mean,
it was everywhere we went. We were doing Dick Clark
Caravan of Tours Stars and everywhere we went the DJs

(41:21):
were playing this track on on and on. So it
entered the Billboard at number twelve, which was the highest
entry at that stage of any racked as a single
at that stage, and it went from twelve to three
to one, stayed at one for four weeks. And I
was I was in a situation where I didn't think
I could go wrong. I had Graham Goldman, who we
will talk about, no doubt, but you know I was

(41:42):
having hit after hit, Peter was having it after it,
Mickey Moses having hit after hit. I mean were and
money didn't mean anything. Do you know. I wasn't being
careful and I just thought, well whatever, I was playing roulette,
winning a roulette. Everything that could possibly go right as
far as money was concerned, to happen all at once
during that time. Yeah, so what can I say?

Speaker 3 (42:12):
Okay, Usually at some point the band wakes up and says,
where's my money? And especially because Herman's Hermides didn't write
the songs and royalty reads were low. Most of the
money was from roadwork and it was split multiple ways.

Speaker 2 (42:30):
Never happened, Never happened. We've got a million dollar deal
with MGM three film deal for a million dollars, which
in those days was fortune, and we signed that and
they were secure for a lot. They had everything they needed.
They never bitched about.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
Money, and what was your deal with the band?

Speaker 2 (42:52):
Twenty five percent out of which ten years to go
to the agency, so at fifteen, which I split with
Charlie originally and he left after three years, and I
carried on at that rate because in the meantime I'd
brought into the agency, so it had it all together,
always on a twenty five percent rate. They never seemed

(43:13):
to bother about it never queried it or anything. But
I think when you think where they came from, I mean,
I suppose you could say the same about all acts,
but where they came from and where they got it
would be very difficult for them to say the money
wasn't worth it, you know. I mean, I did do
a well. I don't want to praise myself, but it

(43:34):
was a spectacular success story.

Speaker 3 (43:37):
Okay, So did you always travel with the band and
you we no? When did you travel? When did you
not travel?

Speaker 2 (43:48):
I traveled to certain I had a partner, Charlie, that
traveled with the band a lot. We split it together
a bit. I then am somebody that was working in
the accountant who looked like David Neven with a white
handkerchief and suit, called John Wright. He was the head
of the phone club, and I used to get him

(44:08):
to go to various places Eastern Europe, or Germany, Singapore.
I couldn't be I couldn't do everything at all at
the same time, because I was starting to get involved
with other acts as well. But my main act, obviously
was Homan Sermons. I went to the obviously when they
were doing the film, I went filming and I went
on a lot of the American dates. Any date that
was important, La or something like that, or New York,

(44:30):
I would be there. And I lived in America for
a while. Yeah, that's right. I learned for about six
months in America in that sixty five period, So I
was around because a lot of our stuff was in America.

Speaker 3 (44:43):
How did you prevent the act getting stolen from you?

Speaker 2 (44:47):
Well, you had to have somebody there all the time.
And if Alan Klein is Mickey most well, you don't
have to worry about anybody else. That's number one, because
if anybody was going to get him, it was going
to be Alc. I mean, nobody else would get a
smell in there. And I had a very very very tough,
very tough attorney called Stephen Wise, who has led Zeppelin's

(45:09):
attorney who they had a falling out with eventually and
legal case and god knows, but Steve was a very
bright operator and between us we protected our interest.

Speaker 3 (45:20):
How did you find Steve Weiss?

Speaker 2 (45:23):
That's a good question. Steve Wise incidentally went out with
Marilyn Monroe on that was his clon defact. He's very
good looking. How did I find it? How did I
get to him? God? Knows well, I don't think it
was from Frank Barcelona, who was our agent. I don't

(45:44):
because I don't think Frank liked him very much. I don't.

Speaker 3 (45:48):
I'm sorry, I really, I'll have to Okay, Okay, it's
a long time ago. This was the beginning of Frank
Barcelona and Premier Talent. How did you hook up with Frank?

Speaker 2 (45:59):
Well, Frank was friendly with my partner Danny Batsh, who
the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars came through that. I
think you know Dick Clark's I'm very vague and my
memory is very vague on these subjects.

Speaker 3 (46:19):
I really okay, so let me go one step further.
You know, Frank Barcelona ended up becoming legendary. Was he
impressive in your day? Was he good or what were
his skills?

Speaker 2 (46:31):
He was very good. It was good at packaging things.
He took an act on like the Who, and he decided, right,
we're going to open for Herman's Hermits, totally incorrect musically.
He didn't care. He just wanted to get them seen.
And once they're seen, they're going to make an impact

(46:52):
and it's down to them. And it was totally brilliant
and he put them with their owning stones. On certain
nights we played Dates Herman and the Rolling Stones, and
trying to think everybody that went on a tour he packaged.
He was a great packager. He got an act, put
them on the show, and the next time they went

(47:13):
out themselves and so forth. And he was very nice guy.
He was very likable. Nice wife June Harris, who was
also in the business at the time, pr whatever, and
they were a good couple, and they were nice people.
He had a partner called Dick Freeberg, who you know there.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
Was So were you a good manager or were you
just bumping into things when you're managing Roman's romits?

Speaker 2 (47:39):
No, I think I was quite creative. I think I was.
I was very involved in a lot of the music
selection of music, even though a lot of the stuff
was rejected. I did try and get bus Stop, which
I had before anybody else to them so rejected by
Mickey most and other songs Well listen people he did,

(47:59):
but some people wasn't Nicky's choice. That just happened and
became a hit. So I don't think Mickey initially recognized
the brilliance of Graham Gouldman. But there's nothing like success,
and then eventually he did No Milk Today, and even
No Milk Today, he didn't put out as a single
A side in America because there's a kind of huss

(48:22):
was the A side which was crazy and East West
was another huge hit. You know, I think, no, I
think I was pretty good. I always employed the best people.
I employed a p R. I was Les Perrin. He
represented Frank Sinatra and then he's represented the Rolling Stones,
you know, a few small acts. So I'm going to

(48:42):
him Peter Noon, you know, right, or best photographer, who's
the best photographer? Go to him, always for the best.
I was never never frightened of you know, I was
never frightened of attempting something big. Always always, and even
the film. We did the film because the guy was

(49:02):
reputed to have had done some films with Elvis Presley,
and so he had a pedigree of some sort that
he wasn't just somebody off the street that's putting together
a movie, but he was because it was a chick
flick and it was rubbish. But that's beside the point.
I didn't know that at the time. So I think
I think all round, I think I was I was

(49:25):
pretty salad. You know I didn't do anything illegal. I
was straight. If somebody did something, I didn't need to
have a contract, you know. I was as good as
my words.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
So you didn't have a contract with the Herman's remits.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
I did initially. Yeah, I always had one. We always
had it on November the fifth. It's the day of
his birthday. Jay got married to his wife. A year later.
I got married to my wife on the name of
the fifth. My wife's mother was November the fifth. Guy
Fowks blew up that has as a parliament of trapped.
That was the day. Yes, So we had a three
year con. We then had a five year contract and

(50:03):
then I think we parted the last terman and another
three year contract. We always had a contract with Peter, Yeah,
I did. And Peter I speak to today, you know,
I spoke to him yesterday. I mean, he's he's a
very nice person and he's improved in his performances. Is wonderful.
He's a great storyteller, you know, he can he's got

(50:24):
the gift of the blindet as well.

Speaker 3 (50:25):
Absolutely, you mentioned Elvis, so you interacted with the colonel
and Elvis tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
We got off a massive tour in America, but I
don't know. It was more than America. It was a
world tour. Anyhow, we ended up, well, let's go to Hawaii.
Let's have a couple of days there. So we went
to Hawaii and I get to the hotel there and
they take one look at Herman's hermits and the manager,
who is German, she's very sorry, we don't have the

(50:56):
rooms for you. So what do you mean you don't
have the rooms. We've got reservation in Hawaii. If the
people don't leave the rooms, they can't be pushed out.
This is the law of Hawaii and I've stud there.
So I said to the group, put all your equipment
on the front of the cahal. It's a beautiful entrance.
So from thirty feet there was masses of equipment and cases.

