We're all about the history of rock & roll at BoomtownAmerica.com!

Every week, we present “ROCK REMEMBERED,” a deep dive into the hidden history of rock & roll, the stories behind the artists and songs that changed the world. Join host, “Boomtown Bill” Cross each Wednesday at 7 pm (Eastern) with an encore broadcast on Saturday at noon (Eastern).

Join us today as we look at the sometimees successful and sometimes not "Turning Rock Stars into Movie Stars!"

At the height of the British Invasion (1964-1965), the most serious challenger to the Beatles was not the Rolling Stones. They really wouldn’t hit their stride until the latter half of the 1960s. The Who scored only one minor hit in the U.S. before 1967.

No, the band that scored the highest was Herman’s Hermits, a bubblegum group before the invention of that term. A boy band decades before boy bands became a thing. Herman’s Hermits were five nice-looking young lads from Manchester. Leader singer, Peter Noone, was nicknamed Herman. He was cute in a way that appealed to the little girls, but didn’t frighten their parents (the way Mick Jagger and occasionally the Beatles did).

In those early years, Herman’s Hermits placed 11 songs in the American Top 10, with another 6 charting inside the Top 40. Between March and August of 1965, they logged twenty-four consecutive weeks in the Top Ten of Billboard's Hot 100. They also starred in two movies, more than any other band of that era outside of the Fab Four.

Here are 5 things about these early rock icons you might not know:

1.) For a brief time, they actually outsold the Beatles. In 1965, Billboard named them the top-selling singles act of the year, selling more 45s than John, Paul, George & Ringo. The Beatles, of course, kept chugging along and remain the best-selling group in rock history.

2.) Peter Noone’s nickname was inspired by a cartoon show. His bandmates all thought that Noone resembled a cartoon character from the Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoon series, Sherman, the little boy who hung around with the brainy, time-traveling dog, Mr. Peabody. To tease him, they started calling him “Herman” like he was related to Sherman. The Hermits’ name was given to the other four members by a pub owner in Manchester when they adopted the scruffier hairstyles made famous by the Beatles.

3.) Instead of drawing on early American rock ‘n’ roll songs, the band’s biggest hits were covers of very old English music hall songs. While the Stones, Beatles, and other British bands were reintroducing American audiences to the songs of Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and others, Herman’s Hermits pulled their two biggest hits from the catalog of English music hall standards of any earlier, pre-rock era. Those, of course, were “Mrs. Brown, You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” (which also became the title of their first film) and “I’m Henry the Eighth.”

4.) Unlike most of the British Invasion bands, Herman’s Hermits had no songwriters in the group. Instead, they had to rely on covering those old music hall songs along with a small handful of American pop hits from the 1950s (“Silhouettes” and “Wonderful World”) and songs from emerging British & American songwriters like Steve Bari, P.F. Sloan, and Graham Gouldman (who later became a member of 10cc).

5.) Before turning to rock, Peter Noone had been the child star on a British soap opera. Noone had started out to be an actor. At the age of 14, he was cast as a regular character on the long-running British soap opera, Coronation Street. Two years later, he would give that up when he became a founding member of Herman’s Hermits.

While the hits dried up in 1967, the band did achieve an enduring popularity. So much so that there has been some confusion and a legal battle over who has the right to the name. Noone left the group in 1971 to pursue a solo career. The rest of the band continued on, simply as Herman, until just the original drummer, Barry Whitwam, was left. Whitwam hired other musicians and kept performing, eventually resuming the full name “Herman’s Hermits.”

Peter Noone, by far the most recognizable member of the original group and the guy who had sung all their hits, ultimately took him to court. They settled the lawsuit by agreeing that Whitwam must bill his group as Herman’s Hermits starring Barry Whitwam and Noone can bill his group as Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone, although he often performs simply under his own name with no group mention.

Yes, that organic produce may be free of pesticides and synthetic fertilizer, but it’s no safer from germs that may come from harvest, transporting and having it out on display at your grocer’s.

Experts will tell you that germs don’t really discriminate based on how the food was grown. As with any raw produce, make sure you wash it once you bring it home from the store.

The huge wave of cash that American International Pictures was surfing with their Beach Party pictures (see what we did there?) did not go unnoticed in Hollywood, where imitation is the sincerest way they do business.

Columbia Pictures decided to see if they could catch the same wave with 1964’s Ride the Wild Surf. As AIP cast an East Coast Italian singer as their lead (Frankie Avalon), Columbia signed the guy widely thought to be a less than successful attempt to clone Avalon, Fabian.

Yet Columbia did not produce an even cheaper knockoff of a cheap drive-in flick. Strangely, Columbia actually released what many critics consider the best of all the surf, sand, and sex films that followed in the wake of the original Gidget.

First off, the film focuses on surfing in a way that no other beach picture ever did. The film, including the surfing footage, was shot on location in Hawaii instead of purchasing already-made surfing footage and shooting in California. In addition, Ride the Wild Surf used professional surfers dressed in suits that matched the movie’s male stars. Tab Hunter and Peter Brown also dyed their hair so it better matched the surfers doubling for them.

It’s important because the main plot of the film centers on a surfing competition that pits most of the males in the cast in an endurance contest to see who can last longest in Hawaii’s savage surf. The result is some spectacular surfing footage that the sport’s aficionados say is the best ever used in a mainstream Hollywood film.

The film is also not a comedy. There are no silly subplots with the possible exception of the thankless role given to Barbara Eden. She plays the film’s only “kooky” character. We know she’s kooky because she’s named Augustina or Augie for short. Because, sure, you totally buy a 20-something girl would be named Augie. She’s also an expert in martial arts because why not? She’s kooky, right? And she wants to build her own fireworks. Did we mention she’s kooky?

The rest of the cast gets involved in some seriously complicated love affairs. Tab Hunter is wooing island girl Susan Hart against her mother’s wishes. Fabian is trying to sweep Shelly Fabares off her feet, but Shelly is resisting because Fabian has no ambition in life beyond winning the film’s surfing competition. Peter Brown, the third of the male leads, is trying to convince Barbara Eden that he can be kooky too.

There seems to be some strange hair coloring going on in the film. After giving Peter Brown blonder hair to match his surfing double, producers asked Barbara Eden to dye her blond hair red so she would contrast with her love interest. They asked Shelly Fabares to go blond to contrast with Fabian’s dark hair. Susan Hart’s hair had to go jet black so she’d be believable as an island native.

The cast, which also includes Robert Mitchum’s son, James Mitchum, turn in performances that are better than you might suspect and the film treats the sport of competitive surfing seriously.  The only musical number within the film is a Hawaiian hula performed very seductively by Ms. Hart. The title song, co-written by Brian Wilson (who also provided the title music for the first Beach Party movie) and sung by Jan & Dean makes its only appearance over the movie’s closing credits.

(BTW – Jan & Dean were originally supposed to appear in the movie as Fabian’s surfing buddies. Before shooting started, one of Dean’s friends was involved in a high-profile kidnapping case. His association with the singer received a lot of publicity and the studio moved to replace them with Hunter and Brown. They were still retained to sing the title track.)

Seriously, if you’re in the mood to see a serious beach picture or want a feel for what the surfing craze of the sixties was really like, track down a copy of Ride the Wild Surf and take that last ride!