In a midday telephone conversation, Peter Noone’s dense British accent reminds one of Mick Jagger. The two artists have several things in common, admits Noone, the 58-year-old former lead singer of 1960s sensation Herman’s Hermits. Along with a striking resemblance to one another during their youthful pop star days, they also share disdain for infamous ABKCO Records president Allen Klein. Noone and Jagger each battled their former business partner in court for allegedly ripping off their respective bands.

Noone has had a storybook career. As a child, he co-starred in a British soap opera called “Coronation Street” before becoming a pop idol at age 17 when Herman’s Hermits made Carole King’s “I’m Into Something Good” a hit in 1964. Producer Mickie Most, who oversaw the careers of The Animals, Donovan, and Lulu, made Herman’s Hermits his most successful act. Over the next decade they piled up 20 hits, including a pair of chart-toppers in “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” and “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”

After leaving the Hermits, Noone went on to Broadway and television. The band has been wrongly dismissed as a lightweight pop act among heavier British Invasion bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds. Though they did not write much of their own material, Herman’s Hermits pioneered the pop music rage that Big Star is credited with launching in the 1970s. To these ears (as a 12-year-old) Herman’s Hermits were better than The Beatles and the Stones.

Black & White: I was just listening to Herman’s Hermits Retrospective that ABKCO put out in 2004.

Peter Noone: Pretty good, isn’t it? People don’t realize how good we were. But what can you do?

B&W: Was it frustrating to the band?

Noone: No, not really. At the time, we didn’t realize what was going on, basically, because we were on the run all the time. In retrospect, it was a good band. People sometimes, forget that.

B&W: Whenever the history of the British Invasion is discussed, Herman’s Hermits are wrongly dismissed as lightweights.

Noone: The main problem is ABKCO doesn’t put out [proper] material. There’s like 300 songs, and every 10 years they put out another retrospective. They’ve kind of done it with everything they’ve got. I would say Sam Cooke would be one of the top five performers in American musical history but he’s neglected totally. Do you agree? What they do is, first of all they don’t pay anybody any royalties. So what they do is they just shuffle things out every 10 years. So they basically destroyed Herman’s Hermits. We just couldn’t survive, and the guys in the Hermits needed money. One of the reasons that it all fell apart is because we weren’t putting records out in America. We had big hits in England right through 1971, ’72. I think all Herman’s Hermits best records were never released in the United States. It was very strange.

B&W: Whose fault was that? Was Mickie Most to blame?

Noone: It was really Allen Klein’s fault. That’s the end of it. I was ready to leave the band anyway. I was the spoiled brat. I didn’t need people telling me what I should be doing. There were things I wanted to do. I was like an adult now, ya know?

B&W: The Stones always said that though Allen Klein ripped them off, he did turn the band into a global act. What’s your relationship with Klein? Does he pay any royalties?

Noone: That’s in litigation now. It just goes on and on and on and on. I don’t have any relationship with him. The only person who speaks to him is my lawyer. That’s got very little to do with the new operation. The new operation is just trying to make people realize how good Herman’s Hermits are. I remember coming to Birmingham to do the Shower of Stars [in the 1960s].

B&W: How long did the original Hermits stay together?

Noone: We went to 10 years in that original version. A long time, you know, for a band.

B&W: Was there any resentment from the band that studio musicians played on the records instead of the band?

Noone: At the beginning it was O.K. But it got worse and worse because I was the spoiled brat. And I forgot to tell them when there was a session. I’d make the record with Mickie, and it would be in the store, and I’d say [to the other Hermits], “Well what are you worried about? You’re going to get paid.” Because musicians don’t really do it to get paid. I hurt people’s feelings because I was just a kid. I had no experience dealing with men. I knew how to deal with teenage girls (laughs).

B&W: Did your experience as a child performer give you any insight or an advantage over others in the pop music business?

Noone: I think it just turned me into more of an independent person. I was very independent. I traveled alone, and I made my own decisions . . . We never traveled together. I would go, and they would go, and sometimes we’d all arrive at the same time. For example, when Herman’s Hermits first went on tour, for some members of the band it was the first time they’d ever been out of the United Kingdom, whereas I’d been everywhere in the world already with my family. My family was a business family and we traveled. Some of the Hermits had never been anywhere; their parents took them to the seaside. I was very well educated for my age, educated in becoming independent. And it’s vital in a rock ’n’ roll band because somebody has to be decisive. If it becomes a democracy, it lasts for about a week . . . I’ve never been a fan of that kind of democracy. Especially, if there’s five people with a vote because they’d always vote against the lead singer.

B&W: Who played the guitar solo on “Henry the VIII?” That’s one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard.