(51:20):
Ten people with all the cases right across, so nobody
could get him. And I phoned up tom Off at
the DJ and I said, can we what we're going
to do? We can't get in. There are no rooms. Oh,
come and stay with me, I said, there, I said,
I've got nineteen rooms. I live in a mission house.
Don't worry about it. So we stayed with him. He
used to put every show on, and he put Elvis on,

(51:41):
so he'd obviously told the colonel, why didn't you ask
Carvey to come and meet Elvis? And I got I
got in the room and there was an you know,
and for some reason there was a notice that Elvis
and the Colonel would like to meet you and the Hermits.
Well okay, so I wasn't going to say no, great. Uh.

(52:05):
There were photographs taken of that event, and for some reason,
Keith Hotwood wasn't on the photograph, and neither was Carl Green.
And I could never understand why why weren't they there?
And I spoke to Keith about three weeks ago and
he said they kept changing this date for us to

(52:26):
go out there. And I was so fed up being
away from home. I decided to go home because I
never thought it was going to happen. Anyhow, it did happen.
We went to the the went to the Polynesian village
whether than beautiful Hut, a bit like the catch Bull
at four, you know, so far in the Sweet Cat
Stevens thing, all those huts, you know, lovely hut, And

(52:49):
there was Elvis. He has white trousers on bear down
to the nothing underneath, no shoes, nothing, and the colonel
comes in. He said, ah, a fat Brian Epstein, I thought, great,
I need this like a hole in. That was true.
I was fat for everybody else. Anyhow, we had a

(53:11):
chat with Elvis. If Elvis stood up six henchmen dressed
exactly the same, with the same houstyle, same brookriam, everything
all stood up together. Everything was. It was the king,
so everybody had to do what the king did. He farted.
They're all going to fard. You know, there's no that
that's what you do. And he and Peter Noom was brilliant, brilliant.

(53:33):
The first question said how come you made it without
long hair, which is and so Elvis said, well maybe
my side Boon's helped, you know what I mean. It
was a great It was a great conversation. It was,
and we got on really well. I'm not convinced how
well Elvis even knew about Herman's service. I don't know.
All I know is it was a It was a

(53:54):
meeting that we milked to hell. And when I got
back to England, I was doing TV. Somebody that's actually
matter because nobody did meet meta Alvis. He never been
to England. He never went to England.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
And what about the colonel. You talk in the book
about a few conversations with the colonel.

Speaker 2 (54:11):
Oh, the colonel is unbelievable, great, and he is responsible.
He's much maligned. He's responsible for merchandising as we know it.
There was a some he telled me. I think there
was some gig in Carolina where I don't know that
fifty thousand people in the forecast was for tremendous torrential rain.

(54:32):
And the Colonel had spent all night trying to find
out where he could buy umbrellas. I mean, this was
the head of the man was incredible. There was a
film that Elvis Presley was in and when they'd finished,
the Colonel had said to the heads of MGM, by
the way, did you get permission to use that watch
that Elvis was wearing? And they looked to no, Well,

(54:54):
either you take it out of every scene, or you
give me quarter of a million dollars quarter a million dollars,
thank you very much. I mean, he was who's he was.
He was a showman who was from circus background. He
told me why he used to get I didn't care
about opening acts, adding package. I used to get a magician,
a conjurer with three mice, and they went on for

(55:17):
forty five minutes and the crowd were going mad, and
then I boy went on Elvis. Now was it the
crowd where? I mean it was? It was a total
opposite to what I was doing when I was trategy,
what's a good act to get the public? And his
idea was to bore the people to sick until Elvis
came on and then he was away and what else? Yeah,

(55:39):
So when I got to Las Vegas. My final story
about him, which is my favorite. He was my son
Paul's twenty first birthday and we were in LA and
I said, well, what, well, what would you like to
do for your birthday? He said, I'd like to go
to Las Vegas. And we were shocked because nobody it
just wasn't the right place we went, and I said, well,

(56:01):
I know the colonel lives here. I'll phone him up
to see whether we can see him. So I'll phone
up the colonel and he says, Harvey, I'm sorry, I'm
just going to the dentist at the moment. I'd love
for you to come, but unfortunate, I've got this. But
if I get finished earlier, I'll call you. So anyhow,
I thought, yes, we're not going to hear from him.
Two hours later, the phone goes, Hi, Harvey, I'm back

(56:23):
from the I'm back. Do you want to bring the
boys around so I can meet them? So now I'm panicking.
Every time I met him, we'd all been in limos.
I mean when he went in a limo with Elvis,
there was a Cadillac in front, three behind. It was
like a processional rub So anyhow, I thought, well, I've
got to get a limo. I'll go into his house.
I'll phone up this agency and I said, look, I

(56:45):
don't want any stretch wheel base, I don't want anything flash.
I just want an ordinary town car please, and a driver.
They send this car around. It's a gray, a gray
town car. It has bullet holes all the way through
the side of the doors, all through the back. And
then he drives us up to the house and he
can't go park. We'll walk up to the house so

(57:09):
we couldn't show this limo. So such bad, that's my sorny.
We came in there and he took the boys into
a room which was filled with photographs of Elvis, with
every dignitary, every memoraiyalty of the world, to you know,
to to the King or whatever, you know, every It

(57:31):
was just amazing. And he spent a lot of time
with the boys. He really liked them, Philip and Paula,
my two boys, and he was very kind. And he
invited me to his ninetieth I think or eighty fifth
birthday party. One. I couldn't get to the last one.
But I always liked him, and I hated the interpretation

(57:51):
of Tom Hanks in the film Elvis. I mean, he
never had a voice like that at all. He had
a kind of a sudden drawl or put on sudden draw.
It was nothing like that thing. And apparently somebody told
me that the reason Hanks did that voice was because
they wanted to make him distinctive as being kind of European.

(58:13):
And I don't know whatever it was, but it was
very unfair. It was. It was a bad portrayal, I thought,
I mean really rough. And all I can say to everybody,
they say, well, he had fifty percent. What do you
think of that? I said, well, do you think Elvis
Presley would have had any success without the Colonel? Because
I don't think he would. He would have children as

(58:35):
another country singer maybe.

Speaker 3 (58:39):
So how did it end with Hermit Summits.

Speaker 2 (58:42):
Well, Peter decided he wanted to go on his own.
He was a natural showman. He wanted to become like
a Tommy Steele. He was always the focal point of
the band. They were doing then cabaret work because the
hit side of it had turned not sour, it was quiet,
and he wanted to be more or more himself and
be an entertainer like Michael Crawford, Tommy Steele, you know

(59:05):
that sort of thing. And he could go on and
the pladium and do his own thing. And Mickey got
him a song which was a Davy Bowie song, Oh
You Pretty Thing, and he had a huge So the
band split on November the fifth, right, the Hermits went
their own way and it was reasonably amicable. But because

(59:29):
things weren't that great at that stage, we had no
success in America at all. That had sort of dried
it completely. But Oh You Pretty Things became a hit
in England, and when it came to doing it on
Top of the Pops, David Bowie himself played on the
set because Musicians' Union regulations that people that played on

(59:49):
the record either had to be on it or had
to something to do with unions, and he came all
dressed in as David bib. We dressed totally out of it,
and there was Peter both on the same thing. And
I met David bow who was very charming, very nice person,
very really nice. I found it very nice. You can
only find people where they found them. I mean I've

