A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs - PLEDGE WEEK: “I’m Henry VIII I Am” by Herman’s Hermits

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

This episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I’ll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast which will have this short intro. These are short, ten- to twenty-minute bonus podcasts which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode — there are well over a hundred of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com/andrewhickey and subscribe for as little as a dollar a month or ten dollars a year to get access to all those bonus episodes, plus new ones as they appear. Click below for the transcript (more…)

Hello, this episode is part of Pledge Week 2022. Every day this week, I'll be posting old Patreon bonus episodes of the podcast, which will have this short intro. These are short 10 to 20 minute bonus podcasts, which get posted to Patreon for my paying backers every time I post a new main episode. There are well over 100 of these in the archive now. If you like the sound of these episodes, then go to patreon.com slash Andrew Hickey and subscribe for us. little as a dollar a month or $10 a year to get access to all those bonus episodes plus new ones as they appear. Today's backer-only episode is an extra long one. It runs about as longer as some of the shorter main episodes, but it also might end up containing material that gets repeated in the main podcast at some point,

because a lot of British rock and pop music gets called, often very incorrectly, musical, and so the subject of the music halls is one that may well have to be explained in a future episode. But today we're going to look at one of the very few pop hits of the 60s that is incontrovertibly based in the musical tradition. Herman's Hermits singing, I'm Henry the 8th I am. The term musical is one that has been widely misused over the years. People talk about it as being a genre of music, when it's anything but. Rather, the Music Hall, which is the British equivalent of the American Vordville,

was the most popular form of entertainment. First under that name and then under the name Variety, for more than a century, only losing its popularity when TV and rock and roll between them destroyed the market for it. Even then, TV variety shows rooted in the Music Hall continued, explicitly until the 1980s with the good old days, and implicitly until the mid-1990s. As you might imagine, for a form of entertainment that lasted over 100 years,

there's no such thing as music hall music as a singular thing, any more than there exists a radio music or a television music. Many music hall acts were non-musical performers, comedians, magicians, acrobats and so forth. But among those who did perform music, there were all sorts of different styles included, from folk song to light opera, to ragtime, and especially minstrel's songs. songs. The songs of Stephen Foster were among the very first transatlantic hits. We obviously don't have any records from the first few decades of the musical, but we do have sheet music, and we know that the first big British hit song was Champagne Charlie,

originally performed by George Layburn, and here performed by Derek B. Scott, a professor of critical musicology at the University of Leeds. Champagne Charlie is my name. Good for any game at night, my boys. Good for any game at night, my boys. Champagne Charlie is my name. Champagne Charlie is my name. Good for any game at night, boys,

who'll come and join me in a spring. If you've ever heard the phrase, the devil has all the best tunes. That song is why. William Booth, the founder of the Salvation Army, set new lyrics to it and made it into a hymn, and when asked why, he replied, Why should the devil have all the good tunes? The phrase had been used earlier, but it was Booth who popularised it. Champagne Charlie also has rather morbid associations, because it was sung by the crowd at the last public execution in Britain, so it often gets used in horror and mystery films set in Victorian London, so chances are if you recognise the song

it's because you've heard it in a film about Jack the Ripper or Jekyllyn Hyde. But the music hall, like all popular entertainment, demanded a whole stream of new material. The British Tim Pan Alley publishers and songwriters who wrote much of the early British rock and roll we've looked at started out in Music Hall and almost every British popular song up until the rise of jazz and most after that until the 50s

was performed in the music halls. We do have recordings from the later part of the musical era, of course, and they show what a wide variety of music was performed there, from pitch-black comedy songs like Murders by George Grossmith, the son of the co-writer of Diary of a Nobody. The first about my laundress, who has left this world of Christ, if you'll listen, I will tell you how she came to lose.

her life. I murdered her last Tuesday, but I thought it would be best. And never, never more will she tear buttons from my bed. And now I'll get my Sunday shirt and collars in one piece. But I murdered her last Tuesday was a merciful relief. To sing along numbers like Waiting at the Church by Vesta Victoria. And the church, waiting at the church, he sent me all at once, he sent me round a note, here's the very note, this is what he wrote, can't get away to marry you today,

my wife won't let me. And one of the most recorded music hall performers, Harry Champion, a London performer who sang very wordy songs at a fast tempo, usually with a hornpipe rhythm and often about food, like a little bit of cucumber, or his most famous song, Boiled Beef and Carrots. When I was a dip for only six months, oh, my mother and me father too,

they didn't know what to weat me on the industry would do. They thought her right they thought of take her a little bit of old cod row. I take four brand of the old book shop and I tell you what will make me grow. But four beef and carrots, and was taken a bit more than stuff we at all be still I'm happy to eat your world and live like vegetarianism and food they give to ferrette. Now I'd you cry from modern I don't for,

beef and terror. But one that wasn't about food and was taken a bit slower than his normal patter style was, I'm Henry the 8th I am. I'm anoree the ace I am. I'm aeneery the ice I am. I am. I'm a race to the widow next door. She'd been married seven times before.

Everyone was a Henry. She wouldn't ever win the order of Sam. I'm a race. Some man's named, Denary. Inundry the ice's name, I am. The song, as written on the sheet music, has Henry, rather than Henry, and most people sing it Enery, but the actual record by Champion uses Henry on the label, as does the hermit's version, so that's what I'm going with. Fifty years after Champion, the song was recorded by Joe Brown.

