I'm Into Something Good: My Life Managing 10cc, Herman's Hermits and Many More!

By Harvey Lisberg and Charlie Thomas

When 22-year-old accountant Harvey Lisberg heard the Beatles’ ‘Please Please Me’, he had an epiphany: he could be Manchester’s answer to Brian Epstein. He had a musical ear, a knack for numbers and a gambler’s instinct for taking a punt. Within a year he had taken local group, Herman’s Hermits, to number one with ‘I’m Into Something Good’. Soon, Hermania was a global phenomenon. Harvey had found his vocation.

In this uproarious, frank and moving autobiography, he reveals the excesses of life on the road with Herman’s Hermits; the frustration of championing unknowns Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber; the highs and lows of managing the brilliant 10cc; the utter madness of looking after snooker bad boys Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and Jimmy ‘Whirlwind’ White and much, much more.

Many other artists benefitted from Harvey’s guidance during this time, including
Tony Christie, Barclay James Harvest, Sad Café and the Chameleons.

I’m Into Something Good is his account of a life that started in Salford and ended up in Palm Springs; a life in which he travelled the world, met heroes and villains, fulfilled his dreams, spent a fortune on good living, family and friends, and never took himself or his achievements too seriously.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Omnibus Press
• Release date: Mar 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9781787592544

Book preview

Prologue

We’re Not Going On Unless You Sort It Out

It’s 21 August 1976 and I’m on a month’s holiday in the south of France with Carole and the boys. We’re staying at Le Negresco, the palatial hotel on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice – really slumming it. Over breakfast I tell them I’ve got to go. ‘I’m doing Knebworth today,’ I say. ‘I’m going to fly out and fly back. You’ll hardly notice I’m gone.’ I get a taxi to Nice airport and fly to Luton where Jeff England, my driver, is waiting for me in the beautiful, brand new blue Mercedes 450 I’ve ordered. It’s a perfect day, the latest in what has been the hottest and driest summer in the UK for years.

We arrive at the gates of Knebworth House, the stately home in rural Hertfordshire which is hosting its third annual rock festival. On the bill are, in order of appearance: the Don Harrison Band, Hot Tuna, Todd Rundgren’s Utopia, Lynyrd Skynyrd, 10cc (the band I’ve been managing for the past four years and the reason I’m going) and, headlining, the Rolling Stones. Jeff shows the gateman our passes and we are waved through on to a tree-lined drive that appears to have no end. As we make our way along it, snatches of sound drift towards us from somewhere over the trees. We turn a corner and there’s still no sign of either the house or the stage, but now the massive thud of a drumkit is clearly audible, an incongruous blast of amplified brutality amid the bucolic peace that surrounds us. At last we get our first sight of the house, an enormous Tudor Gothic country pile at the top of a hill. In front of it are all manner of cars, vans, trucks, pantechnicons, marquees and stalls, ranged across the vast swathes of grass either side of the drive. As we approach, a steward motions us towards a suitable spot, Jeff parks up and we get out. The unmistakable, sickly-sweet whiff of marijuana smoke greets our nostrils. To our right is the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen, well over 100,000. It’s a sea of long hair and denim, flagons of cider, cans of beer and bottles of wine, spreading across a huge field that slopes down towards the stage, a gigantic and frankly rather approximate recreation of the Stones’ lips and tongue logo. It’s an amazing scene, and an ideal setting for a day of rock and pop.

If I’m honest, though, I’d been having serious reservations about doing the gig. Despite the fact that there was undoubtedly a certain kudos and prestige attached to playing Knebworth, to my mind ninety-five per cent of the crowd would be there to see the Stones, and that would be tough for 10cc. We were the last act on before Mick and Co and by then the assembled throng would be well-oiled and getting impatient to see their heroes who, apart from a few brief tours of the UK, had been spending most of the Seventies in other parts of Europe and the United States. In the end the money probably seduced me: £27,000 between us (worth about £176,000 in today’s terms*). Compared to what we were getting, that was like doing a short tour. Instead, you get it for one day’s work. But something about it felt wrong. Just how wrong I was about to find out.

I make my way down to the backstage area in search of the group. There are several celebrities hanging around, notably Paul and Linda McCartney and Jack Nicholson. I presume they’re here to see the Stones, not 10cc. When I find them, there’s not a good atmosphere. They’re due on at about 5.30pm for an hour and a half set but, as usual, there’s something amiss with the sound. I say as usual because Eric Stewart is a perfectionist. If everything’s not exactly spot on he’s not happy. So I’m thinking, it’s just Eric being Eric, it’ll be all right. But this time it isn’t Eric. The equipment really isn’t functioning and the sound is terrible. ‘We’re not going on,’ he says, ‘unless you sort it out.’ I can’t argue. After all, why should they go on if the microphones aren’t working and they can’t hear themselves? Three- or four-part harmonies are an important element of their act. Right now, there’s not much harmony.