(01:00:11):
even found people that like Alan Klin. So you know,
it's how you found somebody and how you deal with them.
It's because you found them to be abhorrent or whatever.
It doesn't mean to say they are. My other favorite
manager was Peter Grant.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
Of course, well okay, you bring them up. Tell us
a little bit about Peter Grant.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
Well, I was in America and Queen were looking for management.
So I said to Peter, you manage led Zeppelin. I
managed Herman serrmitson now Tennessee c how can we not
get a management contract if we've joined forces? And we
went to meet them. Meanwhile, I'd been sending tickets to

(01:00:51):
write Taylor for Wimbledon. He loved tennis. I used to
send him tickets always getnis and John Paul now getting
mixed up no, not John poured downs. Of course. Now,
I'd seen Freddie a few times early in when he
was fifteen. I saw him at Kensington Market, film maker,

(01:01:11):
nails polished and everything, and I said, somebody, who's that,
Oh it's Freddy And he was exactly the same as
he was ten seven years later. Freddie was Freddy even then.
So going back to her that they had the meeting,
Jim Beach was the person that was the accountant and
he was holding the meeting the four members, myself and Peter,

(01:01:32):
and they rejected us. So I couldn't believe it. And
also Peter was just about to form his label, Swan Song,
and I think he wanted them to be on that label.
And I'm not sure whether the reason they turned us
down was maybe because they didn't want to go on
Swan Song anyhow, which I wouldn't have minded, or I

(01:01:55):
don't think it would have been the ideal for them.
I think we could have done better than doing that.
But you know, so Peter and I got really friendly,
and they employed John Reid as the manager Queen and
then he slunk him out after two years, and then
Jim Beach became the manager and to this day he

(01:02:16):
still manages them. He's in Switzerland, I don't know, obviously
in his eighties, but and he's ever since that day.
And I met Roger Taylor coincidentally at what was meant
to be Paul McCartney's last concert ever about ten years ago,
which was an extra date put on the end of
the last tour in Inverted Commerce at Liverpool at the

(01:02:36):
Albert Dock, and I was sitting next to Roger Taylor
and he turned around and says, have you got any
Wimbledon tickets? Which is amazing how people remember things. I mean,
it was, it was just great. And I really liked
Queen by the way. I didn't when I was young,
because when I had TENNCC they were like I would

(01:02:57):
saying to myself, what are you playing that rubbish? Use
was playing Queen Killer Queen Back to Florence, and oh
it's rubbish. But afterwards I began to love them. And
we've actually promoted them as well a few times in England.
But Freddie Mercury was probably my favorite showman of the
last century.

Speaker 3 (01:03:21):
Okay, but Peter Grant certainly previously been a wrestler.

Speaker 2 (01:03:26):
He's a big guy, hundred pounds, was.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
He winning an intimidation or was he really that sharp?

Speaker 2 (01:03:37):
Wow, that's a loaded question, they said, you'd asked questions
like this. Well, first of all, he had he worked
in the same office as Mickey most so I haven't
done very well. His first hit was Winchester Cathedral, the
New Vaudeville Band, and he had that, and he was
the road manager for Gen Vincent. And he told me

(01:03:59):
some great stories of about Jean Vincent. He was very sweet.
He had this exterior that was like a gorilla but
at the time and I just and I had all
the stories about him, people hanging from the windows and
god knows what to get money. But I never came

(01:04:22):
across that. I came across the other side of him.
He came to our house for dinner. My wife Carol
was the most wonderful, wonderful gormet chef, and she did
a side of beef fifty pounds. He came in, he
sat down on a chair, broke the chair, and then
we put him back up again, and he at the
whole side of beef himself, and he says, I've got

(01:04:44):
tickets for you to go to the Free Trade Hall
to see led Zeppelin. And I said, okay, have you
got any cotton wool in the house? I said, what
cotton wool? So why? He says, well, i'll give you
impression you are to eat. Therefore rows in front of
the base speaking and I don't think you were going

(01:05:04):
to like that anyhow, and then we went. We've met
many occasions and my favorite story, which is in the book,
I love this one. We're in La both at the
Beverly Hillton Hotel and we decide we're going to go
out for dinner. And he liked steak, so I said, well,

(01:05:26):
there's a restaurant called Larry's, which is the best steak
there is. And my parents were staying there. I was
with my parents. Let's all go together. So I went
with my parents and he was following on and I
got to the door of the restaurant. A very stuffy
matre d ontwer the door, and he says, oh, you
can't come in without a jacket. And of course, with
my arrogance, I said, well you get me one, you know,

(01:05:47):
And that was me. It was horrible, but that was me.
You get me one. And he comes back with his
seasucker jacket and I put it on and I said
by the way, he says, yes, I said that our
next the last person in the pot to arrive. You
might not be able to accommodate him with a jacket.
We can fit anybody. Don't you worry about it. We
got it all covered. Peter Graham walks through the door

(01:06:10):
and he says, I pass, Yeah, that's Peter.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
Totally hilarious. Okay, So how do you meet Graham Goldman?

Speaker 2 (01:06:19):
Graham Goodman, Lol Crean, Kevin Godley and myself all lived
in the North Manchester Jewish ghetto within one and a
half miles of each other. So that's everybody knew everybody
virtually in that community. So and Graham was in a
band called the Whirlwinds, which was an exceptionally good kind

(01:06:44):
of show band type of thing that played very unusual stuff.
They played all the Italian songs of which were inundating
England Marino, Marini, Kondo, Kondo, Kwonda, all those type of songs,
played them very nicely, and finished off with Alexander's ragtime
band with all the hands going you know at the end.

(01:07:05):
And Brain was a phenomenal guitarist. And I went to
see them at the Jewish Lads Brigade it was a month.
I think it was Monday night the US.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
What exactly was the Jewish Lads Brigade.

Speaker 2 (01:07:18):
It was like a place like the YMCA where people
would go the Jewish who looked after it, like a
youth center where there were camps and football arrange and
all sorts of things for Jewish people to the kids
to go to. And they would practice there because there
was a hall there. It was a good place for
them to practice their equipment. And I went there, and

(01:07:40):
I don't know why I went there, and I've been
trying to find out why I went there. It was
I was an accountant. I had nothing to do with
the music business other than I love music. And I
asked Phil Cohen, who was one of the lead singers
of the band, about two weeks ago, I said, why
was I there? And he said, well, none of us
knew why you were there, and none of us knew

(01:08:02):
you except me because I played football with you. So
I was the only person. And I don't know why
you were there. So anyhow, but I was there, and obviously,
and I got trying to I don't know what it was.
The manager they had there was a guy called Victor
Coss and he was very, very arrogant. This band was

(01:08:23):
very popular. They had date sheet that was fill you know,
they played upmarket places. They weren't playing rock and roll places.
They were playing you know, maybe maybe weddings, maybe you know,
tennis club dances or whatever. They were. They were very,
very very They were well paid, and I probably wanted

(01:08:46):
to be involved with them somehow. But I can't put
it together why except that I love Graham and this guy,
the Victor Call, he was just in his own planet.
He was just horrendous. And I asked Phil about him
as well. I said, well, what was he like as
a manager? Am I being unfair saying he wasn't a
good manager? He said he wasn't until we signed the contract,

(01:09:08):
and I don't know what that means. Meanwhile, I loved
Graham anyhow. Graham was just amazing guitarist and lived really
near to me, I mean nearer than the others, and
I got talking to him and I waited then till
Herman Summits had had some success and I approached him again.

(01:09:30):
I said, well, you know, would you like to join me?
Obviously what I can do for you? And maybe you
should write some songs yourself, you know, because he wasn't
writing songs in the in that pand particularly I think
they had a couple of records. Actually one of them
might have been and are fully brothers. I don't know what.

