Herman's Hermits

Freud et al. have taught me where and even how dreams may come and how they might be interpreted and even understood. On my dreams and my readings I have benefitted from his insights. But at present I am interested in the sound track that emanates from that unconscious and might even serve as musical accompaniment to the dream itself. When I awoke this morning “I’m Henry the Eighth I am” by Herman’s Hermits was playing. They sang: 

I'm Henry the eighth I am
Henry the eighth I am, I am
I got married to the widow next door
She's been married seven times before
And every one was an Henry (Henry)
She wouldn't have a Willy or a Sam (no Sam)
I'm her eighth old man, I'm Henry
Henry the eighth I am
     Second verse same as the first

It is a very silly song and if you see the YouTube of their performance on the Ed Sullivan show you will understand how absent of any meaning this group represented. Other hits from this group included “Mrs. Brown, You’ve got a Lovely Daughter,” and “I’m Into Something Good.” Herman’s Hermits appeared in the United States as part of what was termed ‘the British Invasion.’ Rock groups arriving included the Hermits as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five, the Yardbirds, the Who, the Kinks, the Animals, Blind Faith, the Pretty Things, Dusty Springfield, Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, and Manfred Mann. I am certain there were more, but I cannot remember them because mostly they did not last very long. 

     I do remember animated discussions regarding the question of who was better: the Rolling Stones or the Beatles, the Beatles or the Dave Clark Five. These discussions (and those intense conversations concerning our love lives or lack thereof) consumed our lunch periods. Oh, how I obsessed about my unrequited love to dear Randy whose love was definitely requited. But I don’t remember being jealous of her success—perhaps I was enjoying my ideal longing. But I consider now that that is why Herman’s Hermits this many years later became the soundtrack for whatever my unconscious was effecting. In Digressions and Stories, my in-progress pseudo-memoir, I had been writing about those years of high school when the music changed and when the music changed us. And Herman’s Hermits, though an advance on the bubble gum music that filled the radio waves in the late 1950s and early 1960s, still refused any significance or purpose outside of the enjoyment of the British accents and the remarkable carelessness and fun the music represented.  Herman’s Hermits were plain fun. Oh, yes, some of the British groups addressed our lives in a more serious vein, introduced us to sex and metaphor—I remember two of my classmates heading into New York City and returning with Mick Jagger’s t-shirt. We did not doubt how they had earned that souvenir, and I imagine we were envious of their daring and their successes. And I recall someone suggesting that the Beatles’ “Norwegian Wood” was a word play on “Knowing she would.” It was all a beginning of what would become a remarkably eventful and mostly tragic decade: I know that at least one of those young girls was found dead from an overdose on Bleecker Street, and I am convinced that some of my classmates must have ended up in Vietnam. I hope even now that they all returned. I think early during the decade I learned that evil existed. The Sixties were not fun: aside from the psychic pressures from my own personal demons, there was the horror from the social and political world. The existence of The Holocaust reached public acknowledgement and became part of our unconscious and active consciousness. It seemed to me that there would be no end to the assaults on our humanity and that we, and I, would never recover.
     And so the sound track of “Henry VIII, I Am” by Herman’s Hermits appears now in this moment because in the horror that is the Trump regime and with the impending global tragedy that will result from climate change, I would return to the innocence their songs represented. I would like to sit simply again wondering who was better and bemoaning happily unrequited love. Perhaps only in dreams.