I wasn’t the only one who’d been ambivalent about playing Knebworth. Kevin Godley and Lol Creme, 10cc’s arty, experimental half, had spent the past few weeks deep in a recording studio, working on material designed to showcase their invention, the Gizmo. They weren’t particularly pleased to be dragged blinking into the light to play a one-off gig, however big. They’d also had their wrists slapped by Freddy Bannister, the promoter and creator of Knebworth. Ever the practical jokers, they’d planned to make fun of the Stones by suspending a giant nose and Zapata-style moustache above the inflatable lips of the stage. Freddy got wind of the prank and quickly put a stop to it, much to their annoyance.

I go and see the crew, who are working hard to fix things, but they can’t figure out what’s wrong. Time passes and the crowd are getting restless. Six o’clock comes and goes. The Stones are due on at around 8.30. Unless we do a truncated set there’s no way that’s happening. I decide to seek out Freddy. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘we’ve got a real problem here. It’s getting later and later, how late is this going to go on? We’re doing a 90-minute set and it’s not going to be right, and the way things are going it’ll be at least 8.30 before we even get off.’ Then I have an idea. I look him in the eye and say, ‘Fred, why don’t we not do the show? Give us the money, you’ve sold the tickets, nobody’s going to ask for their money back if they’ve seen the Stones. Let the Stones go on now, let them do their set.’ But Freddy isn’t having any of it. ‘10cc have to play,’ he insists. ‘Fix the equipment. It doesn’t matter if everything’s a bit later.’

Seven o’clock approaches and the problem still hasn’t been sorted. Everybody’s yelling for the Stones and 10cc are now really fed up. Just then a guy from the crowd jumps up onto the stage, takes down his trousers and starts masturbating. I’m watching from the wings, barely able to believe what I’m seeing. This bloke is jerking off in front of 100,000 people. What’s possessed him? He’s obviously off his head on something. Urged on by the crowd, the anonymous wanker achieves climax, ejaculating all over the microphones. I’m thinking, ‘That’s not going to improve the sound’.

Eight o’clock and we’re still no better off. Accusations are now flying around. Freddy thinks we’ve concocted the whole thing so that we can go on at the best time of day, just as the sun is going down, to maximise our light show. Another rumour circulating is that Keith Richards started enjoying the backstage hospitality so early in the day that by the afternoon he could hardly stand up, let alone play. Consequently, he’d been sent up to Knebworth House to sleep it off while the Stones did a job on our equipment to make it look like our fault. Apparently one of their roadies had sawn through the cables.

At 8.30, even though the sound problems still haven’t been resolved, 10cc are forced to take to the stage, having agreed to play a shortened set of one hour. For some reason known only to themselves, they kick off with ‘Une Nuit à Paris’, their nine-minute, three-part mini-opera. It’s hardly a crowd pleaser, but then they like to be unpredictable. On this occasion, however, it doesn’t pay off and there are a few boos. The band sound and look lacklustre. It’s not a promising start. All my worst fears are being realised. I look out at the crowd and think, ‘They are going to have to sit through an hour of things they don’t want to hear. Oh God, this is awful.’

They did eventually win the crowd over, but it was by no stretch of the imagination what you’d call a triumph. I made my excuses and left soon after, exhausted by all the hassles and arguments. I wasn’t to know it then, but we had all witnessed 10cc’s last ever gig as a foursome. What a way to go out. Apparently the Stones got on at about eleven o’clock and didn’t finish until around 1.30am. Pity the poor punters. While Jagger was prancing about in a field i-n Hertfordshire, Jeff delivered me to the Halkin Hotel in Belgravia and I made my weary way to bed, the last flight to Nice having long since departed. Just another day in the life of Harvey Lisberg, rock’n’roll manager…

* Figures quoted throughout the book will follow the same style: the original value at the time, followed by the equivalent value today in brackets.

1

Harvey – You And I Are Going To Do A Deal

I’m three years old and I’m standing in front of a huge, wooden record player. It has large speakers at its base, out of which a tune is emerging, along with the words, ‘Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition and we’ll all stay free’. I don’t understand what it’s about, I just like the tune. I’ve heard my family singing it as well. They say it’s something to do with ‘the war’.

And that’s my first memory.

The record player belonged to my grandmother Gerty. She was born Gertrude Brown, the eldest daughter of Lewis and Selena Brown. That wasn’t their real name. They had emigrated from Romania and, like a lot of Jews who came over, they wanted to fit in, so they just picked a colour; green, brown, black, white, whatever. They chose brown. (I like to imagine that when Lewis and Selena were walking through the streets of Manchester with young Gerty, people stopped them and said, ‘Mrs Brown, you’ve got a lovely daughter’ – the title of the Herman’s Hermits song that was to bring us so much success in the mid-Sixties). They had a big family, nine children in all, and they lived in Salford, a small community in north Manchester. Grandmother Gerty was the oldest and the first to leave home, when she married my grandfather Henry Sternberg. They had four children, including my mother, Violet.