(01:09:52):
Then they did a cover version of something, but it
didn't do anything. So their band was kind of in
a to disarray and people were going into their own careers,
and Graham said, okay, well let's try it. And I
met his father, who is a very nice man called himI,
who is a frustrated playwright, absolute genius, beautiful with lyrics,

(01:10:16):
very very close. And his mother was lovely, lady Betty,
and they were a lovely couple, and they she was
very into theater, so both of them were very theatrical.
And it was a nice thing. And I got to
know them and I said, look, would could I look
after him? And I gave him a few quid a week.
I was a retainer to you know, keep just good faith.

(01:10:38):
And I did that with Kevin Law. I did that
with they did a mural for me. I just kept
everybody in work because money was flowing through me. Like
like I said to you, it was a joke, you know,
I couldn't give it away quick enough. Rice Weber as well.
We talked about I put them on a dealer, I
mean everybody that came and Graham. Graham was very close.

(01:10:58):
He was like a brother, and we started writing together,
and then I was involved in the writing. We used
to go nine till five every day to his little
flat and we used to just plod along, playing things,
taking things out. I was acting like more as an editor.
He'd plays something. I said, well, that's great play that.

(01:11:19):
Why do you change that? And we had this break
where it wasn't a brain wave house. The Rising Sun
was so big, I mean it was just everybody had
a guitar was playing it. I said, why do you
write a song on those four chords? And he said,
and surreptitiously he changed the last chord minimally and then
wrote for your Love And then in the middle, I said,

(01:11:40):
well we need something different in the middle. Can you
do anything? And he broke it into the rock and
roll part of it, and then it finished it and
I heard it and I thought, number one, there is
no question. I was absolutely convinced going to take that
to the Beatles. They can do it. I had very
like I said, I don't think small, and Graham looked
at me as, oh, man, yeah, write the Beatles. You

(01:12:00):
know they're not going to And he hadn't handy his
success at all ready, so you know. But anyhow, I
decided we'd go and see the Beatles and get it
to them. So we went to see the Beatles at
Hammersmith Odeon and the opening up with the Yardbirds, and
behind me was a publisher called running Back, who was
a publisher. I said, look, Ronnie, can you do me

(01:12:21):
a favor? I've got this demo? Can you go and
play it to the Beatles? I think that I think
it's the number one and I'd like to know And
and he looked at me sheepishly as I'm mad. And
after the interval he comes back, do you mind very
much of I play it to the Yardbirds? I said?
Who are the yard Berds are opening up? No? I

(01:12:41):
wanted to go to the Beatles. Who the uppers? The
armis don't mean shit? Come on? Anyhow, he said, well,
the manager would like to meet you. And how between
Georgio Gomelsky and Hem they managed to taught me into
allowing them to do it. Eric Clapton blew a fit
He wanted the Yard to be a blues orientated band,

(01:13:03):
as most of them were, like Lon John Baldry and
the Huci Coucie Man, Rod Stewart and the Steam Packet.
They all played American rhythm and blues and that was it,
and they were mad on the blues. And Eric Clapton
didn't want to know about Bloody Graham, Gooman or pop
or anything. It wasn't where he wanted to go, and
he subsequently left the band. They've got a few small
people in there, didn't they. Jeff Beck, a few other

(01:13:26):
miners came into the band, but that so For Your
Love went out. Georgio taught me into it. He used
I think Brian August. They used some very he did
some very nice things the harpsichord on. It was very
clever and it was a very again it was it
had atmosphere, you know, certain records like I'm Not in

(01:13:49):
Love bahem in Rhapsody MacArthur Park, they've got atmosphere, and
that for Your Love at the time, for what it was,
it had that atmosphere. Something slightly weird, isn't it. And
the lyrics, of course weren't done by the Graham. The
lyrics were high. Miss A seventeen year old doesn't write
I'd give the moon if it were mine to give.

(01:14:10):
I mean, not in the sixteen year old guy from school.
I might know it. So I'm an artist from his father.
And it was great. It was a great, great lyric
And of course then the thing went to number one.
I mean, as I said, everything I had touched turned
to gold. I mean, it really did. I should have

(01:14:30):
known that things would change, but it was certainly. It
was certainly a golden era for me.

Speaker 3 (01:14:37):
So after a four year love, how does the songwriting
continue with Graham?

Speaker 2 (01:14:42):
I thought of the titles A Heart full of Soul.
That's my claim to fame. So technically I'm a co writer,
and technically I wrote half the lyrics because it's repeated
about nine times. But other than that, yeah, So I
got involved. Kevin Lolan was done. Next thing we did,
and Kevin now brought me beautiful songs. Graham and I

(01:15:05):
we were going to publish them, and we we did it.
We decided we joined the company together myself and Graham
called our new Music, and I think we also put
some of Graham's songs in it as well. I think
maybe even no milk today went in it. And we
just did that fifty to fifty myself with Graham, so
it was like it was done with Campbell Connelly. They

(01:15:28):
had fifty and we had fifty percent. I was fed
up about for your love's royalties. Graham was getting fifty percent,
and then it was fifty percent for Overseas Publishing, which
was just so that was the end as far as
I was concerned. And we I just did a heart

(01:15:48):
full of soul deal because we didn't have time to
really and afterwards we said, right, we'll go our own
publishing company. We're not going through all this nonsense again.
And that was it and we formed man Well, I
formed mankm Us in America and that was in sixty
five or something. And yeah, so that that's what goded

(01:16:11):
me to do my own publishing company.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
Okay, So when you put Graham's new songs in that
publishing company, how was the split? And it was just
the two of you.

Speaker 2 (01:16:23):
Yeah, we split and we split the publishing share with
Cambel Kennelly and then Graham got the writer's share.

Speaker 3 (01:16:32):
Okay, so you split twenty five and he got fifty
he got Okay, who owns that stuff?

Speaker 2 (01:16:39):
Today Campbell and Early brought it back and it's bought
by Wise Music. Now it's gone down the chain. You know,
Campbell Cannelley was sold, this was so and acquired and
so forth.

Speaker 3 (01:16:51):
Well, I guess what I'm saying. Have you sold your
share and as well?

Speaker 2 (01:16:54):
Now I sell my share. I'm graham share A long
time ago. Was mistake. Obviously we sold it in about
nineteen sixty seven. I think we got two and a
half thousand pounds each for it. And does he still
have his writer's share? No, No, I sold that too,
the writer's share. I acquired the writer's share when they sold.

(01:17:18):
They sold all their rights virtually in nineteen ninety three
or six or something. They sold to Saint Ann's was
sold to EMI firstly, and then every member of Tennessee
C other than Long sold their rights because of various
financial implications they had at the time. They needed money

(01:17:39):
and they couldn't acquire it or whatever, and they sold
for considerable amount of money. And I acquired the American
rights because I asked Graham, Eric and Kevin I think
at the time, you know, said, look, if you're going
to sell to EMI for the world, why do you
let me buy the rights, I'll give you a better deal,

(01:18:00):
which I did, and you know, let me look after it.
They're my babies as well. So I still published the
the songs even to today, of subjects to reversions obviously
of Tennessee c in America.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
And in America we have the right of reversion.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Yeah, that will all work. When it works. Yeah, when
it works.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
A good point.

Speaker 2 (01:18:28):
When it works, I'm talking about on the time period
of the thing, right.

Speaker 3 (01:18:31):
So do they have any of their rights back?

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
They will have.

Speaker 3 (01:18:37):
Okay, let's get back to the narrative. So you're working
with Graham. You're having this incredible success. How do you
get the songs to the Hollys.