We've talked about Brown before in the main podcast, but for those of you who don't remember, he's one of the best British rock and roll musicians of the 50s and still performing today, and he has a real love of pre-war pop songs, and he would perform them regularly with his band, The Brothers. Those of you who've heard the Beatles performing Sheik of Arabi on their Deco audition, they're copying Brown's version of that song. George Harrison was a big fan of Brown. Brown's version of I'm Henry the 8th I am,

gave it a rock and roll beat and dropped the verse, leaving only the refrain. Enter Herman's Hermits, four years later. In 1964, Herman's Hermits, a beat group from Manchester, led by singer Peter Noon, had signed on with Mickey Most and had a UK number one with I'm Into Something Good, a Goffin and King song originally written for Earl Jean of the Cookies. That would be their only UK number one, though they'd have several more top ten hits over here. It's only made number 13 in the US, but their second US single, not released as a single over here, can't you hear my hear my head?

heartbeat, went to number two in the States. From that point on, the group's career would diverge enormously between the US and the UK. Half their US hits were never released as singles in the UK, and vice versa. Several records, like their cover version of Sam Cuck's Wonderful World, were released in both countries, but in general they went in two very different directions. In the UK, they tended to release fairly normal beat group records like No Milk's today, written by Graeme Goldman, who was also writing hits for the Yardbirds and the Hollies. That only chartered in the US when it was later released as a B-side. Meanwhile, in the US, they pursued a very different strategy. Since the British invasion was a thing, and so many British bands were doing well

in the States, partly because of the sheer novelty of them being British, Herman's Hermits based their career on appealing to American Anglophiles. This next statement might be a bit of be a little controversial, even offensive to some listeners, so I apologise, but it's the truth. There is a large contingent of people in America who genuinely believe that they love Britain and British things, but who have no actual idea what British culture is actually like. They like a version of Britain that has been constructed entirely from pop culture aimed at an American market, and have a staggeringly skewed version of what Britain is actually like, one that is at best misguided and at worst made up of extremely offensive stereotypes.

People who think they know all about the UK because they've spent a week going around a handful of tourist traps in central London and they've watched every David Tennant episode of Doctor Who. Please note that I am not here engaging in reflex anti-Americanism, as so many British people do on this topic, because I know very well that there is an equally wrong kind of British person who worships a fictional America, which has nothing to do with the real country,

as any American who has come over to the UK and seen cans of hot dog sausages in brown with American style and an American flag on the label will shudderingly attest. Fetishising of a country not one's own exists in every culture and about every culture, whether it's American webes who think they know about Japan or British communists who were insistent that the Soviet Union under Stalin was a utopia. For their US-only singles, most of which were massive hit,

Herman's Hermits played directly to that audience. The group's first single in this style was Mrs Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter, written by the actor Trevor Peacock, now best known for playing Jim in the Vicar of Dibbley, but at the time best known as a song for groups like the Vernon's Girls and for writing linking material for 6-5 special and oh boy.

That song was written for a TV play and originally performed by the actor Tom Courtney. Mrs. Brian, you've got a lovely daughter. Girls as sharp as her or something rare. But it's sad. She doesn't love me now. She's mighty clear enough. Oh, now it's rough.

The hermit's copied Courtney's record closely, down to Noon imitating Courtney's vocals. Mrs Brown you've got a lovely daughter, girls who's sharp as her or something rare. That became their first US number one, and the group went all in on appealing to that particular market. Noon started singing, not in the pseudo-American style that, say, Mick Jagger sings in, and early 60s Jagger is a perfect example of the British equivalent of those American anglophiles, loving but not understanding Black America, and not in his own Manchester accent, but in a faked Cockney accent, doing what is essentially a bad impersonation of Anthony Newley.

Davy Jones, who, like Noon, was a Mancunian who had started his career in the Manchester set soap opera Coronation Street, was also doing the same thing at the same time, in his performances as the Artful Dodger in the Broadway version of Oliver. We'll talk more about Jones in future episodes of the main podcast, but he, like Noon, was someone who was taking game at this market. Noon's faked accent varied a lot, sometimes from syllable to syllable, and on records like Mrs. Brown, you've got a lovely daughter, and the hermit's version of the old George Formby song leaning on a lamp post, he sounds far more nun. northern than on other songs, fitting into a continuum of Lancashire novelty performers

that stretched at least from Formby's father, George Formby Sr., all the way to Frank's sidebottom. But on the Hermit's version of I'm Henry the 8th I Am, Noon is definitely trying to sound as London as he can, and he and the group copy Joe Brown's arrangement. That also became an American number one, and Herman's hermits had truly found their niche. They spent the next three years making an odd mixture of catchy pop songs by writers like Graham Gouldman or P.F. Sloan, which became UK hits,

and the very different type of music typified by I am Henry the 8th I am. Eventually, though, musical styles changed, and the group stopped having hits in either country. Peter Noon left a group in 1971, and they made some unsuccessful records without him before going on to the nostalgia circuit. Noon's solo career started relatively successfully,

with a version of David Bowie's Oh You Pretty Things, backed by Bowie and the spiders from Mars. That made the top 20 in the UK, but Noon had no further solo success. These days, there are two touring versions of Herman's Hermits. In the US, Noon has toured as Herman's Hermits featuring Peter Noon, with no other original members, since the 1980s. Drummer Barry Whitwam and lead guitarist Derek Lackenby kept the group going in the rest of the world, until Leckinby's death in 1994. Since then, Witwam has toured as Herman's Hermits without any other original members.

Herman's Hermits may not have the respect that some of their peers had, but they had incredible commercial success at their height, made some catchy pop records, and became the first English group to realise there was a specific audience of anglofiles in the US that they could market to. Without that, much of the subsequent history of music might have been very different.

Bollah-da-do-do, rock and roll. Biss Bola-da-da-o, yeah.