THE GREATEST SONGS OF THE 1960s THAT NO ONE HAS EVER HEARD
841) Herman’s Hermits — “Hold On!”
Here’s the title song to Peter Noone’s teen flick Hold On!, a neat and peppy little number. “This is the West Coast meeting the U.K. in a very pleasant way, and the combination is impressive”. (Joe Viglione, https://www.allmusic.com/album/hold-on%21-mw0000856840)
Had the producers not changed the name of the movie to Hold On!, the song never would have been written! The song’s writer P.F. Sloan recalls:
I was in the audience watching Donovan on stage at The Trip, an L.A. nightclub on Sunset Boulevard. Mickie Most, [the Hermits’] manager, came over to my table and said, “In two days, I need a song for Herman’s Hermits for the movie ‘A Must To Avoid’. Can you come up with a song tomorrow, and demo it the next day, so I can take it back to England to record it?” So I called my songwriting partner Steve Barri up at midnight – he was in bed, asleep – who said “No, I can’t come, I’m not interested”. So I went downstairs, used Donovan’s guitar, and wrote the melody to “A Must To Avoid”. The next day I called Steve up, but his wife was ill, and he couldn’t come over, so I started writing most of the sketch for the song, and when we got together at the demo session, Steve was able to add some of the lyric. Then they changed the name of the movie to “Hold On”, because they didn’t dare put out a movie with the title, “A Must To Avoid”! So I had to write another song! Peter Noone wanted me to play guitar, and teach the new song to the other members of the band, but I refused, as I didn’t want to change their sound.
http://www2.gol.com/users/davidr/sloan/interview.html
Joe Viglione:
More than another Herman’s Hermits album with two hit songs, “Leaning on the Lamp Post” and “A Must to Avoid,” this MGM soundtrack features the original version of “Where Were You When I Needed You,” the first of 14 hits for the Grass Roots, which landed in the Top 30 four months after Peter Noone sang it. Four of the tunes, including the title track “Hold On” and the hit “A Must to Avoid,” were written by the team of Steve Barri and P.F. Sloan . . . .
https://www.allmusic.com/album/hold-on%21-mw0000856840
Herman Munster gets more respect than Herman’s Hermits (see #300, 613, 639). But they will be the new Monkees! They will get the respect they deserve. Don’t take my word for it. Just listen to Altrockchick:
They were one of the most successful bands of the invasion years (the #1 pop act in the U.S. in 1965), in large part because of their uncanny ability to make people smile. Peter Noone was the terminally cute boy that every girl’s mother wanted as a son-in-law, and the band seemed much less rough around the edges than the other invaders, including The Fab Four. . . . Once they faded from the scene, they apparently became something of a joke, a group of lightweights who made it because of exquisite timing and Herman’s irresistible sweetness: the British version of The Monkees, another band whose reputation suffered after they departed from the scene. . . . [But a]t their best, they performed with sincere and unrestrained joy and made people feel good about everyday life. . . . [T]hey did pop songs as well as anyone before or since. I refuse to apologize for liking Herman’s Hermits! . . . [W]hen they were on, enjoying themselves and the music, they had the ability to express the sweet and honest emotions of youth in a way that reminded people how sweet those innocent feelings were. Compare and contrast that to the celebration of suicidal tendencies in 90’s teen rock and I’ll take Herman’s Hermits every time, as uncool as that may be. So, yes, this dominant, leather-clad, sadistic, cigarette-smoking, vodka-guzzling, martial-arts-trained, whip-wielding terror of a woman has absolutely no guilt about expressing her appreciation for Herman’s Hermits . . . .
https://altrockchick.com/2014/02/07/classic-music-review-hermans-hermits-retrospective/
If you don’t listen, you’re gonna be whipped!
PopDose agrees:
Time and “hip” critics haven’t exactly been kind to Herman’s Hermits . . . . Which I say bullshit to. The Hermits ran a pretty good race, staying the course until around 1970 . . . but a six-year career was not a bad thing. Especially when you see how quickly most of their contemporaries in the original British Invasion disappeared without a whimper by early-to-mid 1966. Although they may have been perceived as lightweight, they were actually quite an astute and damned fine band.
https://popdose.com/reissue-review-the-best-of-hermans-hermits-the-50th-anniversary-anthology/
What was the movie about? Huggo lays it out:
The U.S. State Department is facing a PR nightmare: As the astronauts on the next Gemini mission were unable to come up with the name for the spacecraft for luck, as is custom, they allowed their children to come up with the name. Their choice: Herman’s Hermits. The fact that Herman’s Hermits is a rock band is the lesser of the problems; the main one is that they are not even American, but British, evoking the Revolutionary War. Colby Grant of the State Department assigns Cape Kennedy Space Center scientist Ed Lindquist, whom he believes is the source of the problem in letting it happen, to follow the band on their current first-ever American tour so they can spin this problem effectively, Ed, a middle-age white man who is frustrated by this assignment in having no idea about the band or their music. Beyond the lads wanting to experience life in the States unencumbered, Ed has the additional problems of going through Dudley Hawks, the band’s manager and the only one allowed to manufacture their publicity; and the throngs of adoring young female fans wherever the band goes. Of those adoring young female fans, the two causing the most problems are: Cecilie Bannister, an aspiring starlet who feigns being old friends with Herman as leverage for upcoming contract negotiations with her studio; and Louisa “Louie” Page, with whom Herman falls in love-at-first-sight.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0060512/plotsummary/?ref_=tt_stry_pl
Groovy!
Here’s the trailer:
Here’s the whole thing:
Here, the Stool Pigeons have a go at “Hold On!”:
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