Speaker 2 (01:18:48):
I didn't. I think Graham got them through it one
way or another because of Graham Nash. Although the Hollies
were managed by fellow or Michael Cohen, who's my wife's
first cousin. I was quite close with him. But I
think Graham got them to Graham got them to Graham Nash. Somehow.
I got the song and I tried to get it

(01:19:09):
for Herman's Hermits, and I went to Mickey Most who
just rejected it. And I was very upset because I
thought it was a super song. I was in Israel
and when I got back, Graham said, I've written a
new song. I said, okay, and I come around to
the house. He came out to my house and we
had this horrendous Epstein furniture which was like so big

(01:19:30):
you could filled the whole room. And he sat in
this huge armchair with one foot laps on both sides
with this thick material. And Graham gets on and starts
playing bus stop. He plays it right through with the
reff everything, and I just sat back. I thought, oh
my god, that is incredible. It's possibly his best song,

(01:19:52):
you know. It was just it was amazing. It had
the feel of the time, The lyric was charming, the
song was incredible. How can Mickey most turn it down? Well,
in one word, No, that WASNX and the the exide.
I think Grahamer got it to the Hollies. The Hollis
had done an initial song of Graham had written a
song with Charlie call look Through Any Window, So that's

(01:20:15):
probably how they got it because that had a success
as well. That was a top twenty in England, so
that's probably how that happened.

Speaker 3 (01:20:22):
So how does Graham as an individual song writer morph
into ten CC, Strawberry Studios, Eric Stewart and everybody.

Speaker 2 (01:20:35):
He starts off with Oerx Stewart. I mean I bought,
as I saying, to the agency, Kennedy Street Agency. I
bought the partners out of that. They had Freddy and
the Dreamers and when Fontana and between us we had
one two and three in Billboard one week with when Fontana,
Freddie and Herman one two and three. So that was

(01:20:55):
all right from Manchester, which was our aim always to
stay in Manchester. I I'm trying to think, and yeah,
that's right. Then Wayne Fontana had the big the Game
of Love. I think then the mind Wayne Fontana and
the mind Benders split up mind Men as a hit

(01:21:19):
called Groovy Kind of Love, which went to number one
world wide. I think was was it Gothinking might have been.
I don't know who it was. It was, It was
a very big writers anyhow, it was a great song.
And then Graham joined with Eric in the Mind Benders.
I don't know why, but that happened. So that's their
first thing together. I'd met Wayne Fontana and Eric in

(01:21:42):
America on tour when I was touring home and I
met him for the first time. Very good looking, very charming, nice,
very nice, very nice person and at the time, so
they got together. Then then we always had this dilemma
of having to go to London to record, which was

(01:22:05):
a pain in the ass. So they decided they wanted
to start a recording studio in Manchester. We invested in
the studio Kennedy Street, our company. Dixon, who was managing
Eric at the time, also was employed by Kennedy Street.
He was supervised a lot of the work in the
studio and they developed a Strawberry studio. Once that studio

(01:22:29):
was going, Graham in the meantime had been writing and
he was doing songs. He went to America to write
for Kaznuts Cats on some kind of a deal, and
then he used to do demos of the songs and
put them out in England to try and have success
with various tracks that they all wrote together. Really good

(01:22:51):
stuff read songs that nobody's ever heard, but they were
really good. They were utilizing the studio to get it.
Then when it really happened was when they were testing
drum equipment or something and kevil Ola and Eric came
up with neanderthal Man, which was huge hit in England,
a song Obscure Song, And when Graham joined, then that

(01:23:15):
band to put with Moody Blues on some tour, and
then the four of them used to do session work
all the time for anybody that came. So we had
an artist called Ramses and they did a whole album
with Rameses. And then through my meeting Tony Christie and
being my real second act, probably after Herman's Thermit's or no,

(01:23:41):
after Graham, Tony Christie was the next person on the
scene and he had a very good voice. You liked
Tom Jones. I was in America the bal Building with
Donny Kirshner, who I was quite friendly with her liked
a lot, And I said, whatever happened to Nil Sadhaka,
one of my teenage loves, And he said he's upstairs.

(01:24:03):
He said, you're kidding. He said, can I hear it?
Because I'm with my wife Carol, Let's go and see him.
So we went up to this little room ten feet
by six with a big upright piano, and Donnie says, Neil,
playing some of your new stuff. They played five tracks.
The last one was is this the Way to Amarillo?
And I said that's it. That's a smash. I like that,
and Donnie looked at him. It's Neil, and Neil looked

(01:24:26):
at Donnie and they said, this guy is crazy. They didn't.
They just looked at it. They didn't. They didn't like
the song. Anyhow. I get back to England and now
Carol's driving me mad. Have you got a demo for
that song? Get the demo? And I'm phoning Donna Cashion.
It was like with Mickey most It's like getting things
out of people was so hard. You had to have
my kind of persistence or ignorance or whatever you call it,

(01:24:50):
or what there's a better word than that kutzper to
truly drive people mad. So and finally he sent me
a demo of Amarillo. I went to London. It was
recorded the next day. It was put in the charts.
Two weeks later he got to eighteen, which I thought
was crap. I thought that it was much better than that. Anyhow,
twenty five years later, Peter care comedian did a thing

(01:25:13):
for BBC which is a Red Nose Day, which is
to do with charity, and they did a new video
and they used it is this the way to Amarilla.
It became the biggest record of two thousand and four
and was number one for twelve weeks in the UK charts.
That's the history of that. But going back to why
I started, so when even when he got to eighteen,
Danny Kirshn who was ecstatic, He says, God, I thought

(01:25:36):
I had good ears. That's amazing, Harvey. And I said, well,
why do you send Kneel over to England? And that's
let the boys do a bit of recording with him,
you know, because they're very good and they had had
a hit with I think that, yeah, they might have
had a hit with Neanderthal Man. By then they were
having success and Graham had had a pedigree, and you know,
Graham just had hit. He was a joke. So anyhow,

(01:25:59):
and also so I become a brother in law of Graham.
We married sisters, and that was in nineteen sixty nine,
so this was seventy one. Everything was happening at the
same time. So Danny said, okay, I'll send him over
to do a session. So he came over to do
a session and he did two albums. Monster never stopped recording.

(01:26:21):
We used to go into the studio. He used to
sit at the piano to start with, and then he
goes calendar girl breaking up his heart to do and
everybody's sitting on the floor getting a concert before his starts.
And I used to bring bagels and locks from north Manchster,
best bagels in the world, best locks from a shock

(01:26:43):
called Titanic, which was named after some of his grandparents
who died in the Titanic or something. And he loved it,
and the so and so credited me on the album.
I was quite instrument I was responsible. Yeah, I can
say I was responsible for Neil's Darker having a revival.
I mean, you know, okay, Elton John put the record out,

(01:27:04):
and Elton John did this and that and the other.
But he wouldn't have seen Elton John unless this had happened.
The credit was Harvey didn't even have full name Harvey
Bagels and lucks. That's the darker story. So then then
he said to them boys, because he'd done beautiful music
with them, it was magnificent, he said to them, well,

(01:27:25):
why don't you do something yourself? And I think that
goaded them. They've now done a Ramses album which is
pretty damn good. They've done. It's a darker album with
tracks which are amazing, right solitaire, I mean just incredible.
And then so they started fiddling around themselves. That's the
beginning of the tense siemaur together. And then they did

(01:27:48):
a song called Waterfall, which I didn't like. They thought
it was the greatest thing since Last Bread, and they
pedaled it everywhere themselves more or less, and Apple said
they liked it. You know, Apple, it was the most
disorganized organization in the world. They liked it. So you

(01:28:08):
know what happened to that. Jonathan King comes up one
day and they they done a track called Donner, which
is a ripoff of O Darling by the Beatles, which
is a ripoff of Valance Darling. I mean, the thing
oh Darling has been used not I can't describe it

(01:28:29):
to the Beatles. It goes back to American whoever did
it to start with. So they did this and we
thought it was a joke. I mean, Lol had a
high pitched voice, and you know, they all thought Waterfall
was great. And Jonathan King said that's a hit. Oh yeah, right, yeah,
right right, yeah, we know it's a hit. So well,
I'll give you I think he gave him five and

