INTERVIEW: Peter Noone details his ‘Very Own British Invasion’
Photo: My Very Own British Invasion at Paper Mill Playhouse stars Jonny Amies as Peter. The musical also stars Jen Perry, Trista Dollison and Gemma Baird. Photo courtesy of Evan Zimmerman for MurphyMade / Provided by Richard Hillman PR with permission.
My Very Own British Invasion, the new musical directed and choreographed by Tony winner Jerry Mitchell, features music from the powerfully influential era of the 1960s. British bands back then were all the craze in the United States and around the world, and this new musical extravaganza honors those impactful days and the musicians who created the soundtrack of a generation.
The musical, which has its sights set on Broadway, is currently playing the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. Performances run through March 3.
In the show, audience members will experience theatricalized versions of some mega-hits, and the central character is based off one of the most famous singers of the era: Peter Noone, who led Herman’s Hermits. The band had many hit tunes, including “I’m Into Something Good,” “There’s a Kind of Hush,” “Henry the VIII, I Am” and “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”
“First of all, I had this idea about the Bag of Nails, which is a club in England that I went into, and John Lennon bought me a drink in the club,” Noone said in a recent phone interview. “I was a teenager, and I went in. And everything to do with the British Invasion was actually in this room.”
There were the Rolling Stones, Dave Clark Five, Mary Quant, Twiggy, Eric Clapton and so many more, and the Bag of Nails was their local watering hole. Noone, young and not realizing this was a burgeoning music scene, was enamored of the talent around him.
“Geno Washington, who is also in the play, was an American who was living in England and is actually my brother-in-law, so I used to tell this story about this great night and how all the music from that room became the British Invasion,” Noone said. “Although in England we didn’t know what the British Invasion was.”
Noone’s memories of that night stayed with him for decades, even after Herman’s Hermits and his own star began to rise. Today, he still tours the world under the banner Herman’s Hermits Starring Peter Noone, and his set list still features the band’s many hits.
But Noone wanted something more about his time in the Bag of Nails; these memories couldn’t be relegated to a few anecdotes said into the microphone at a concert. So he began to gather a creative team.
“I had this idea, and I used to toss it around,” he said. “We went to a seder, maybe it was Passover, and my wife sat next to a guy called Craig Haffner. And she told him that her husband had this great idea, and he joined me.”
They started talking, and the idea of bringing book writer Rick Elice, a Tony winner for Jersey Boys, started to emerge. They wanted him to join the project and think of ways to take this collection of British rock songs and actually craft a real story with love, hurt and character arcs.
As an example, Noone sang a few bars of the Zombies’ hit song “She’s Not There.” They needed Elice to take “Well, no one told me about her” and find a love story.
There was just one problem.
“We couldn’t get to Rick Elice,” Noone said. “He said no, and I insisted that he say yes. So we chased him a bit more, and eventually I think my enthusiasm caught on about the idea. And he said he would create a fable, so that it wasn’t like a documentary.”
Noone liked the idea of a romantic fable about young love in the 1960s, all set to the soundtrack of this impressive songbook.
“I go, wow, it’s great as long we could get the songs in, and it’s in the Bag of Nails,” he said. “And then Jerry [Mithcell], him and Rick Elice, it was like a tornado. They were so enthusiastic when they were together about this idea that it just suddenly started to fire itself up. There was this equal amount of enthusiasm in the room. Everybody was like yeah, yeah, yeah and this and this and this, like writing a song really. It’s like when you write a song, and the person that you’re writing a song with is like, ‘This is a great idea. How about we do this?’ It was all that stuff going on.”
He added: “I knew that it was eventually going to get on Broadway in some form. I knew that once they got involved that it would all fall into place. It was like getting all the Beatles into the same room. They were just the perfect people. My original idea has completely been changed into their idea, but it’s still my idea. So it’s great. None of the stuff that takes place is my idea. It’s just the room is my idea, and the people in the room is my idea. Rick did a brilliant job of writing a fable about this Peter Noone person.”
The musical, which officially opens this weekend, stars Jonny Amies as Peter, Bryan Fenkart as John, Erika Olson as Pamela, Kyle Taylor Parker as Geno, Conor Ryan as Trip, John Sanders as Fallon and Daniel Stewart Sherman as The Hammer. Many of these actors are Broadway alumni, which may bode well if the musical jumps across the river to the Big Apple.
“I went to the first run-through, and I kind of hid from the players,” Noone said about rehearsals. “I hid from them, and I actually believed them. I was kind of shocked. At the end of it, I went up to the guy who played Peter Noone, and I said, ‘It’s pretty shocking. I believe you.’ And Geno is my brother-in-law, and the guy who was playing Geno, I said, ‘He’ll be really happy when he sees your version of him.’ And I think that’s an unusual feeling. Most people wish they made you taller and better and handsomer and everything. They made us look like nice people, which is good, and just artists in a way, people with a small talent that they take to the maximum effect.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
My Very Own British Invasion, directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, plays through March 3 at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. Click here for more information and tickets.