My father’s parents came from Russia and moved to Manchester in the late 1800s. My paternal grandfather, Alfred, founded a textile mill, A. Lisberg and Son; it was a little factory at the back of the house. He would get all the cotton waste from various mills all over Lancashire and Yorkshire, sort it and resell it. He made an absolute fortune after World War II because everybody needed clothes. It was a very successful business and continued to be so until the 1950s, when my father hit hard times. His name was Judah and he was a lovely man. As well as inheriting and running the family business, he had several outside interests. He was a pretty decent tennis player, county standard, and it was through tennis that he met my mother, who was captain of several clubs. Judah was also a very fine musician. He was first violinist at Manchester Grammar School and he used to play in the pit at the cinema that my grandfather owned. He played the saxophone and clarinet as well and was in the army band. When war broke out he was sent to Africa where he contracted malaria. He was in hospital for six weeks, after which he was taken by the American troops into Italy to play in the Peace Corps, behind the fighting. He loved opera, so he was in heaven. He was quite a romantic, too; he used to write lots of letters to my mother while he was away.

Judah and Violet were married in 1937 and I was born in March 1940, so I didn’t see my father until I was five, when the war ended. I was an only child but I discovered many years later that my mother had intended to have a big family. I found a little prayer book with my name on it, as though there was going to be a series of children after me. That was how it had always been. I came from a line of big families. But I was a caesarean birth and in those days that was it, you couldn’t have any more children after a caesarean. My mother wanted more, so there was a sadness there and I often wonder whether I would have turned out the same if there had been siblings, because I was doted on; I was the first grandchild in this big family. I had an excess of love, which gave me this sense of infallibility. I grew up feeling I could do anything. I was very close to my mother, who was a fabulous woman.

Family was very important in the Jewish community. A lot of our extended family had been wiped out in the war and never seen again. My grandparents and parents never talked about it but there’s no doubt it brought us all closer together. Everybody lived near each other and, because we were a minority, we were always aware of the outside. You’re always worried about anti-Semitism as a Jew, and that binds you together. It was extremely close-knit, much tighter than, say, a Church of England family. There seemed to be more traditions. There was a set pattern in Jewish life and it was very family orientated. There was a warmth towards each other, whereas I felt in the middle-class homes of the Church of England, the relationship between the children and their parents was a bit more distant. There was sometimes a lack of respect, which wouldn’t happen in a Jewish family. I had a very good, very close relationship with my parents, although we had arguments, usually about music. The house was inundated with every opera you could name, thanks to my father. All day and night, all I could hear was bleeding Puccini. But the strange thing is I never heard him play the saxophone or the violin himself. It was as if he reached a point in his life where he thought he was too old for it and gave it up, which was rather sad. He wasn’t alone: over the years I’ve known many people who’ve just stopped, having played an instrument all their lives. I often wonder why. It seems odd to me.

I learned the piano and was largely self-taught. There was a small upright in the kitchen and after my parents had finished their evening meal and gone into the living room, I would stand and mess around on it. I found that if I closed my eyes I could pick out a tune with my right hand and then work out chord sequences, as long as there weren’t too many sharps or flats. Or I would look at sheet music and get an idea of chords from the left hand. My mother’s sister Sylvia could play anything on the piano unbelievably well by ear. I would watch what she was doing and wish I could play like her. The fact that she could do it without reading music was just inspirational to me. Once you can read music it’s like a typewriter, whereas when you play by ear, you put your own feeling into it, you do what you like. You might play the wrong notes or the wrong chords, but it doesn’t matter. I had a few lessons but I soon stopped. I couldn’t stand doing scales all the time, it was just so boring. I thought to hell with this, I’m going to listen to a song and I’m going to play it. The first one I learned to play was ‘Smile’, which was a big hit for Nat King Cole and has only one flat, so I could handle that.

At about the age of six or seven I started suffering from quite severe bronchial problems. Manchester in those days had horrendous pollution. The pits were churning out this black filth very near to us, creating fogs that were so thick you literally couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I remember walking down roads and being scared I would be knocked over by a bus. There was absolutely nil visibility, maybe one yard at most. All the buildings were black. My mother and I were evacuated to Blackpool during the war and I remember noticing how clean the houses were. They all seemed to be bright red. Back in Manchester, everything was covered in a layer of soot. Even Manchester Central Library, which is a magnificent building, was black. They’d clean it, but five years later it would be black again.