(01:28:51):
offered some money or something for it. Was crazy. Okay, right, okay,
we'll do it, and he I got to number two
in the charts, and that was the beginning of the
Nathan King thing. We signed a contract with Jonathan King
on a very low loyalty. I think we were on
four percent, I think. And my idea was, Okay, we'll

(01:29:12):
sign this, but if they become successful, I'm sure he'll
renegotiate and that will be great for us. We can
we'll have all the benefits of his enthusiasm. We'll have
a hit, we'll have another hit. Great, and then he
won't be happy. He wants us to earn money. Anyhow,
that was the wrong thing. He didn't anyway. They had

(01:29:34):
a load of success. This is between seventy two and
seventy four, tremendous, many of many hits. Nothing in America,
not a smell in America. Number one in England with
rubber bullets, The Dean and I was a hit, or
Frant's Saint's a hit, Mandy Flymy Classic was a hit,

(01:29:58):
and nothing in America all and the boys said, we're
on four percent, We're on one percent. Jonathan is getting
more himself than all of us put together. It's not right.
So I speak to Jonathan. I said, look, this isn't right.
Will you change it? No, the contracts at contract public
school is you signed a contract. That's the contract. And

(01:30:21):
the law in England stipulates you can't force somebody to
do a management contract. And it was I managed Jimmy White,
for instance, a snooker player. He tried to get out
of his contract. My only all I could do is
get damages. I can't force him to carry on with
me and that so we did the reverse with Jonathan.

(01:30:43):
King said, well, look they're not going to give you
any more product. You're not going to work for less
than you getting more than the whole group put together.
I'm sorry. And incidentally, by the way Jonathan said, finally
was forced into meeting and we went on the train,
myself and my attorney to meet Jonathan King at eight

(01:31:06):
o'clock in the Westbury Hotel. The train broke down in
the middle of nowhere and we were stuck on this
train from Manchester to London. We got into the Westbury
Hotel at four thirteen and there were no telephones. There
was no mobile phone. We were in the middle of nowhere.
He was at the hotel. We got there at four

(01:31:27):
point thirty were still sitting there waiting, and I couldn't
believe that he'd waited all that time. And now we
did the deal, and he got a very good deal.
He got a reversion of the rights from me. First
of all, we got permission to leave and go on
to another company. And the other company being Phonograph, had
done a deal with him to acquire the rights for

(01:31:49):
those albums for that period of time, the rights reverting
to him again, they could sell them again and again.
And I spoke to Jonathan a few weeks ago and
they said it was the worst decision he ever made. Now,
the reason we left was was we had no success
in America. The reason we had no success in America
because we're on a crappy label. London Records was born

(01:32:09):
on the worst label I've ever been associated with. Not
that we went to a much better one in Mercury,
but London was particularly bad. I mean, we went with
Mercury because of the money, and Phonogram because of their
pedigree Deutsche Grammarphone. For the rest of the world, that's
a different story. But London didn't get us a sniff.

(01:32:32):
And my son Paul said to me, well, maybe it's
because the American radio weren't playing that kind of music
at the time. It was very formatted American radio and
TENCC just didn't fit into that at all. And there
is an element of truth in that. But the talent
was so great and the publicity was so wonderful, even

(01:32:54):
in America, that one would have thought they'd have had
some kind of success with all that magnificent, but they didn't.
So we went to Phonogram.

Speaker 3 (01:33:10):
Okay, so you have all those albums. I bought them more.

Speaker 2 (01:33:14):
I was a big fan.

Speaker 3 (01:33:16):
The album comes on on Phonogram Mercury, I'm Not in Love.
Tell us the story there.

Speaker 2 (01:33:22):
I went into the well. The great thing about inger
manager then of TENNESSEC, was I didn't have the problem
of finding the song. I sat back and they presented
me with all this magnificent so and the only thing
is to decide which song goes out first or which
is the hit. So they pre into this album and
because the record company, I went into the studio and

(01:33:44):
I heard I'm Not in Love unmixed in the studio
and talking about atmosphere. That was the Bee's Knees. That
was That was definitely the best thing they did from
a point of view of atmosphere, it was incredible difficulty
being it was six minutes and there was a lot

(01:34:04):
of discussion was resulted in them putting Minnestronia as the
first single in England. Anyhow, I'm Not in Love just
took over the world. It was the biggest record and
it was even in America, even on Mercury, probably the
worst record company there. And the other thing why it
really didn't happen was the group, who were always very

(01:34:28):
meticulous about the sound in concerts did not give it well,
I shouldn't say they didn't give it off. They didn't
pay much attention to the visuality of their show. So
they never they would go on in genes with a
T shirt like like Steve Jobs. You know, it wasn't
even they weren't even interested in anything, whereas Dave Bowie,

(01:34:52):
Mark Bowl and Freddie Mercury, you know, you just go
on and on of all the stars that did get
that additional visual thing. And concerning how good Kevin Low
were on visuality and artistic work, as subsequently they proved
with their video stuff, it just wasn't used for them.
So when we were off they were interested in sound

(01:35:14):
sound sound. Oh it's to me mad. I said to them, well,
if they want the sound and by the bloody record,
I want to go to a concert. I want to
hear them singer sing flat. I don't care if he
drops a few notes. I don't care if the string breaks.
I want a live performance. I want an interaction with
Surely that's the game for a live show. But they

(01:35:36):
didn't see it that way. Well, they weren't prepared to
do anything. We were off at the Eagle store while
the record was in the charts, and of course it
was rejected, wasn't it because of some bloody sound thing
or something? Or I didn't want to go into it.
I thought, well, you know, and also I think I

(01:35:57):
think Frank Barcelona was actually looking after tency See as well.
I think so it might have come from his packaging ideas.
I don't know, but they were perfectly suited as well.
I mean, when we played with the Rolling Stones, that
was not a clever match. It was totally different. But
the Eagles and TENCC, that just that would have been easy.

(01:36:18):
And I think if they'd have done that, they'd have
had a number one album, and I think we wouldn't
be talking about them in the same way. I mean,
they are definitely not first division. You know, they're not Beatles,
Queen Pink, Floyd Prince, Michael Jackson. But I think they

(01:36:40):
could have been if they'd have had a few number
one albums in America and the American public had got
to know the humor and the genius of them. And
of course they didn't stay together again, I mean, I'm
talking about I'm not in Love with only half the
band as well in the end, because the others had
left were leaving.

Speaker 3 (01:36:58):
Okay, so tell us about the being breaking up in
the Gizmo, etc.

Speaker 2 (01:37:02):
Yeah, Well, the band were always two sided affair. It
was Graham and Eric with the establishment. They could have
had both eyes on and Kevin Lol. Were the hippies
they wanted. They didn't care about commerciality. That was not
their game. Their game was doing what they want, unrepressed, unedited, unproduced.

(01:37:27):
You know they did. Consequences was three albums, a three
album set. You know, it's crazy. And all I said
is give me a single, Please give me a single.
And they played a track called Honolulu Lulu, which is
seventeen seconds of a brilliant idea. Aloha, I'm Honolulu, Lulu
from Hawaii. I saw you from the corner of my eye,

(01:37:50):
which and it was beautiful music, and I said, that's it.
We've got a single. It's going to be a smash. Anyhow,
a few weeks later I went to the rest of
their track, put like a fifteen minute orchestral piece on
top of the seventeen seconds, and that was all. That's
their commerciality. They weren't. They weren't at all interested in commerciality.
But Kevin loll but Graham and Eric, they think, right,

(01:38:14):
we've got to do an album. We've got to do
it by this time. We've got to have the singles.
We've got to do this, We've got to do that.
And I think the obviously they've been together for four years,
and there was there was, I don't know, not musical differences.
There were I don't even think of his personality differences.
I just think, you know, the instead of nowadays an

(01:38:36):
artist would take off for a year and then go
back and do it. In those days, it was like
they created a brand. It had a tremendous marketing aspect worldwide,
with the exception of America. They could everywhere they went,
and so Graham and Eric joined together and they did
The Things We Do for Love, which was half done

(01:38:57):
before Kevin long left or that, and Kevin just hated
it when they heard it. They hated it, and it
was very much liked in America, and Graham went to
see beat Middler, who was a favorite song at the time.
I mean, you know, it was a very popular song,
and it actually outsold I'm Not in Love, which I

(01:39:17):
didn't understand, but go figure it.