Noone: Derek Leckenby. It was [Keith] Hopwood on “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”

B&W: “Mrs. Brown” was a different style for what was on the radio then, with the banjo intro.

Noone: It was from our live show. We always did songs that none of the other bands would do. Now every band in those days played the same songs, sort of like now. So we avoided all the songs that The Beatles and the Escorts and all the local bands did. And “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” was very odd. It sort of went with the band. We were called Herman’s Hermits. It wasn’t a typical rock ’n’ roll band name.

B&W: Herman’s Hermits were somewhat unique in that you sang with a British accent. Was that a conscious effort?

Noone: Yes. Nobody had ever done it before. I wondered why everybody was singing in an American accent. So I went and sang with a British accent. I just thought it was kind of amusing. We had big stars in England when we grew up like Lonnie Donnigan, who we thought was an American. Even when he spoke English he had a bit of an American accent.

B&W: Did you know Graham Gouldman in Manchester? He was an incredible songwriter [Gouldman was a premier British songwriter who wrote “Listen People” for the Hermits, as well as songs for other bands. He later was the talent of the 1970s band 10 CC.]

Noone: Yeah, very well. He was like family to me. He was the greatest. What he did was brilliant stuff. He really wrote for his own band, which was the Mockingbirds. They didn’t really jump. . . We got first look at everything. We did “Bus Stop” first, and “For Your Love” and all those songs. If you listen to Herman’s Hermits’ version of “Bus Stop,” it wasn’t a great performance. So it went to the Hollies and they did a great performance of it. “For Your Love,” we did it, but The Yardbirds did it better. Ours was like an album track, and theirs was a single.

B&W: “For Your Love” was on Herman’s Hermits On Tour, the second record I ever owned. I would sit and stare at that cover. [It featured the band grinning while flying in an illustration of a hot air balloon.]

Noone: On our balloon there! [laughs] The great thing about that is that MGM was so cheap, the first album and the second album had the same picture. They put us in a balloon for the second album. Just painted a balloon on there.

B&W: The song “Museum” was certainly a departure for Herman’s Hermits, stylewise.

Noone: It was actually a Donovan record, and he didn’t like it. So it was always Mickie’s thing . . . like Donovan didn’t like “Mellow Yellow,” so I said, “I’ll do it!” and then [Donovan] decided he did like it. So Mickie tried it again with “Museum.” So I used Donovan’s track and his musicians, and my version was better than his. So mine came out. It wasn’t a hit.

B&W: Did you meet Carole King soon after recording her song “I’m Into Something Good?”

Noone: No, I met her later, actually. And I still see her. I was always a big fan of hers. I know her now. When I was about 14, I had that record she’d made, “It Might as Well Rain Until September.”

B&W: Barry Whitwam [the original Hermits drummer] has a version of Herman’s Hermits that tours.

Noone: He’s supposed to call it “Herman’s Hermits starring Barry Whitwam.” And I call mine “Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone.” But he always forgets to put Barry Whitwam on his. And I never forget to put Peter Noone, because I think it’s important.

B&W: Last time you were in Birmingham you played a shopping center at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Are you still keeping such ungodly hours?

Noone: That was a weird one. But it worked out good; we enjoyed it. It was not the real band, though, it was just me on my own . . . I had no idea, [it was in a shopping center when booked] but I have really good friends in Birmingham, so I really do enjoy going there. My friend’s a doctor—a heart surgeon—and they’re almost family. Almost my relatives. We spend every Christmas together. It’s like I got my family in Alabama!

B&W: You’re one of us.

Noone: [Sarcastically] Yeah, right. I can say [affected Southern drawl], “How y’all doin”?

B&W: Did anyone ever tell you that you resemble a handsome Mick Jagger?

Noone: Yeah, a lot of people think that. From those days, there’s this wonderful bit where they’re doing a story about The Rolling Stones and they go, “Read more about the Stones on page whatever,” and they used a picture of me and not Mick Jagger. He didn’t like it. [As he promised during the interview, Noone later sent the photo and brief news clipping. He was confused. It was actually a newspaper clipping that continued a Hermits story with Jagger’s photo mistakenly inserted in place of Noone’s.] There’s lots of stories in those Rolling Stones books how people would ask [Jagger] for my autograph. He’d sign his name and they’d say, “Oh, I thought you were Herman!”

B&W: When was the last time you saw Jagger?

Noone: Well, I see the other guys more often than him. I kinda go more in the music circles than the show business circles. So I see Charlie a lot, and I saw Bill in London. I don’t really go to those sort of fancy restaurants that Mick goes to.

B&W: How about Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree recently?

Noone: Pretty good! He thought it was a cocaine-nut tree! &