My breathing continued to deteriorate, so when I was eight my parents decided to send me to an independent boarding school down south where the air was better. It was near Newbury and it was called Carmel College. Kopul Rosen, the headmaster, was an imposing man, six foot two inches tall. He was a former Rabbi who had left the rabbinate to dedicate himself to education. He founded Carmel College in 1948, the year I arrived. I was the youngest person there by two years and from the moment I got there I felt like an alien in a strange land. From being the centre of attention in this very close-knit family, I had been sent to what seemed like the other side of the world. I was confronted with all kinds of things I’d never come across before. We had to do a five mile walk through the forest at six o’clock every morning. We had pickled beetroot every lunchtime. And there was a lot of corporal punishment. I remember soon after I got there somebody set fire to Mr Rosen’s car and no one would admit to it, so there was a public caning. We all had to go into the main hall, stand in a queue and when it was your turn, take your trousers down in front of everybody else. The headmaster had a great big bamboo with which he whipped every single bottom of every single boy in the school.

After a while I began to rebel. I never liked exercise, so my mind started scheming. How could I get out of the early morning walk? There were hooks on the back of each toilet door. I found that if I climbed up on to the toilet seat, turned round and leaned back I could hang myself from these hooks by the collar of my blazer. The toilet doors all had gaps underneath. The masters would come round and look underneath to make sure nobody was hiding inside. I’d be hanging there, feet dangling above the gap, safe from their prying eyes. Then there was the issue of the daily beetroot. I dealt with this by sliding it down between my legs and on to the floor, where I would kick it to the other side of the table.

None of this cured the homesickness, though, so I started running away. The first time I ran to the nearest village, the next time to Newbury. I kept disappearing and the teachers would have to come and find me. One day, I think it was a Friday, I was with a boy called Keith Rose. He’d noticed what I was doing. ‘Why don’t we run away together?’ he said. ‘I mean, really run away.’ He had an aunt who lived in London near Euston Station and he thought we could go and live with her. We could have some decent food and get properly looked after. It sounded fantastic to me – anything that didn’t involve Carmel College would have done – so we planned out the whole thing. On the appointed day, we walked all the way to Newbury train station, got platform tickets and off we went, up to London. When we got to the aunt’s house, the first thing she did, and I still resent her for it, was to phone up the headmaster. ‘They’ve just arrived here’, she announced. ‘I thought she was going to look after us,’ I hissed to Keith, who just shrugged. He clearly didn’t know his aunt that well. Not only did she not take us in, she didn’t give us any food and sent us straight back to Newbury on the very next train. I was fuming!

It was about eight o’clock at night when we got back to school, by which time word had spread about our escapades and we were now heroes. This was not a view I expected to be shared by the headmaster, however. Given the way he’d reacted to his car being set alight, I was anticipating another close encounter with the bamboo. Instead, he called me into his study, shut the door and told me to sit down. ‘Now listen, Harvey,’ he said. ‘You and I are going to do a deal. I’m not going to punish you, if you promise not to run away again. All right?’ I said yes, it was all right, so we stood up and shook hands on it. I walked out of his study having just done my first deal. I felt very grown up – and greatly relieved.

Not long after this incident, my mother came to visit me. I just fell apart. I told her I hated it there and wanted to go home. She advised me to wait, saying things would improve. They didn’t. If I’d been the same age as the others I might have stood a chance, but as it was I just couldn’t cope. After two years my parents finally relented and I was allowed to return home. If nothing else, my spell down south had cured my bronchial problems. But you know the expression ‘out of the frying pan, into the fire’? A year later I began a new life at Salford Grammar School. If I thought Carmel College was bad…

I went to Salford Grammar because I’d failed to get into Manchester Grammar School. That was really a tremendous knock to me because if you went to Manchester Grammar you were the elite. My best friend, Peter Copeland, got in and I found that hard to deal with. Salford Grammar was like the second division, while the third division was the comprehensive school. Being in the second division was a blow to my self-esteem.

Salford Grammar was rough. One of my friends had his fingers broken by the biology teacher, who whacked his hand with a Bunsen burner. He went home in agony and received a bollocking from his parents for being naughty. In those days adults generally assumed children were at fault, so the teachers could get away with anything. The ones at Salford took full advantage. Another of them would amuse himself by seeing how far he could kick his students. He would get a boy to come to the front of the class and tell him to bend over. Then he’d walk back a few paces, take a run up and kick him as hard as he could in the backside. The kid would go flying out of the classroom.

I tried to avoid trouble, otherwise you got the shit beaten out of you. I tried but I didn’t always succeed. I once got smashed in the face for the crime of delivering a message. The headmaster had handed me a piece of paper, saying, ‘Lisberg, go and give this to Dr Bird. Tell him I want him to come and see me.’ I found Bird’s classroom and went to give him the