Speaker 3 (01:39:23):
Okay, the BM split support, but you're still looking after
Eric and Graham? Do you continue with Kevin and Lawell?
How long does that last?

Speaker 2 (01:39:32):
I did a deal with Kevin Lowell, but I carried
on publishing their material and they could go on their
way because they wanted to be involved in new things
for video work and everything, and I said, fine, that's fine.
But so I retained the publishing on everything they did,
and they had some hits on their own, which was
very good, and it was very nice, and it was

(01:39:54):
always a very friendly relationship. And to this day, I'm
very friendly with loll. Lull's the lucky one really because
he didn't sell any rights, so he didn't have any
handy and beefs or anything. He just let the money
keep rolling in because he had some kind of a
case in America against the previous management where he'd been

(01:40:15):
awarded a nice chunk of money, and I think it
just kept him able to retain everything he had because
everybody else was probably overspending at a tremendous rate. And
then there's always the tax implications of earnings which you've
not put aside for which is very typical of lots

(01:40:36):
of people. Although everybody had accountants, the accountants can't control
the spending. If you're going to get three ferraris, what
do you want?

Speaker 3 (01:40:47):
Okay? So they do that outun deceptive Benz the two.
Then they do dreadlock howaday ah they're to hit and
then it peters out. What's going on there?

Speaker 2 (01:40:59):
Well, I think there was a lot of well Graham
and Eric didn't get along then, particularly, I'm trying to
think of dates now, because what date are we talking
because nineteen the band like disbanded for a while in

(01:41:21):
about nineteen eighty three or something like that. I think
they tried various things that Andrew Gold came in as
a kind of a producer and tried all sorts of things.
We moved from Mercury to Warner Brothers for what it did.
Didn't do any good. But we did move to a
des label, and I think I don't know that they

(01:41:44):
just grew apart. You know, it was just pretty much impossible,
So I think Graham decided to do his own thing. Meanwhile,
punk had come in. Their music was not fashionable. They
were self in, dundant algent capitalists, and it wasn't what
the sex pistols were about. And the sex pistols took

(01:42:07):
over the airways, and so you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:08):
Know, okay, so then you manage some other singers, but
then you manage a snooker player. Where does that come from?

Speaker 2 (01:42:17):
And when I got out at the same time, I decided, right,
I want to get into sport. Now they're not going
to play any music. I'm want to rest for a while.
Have had a nice career the sixties, the seventies, we've
missed out Rice Weber. But anyway, we go on to
the seventies and the eighties, and I thought, right, can't
any music played. I did ultimately succumb to getting a

(01:42:42):
kind of group that fitted in with the contemporary situation,
but before that I had Wax came together. Graham and
Andrew Andrew was a very big favorite of mine. I
really think he's a very talented person, could play every
instrument and was absolutely tremendous. And Graham and Andrew, I

(01:43:05):
think together had the best time of their respective lives
as far as musical music was concerned. So Graham had
gone from a situation where it was probably always battling
whether it be on editing Kevin Lowl or whatever edit
or falling out with musically with with Eric or whatever production.

(01:43:27):
He was now with somebody that he was completely well,
completely in bed with. They just they got on like
a house on fire. They were wonderful together. We have
some great stories of theirs. I mean, on Andrew's thirty
third birthday, we went to Morton's in London. It was
a restaurant and we both loved the producers. Everybody I'd

(01:43:48):
ever been associated with, going back to twenty years, had
always had the producers film and we knew every single
word of it. And we're sitting down at the table, myself, Cara,
Andrew and Graham, and mel Brooks walks in and he
goes and sits down with a fellow called Joe Lustik,
who I knew as an agent. So I, in my

(01:44:11):
inimitable manner, I sent a bottle of beautiful red wine
over to their table and saying it's from Harvey over there,
so the way to take something over to mel Brooks.
And mel Brooks gets hold of the wine, is drinking
and says the way to take this pig swill away

(01:44:31):
and get this. But later in the later in the meal,
I feel the mass somebody massaging my shoulder and I thought,
what's going on around? It's mel Brooks And I said
to him, I said, would you be embarrassed if you
repeat a line from the producers and Graham and Andrew
will give you the next two lights? He says, how

(01:44:52):
can I be embarrassed? An old Jew? Then he were
at the whole room, from table to table. Yeah, Andrew,
we all love the producers and that was great and
it's very interesting the producers. Actually I met Gene Wilder
and he was appearing in a play and Neil Simon play.

(01:45:15):
You were asking about anti Semitism earlier on. We're sitting
in this playhouse in London and it's Neil Simon play
and we're sitting down in a woman behind. I didn't
know that Neil Simon was Jewish, and this is what
you're dealing with. That's part of England. That's probably a
clrent of Wisconsin or somewhere. I don't know, but he's like,

(01:45:38):
you know, there's England, and there's a hit places, and
there's places from the wild that you just don't know
what's going on. So anyhow, I said to Gene Wilder
next morning we were staying at the hotel, I said,
why don't you do a musical of the Producers? It's
so obvious you've already got music in the film. And
he said something that was really interesting. He said, well,

(01:45:59):
he said, no, always like to keep that close to
his chest. Interesting, isn't it. And that's at least ten
years before it was I mean a long time before
it was released. Interesting because Gene Wilder was amazing in
the film.

Speaker 3 (01:46:14):
Absolutely with the uh oh, we're not going into the Producers.
So you have this run, you decide to take a break,
and then you ultimately don't come back.

Speaker 2 (01:46:30):
Yeah, we did come back. We did an album with
We did an album with ten CC. They were back
in the nineties. We got to do with a Japanese
company called Avex, which was unbelievable. It was a I
think Eric was very impressed with that management. I think
they got a fortune. They sold every song I think
on it publishing for ten thousand pounds song, so that's

(01:46:54):
like fifty or sixty thousand. They got another few hundred
grand for the album that were flown to Japan. They
had like a revival. But making of the album, the
boys hardly spoke to each other. One did it in
their studio, the other one did it that there was
a complete concoction, a total disaster. And I didn't really
get out of the business because I was always publishing

(01:47:15):
all the American music anyhow, and then I came in
nineteen ninety two. I bought a property in Rancho Mirage
and I became a snowbird. And from there I went
to see the Indian Wells Tennis garden, which was used
for three weeks in the year for tennis, very nice tournament,

(01:47:39):
and my wife Carol said, what the hell did they
do with this for the rest of the year. Well,
they don't do very much, and the staff are very happy.
The staff are working for eight weeks in the year
and they're on Sistan the other and I said, it's
a marvelus amphitheater. So I got hold of Raymond Moore
and Passerell, who was his tennis player from a Maria

(01:48:00):
Charlie Passerell, and I said, look, why don't we put
some concerts on here. I knew they'd put one thing
on which was pretty much a disaster, but it was
I think they put Pacelli on and it was all wrong.
And I then got hold of a William Morris agent
called Peter, whose second name has eluded me on a
Peter thank you, Peter Groslite, who's absolutely charming, lovely guy,

(01:48:23):
great golfer as well. And I got the stadium to
agree that I could be an agent for them to
bring action in. So my first act was the Eagles,
and we get the Eagles, and then we have a
meeting there and they say we can't charge two hundred
and fifty dollars a ticket. I said, why, you've only
got the wealthiest community in America. Why should we charge

(01:48:47):
one hundred when everybody else charges to fifty. Anyhow, we
sold out three nights on the Eagles at the price.
Then we put the Who on, Tom Patty and the
Heartbreakers Lewis Neguel who you know that we did with
all those concerts and all they were worried about was
the tennis surface, and god knows what was happening. It

(01:49:09):
wasn't really equipped as a stadium. But of course, as
I said, without I thought, right, the answer is this,
Barbara Streison won't work open air, right, this one won't
do that, this one won't do the other. I said, right,
we're going to do what Wembley Stadium does. We'll get
a roof put on the place and then we can
work it all year. We don't have to worry about

(01:49:30):
her in twenty degrees. So I get an architect who
tells it for twenty million dollars they could do a
roof that closes, right, But there were twenty people who
who are ten people involved? Raymond wore and ten or
fifteen other a committee, and of course the committee rejected it.
And now in Palm Springs they have got a ten

(01:49:51):
thousand arena which has been put up, and they could
have had it easily, and I saw world championship boxing
matches everything coming from there. Anyhow, my three years expid
as an agent. It wasn't renewed and they not had
a concert since. So that was fifteen year. How many
years ago, and now I'm just writing books and doing

(01:50:11):
other things.

Speaker 3 (01:50:12):
Like Okay, in the book, you famously say a few things.
You were a big spender, you lived large, you drove
expensive cars, and you were a big gambler. So did
you piss away all the money?

Speaker 2 (01:50:35):
Well, not really piss away all the money. Because of
my accountancy training, it allowed me to have control. I
wasn't the gambler. That a friend of mine had a
horse and he used to back the horse. He was
a big gambler. And the horse won seven races on

(01:50:57):
the row and the eighth races also, And I said
to the guy's wife, I said, well you must have
made a fortune. No, we lost. So why he put
every single bit of his winnings on the next and
the next and the next. That's what you call a gambler.
When I was a gambler, I'd have four hundred pound
on me if I lost. That that was it. And

(01:51:17):
the other thing about gambling. When I went with Horman
Swimmits to Las Vegas, which is relevant to show business,
it was in a June's hotel. They said, we're comping
everything you've got, mister Lillisburg. All food is free. Your
runs three anything you want. And by the way, you
and every member of the band will have a credit
of one hundred thousand dollars. That's in nineteen sixty six.

(01:51:40):
I don't know what that is worth today. And I
said no way, I said. I didn't say no way.
I said, thank you very much. If we need it,
we'll ask you. And that so all the people like
Frank Sinatra or Elvis or anybody. I mean, the Colonel
was an enormous gambler. Brian Epstein was in an enormous gambler.

(01:52:01):
But these people were, I mean, they were permanently in
the money. I mean, I think ultimately, probably somehow the
Colonel got out lost it. I don't know. But no,
I wasn't. I didn't. I didn't blow it all away.
My son said to me two days ago, he said, well,

(01:52:23):
maybe you got something right. So why, I said, because now,
if you put all your money away and you had
one hundred million in the bank, you wouldn't have been
able to go around the world because you wouldn't be
you wouldn't be fit enough. Or because I decided when
I was fifty that was going to go around the world.
I wasn't going to wait till I was eighty. So

(01:52:46):
that was my mentality, and I think somewhere in between
the two is right. I don't think what I was
doing was right. It was excessive, and I can criticize
myself for that. I got carried away. I had Joseph
and the dream Coat, which they came to me, and
I had that. I tried putting it with sixteen people

(01:53:08):
who all rejected it. Now, if i'd have got the
publishing on that, when I met t him Rice in
two thousand and four, he told me that his earnings
from I think it was a quarter and a half
on Joseph, which had been rejected, was three hundred and
ninety thousand pound. That was twenty five years after it.
So you know, if I'd have had all that money,

(01:53:29):
I don't think I would have had yachts, and you
know there's no limit. You'd have era planes. You'd if
you were acting stupidly, and you would think you're infallible,
you'll believe in yourself. You start becoming like Robert Stigwood.
You know, you think you everything you do is you
know you're our for cameeron Macintosh. All these people are

(01:53:50):
like kind of egomaniacs in a way, you know, they're
becoming a different league. I never got into that league.
I don't think Epstein was in that league either. I
think he had the money, but I think he was
just he had a lot of problems. When I met him,
Clein had tried to get me to see him about
getting a piece of the Beatles for him management of

(01:54:11):
the Beatles. Would I speak to Brian and if I did,
Alan Klein, in his imitable manner, would give me a percentage.
So I went to see Brian Epstein in his flat
in Belgravia. Meeting was at six point thirty at night,
and I walked through the door and it was all white,
white walls, everywhere was white. And I said to him,

(01:54:33):
look are you interested in Klein looking after the Beatles?
We want to sell it. And his face went to
the same shade as the walls. You know, he obviously
Clian had obviously been busier around all the everywhere else,
you know what I mean. And it was he that
was the end of that conversation. We just carried on
from there. But I thought that it's funny. I thought

(01:54:57):
the Beatles would end up with Alan Clin somehow, because
you were talking about how do you protect yourself? Well
against the one person from Manchester, that's one thing, but
from people with the experience and the tentacles of Alan Klein,
it's not easy to avoid. I mean, you got the
biggest in the world.

Speaker 3 (01:55:18):
Okay, So how many of the people from the past
you still talk to?

Speaker 2 (01:55:25):
Right? And I speak to Lord Crean, Peter Noon, Tony Christie,
John Lee's from partner James Harvest. Harvey Andrews is an
English songwriter. Unfortunately Peter gross Like passed but I was
very close with him. Janny Patsha's partner with speak to

(01:55:48):
him regularly. I've not spoken to Graham for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:55:57):
Is there any bad blood there?

Speaker 2 (01:56:03):
Well, it's not on my side. I mean we were brothers,
we were brother in laws. Well stay together fifty five
years and then unfortunately we got divorced. So I don't know.
It wasn't to do it wasn't. It wasn't my idea.

(01:56:26):
I mean, it wasn't. It was kind of inexplicable to me.
But I suppose that people have their reasons. And if
you analyze all the patterns that split up and all
the split ups that happen and these things happen, not
usually after fifty five years, I don't think, but you
never know. I still think he's a very talented person,

(01:56:50):
and I don't think he's got it right. But that's life.

Speaker 3 (01:56:54):
I have to ask, since we covered this earlier, was
it split about the money?

Speaker 2 (01:57:00):
No? Oh, this as split with Graham?

Speaker 3 (01:57:03):
Yeah, No, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:57:05):
Well, no, I know. I wish it would have been
money is easy if he said I I just want money.
It wasn't that it was. There was also I don't really,
to be quite honest, my feeling is that somebody got
at him, and I don't know who, and I don't
really care. I think somebody tried to try to poison

(01:57:31):
him against me, I think. But my trap record, I
think speaks for itself. I was surviving before I met Graham,
you know, so I think I helped. But as I say,
managers aren't looked at very kindly. I mean, Peter Grant wasn't,

(01:57:51):
the Colonel wasn't, Brian Epstein wasn't, Andrew Olter wasn't. I mean,
where do you go? I mean, it's you create an act.
They become the biggest thing in the world. And then
I had a thing Robert Graves, the famous writer. He
said a friend is like an ass. He waits thirty

(01:58:15):
years to give you a good kick, and that applies
to a lot of people in own business.

Speaker 3 (01:58:25):
On that note, Harvey, I think we're going to leave it.
I want to say your book is very readable. A
lot of these books are just you know, people have
nothing better to do. But if you're interested in this era,
if you're interested in what Harvey talked about, there are
many more facts and stories in the book, and in
a couple hours you'll finish. It's a great read, which

(01:58:47):
is why I wanted to talk to you. In any event, Harvey,
thanks so much for taking the time to talk.

Speaker 2 (01:58:52):
To my audiences. But a great pleasure.

Speaker 3 (01:58:55):
Until next time. This is Bob left sets

Speaker 2 (01:59:19):
Sh