‘We became real hermits’: Peter Noone and his Herman’s lads finally return to MPAC

Herman’s Hermits set a few records for record sales in the mid-1960s, in between the Beatles and Monkees.

More than a half-century later, Peter Noone and his re-created band still are setting records of sorts.

According to Morristown’s Mayo Performing Arts Center, the act was postponed at least five times by pandemic lockdowns.

“For a bit there we became real hermits,” Noone joked on Saturday, to a nearly packed house.

The masked, vaccinated crowd seemed to feel it was worth the wait. Noone, a cherubic-faced teen during the British Invasion, remains exuberant at 73.

He works as hard, harder maybe, than many younger entertainers, mixing a bag full of catchy (we don’t say “infectious” anymore) pop confections with shtick tailored to his audience.

How many other performers would strap on a guitar and attempt a deadpan ballad about “The Mayo Performing Arts Center in Morristown, New Jersey”?

As in prior visits, Noone  — a childhood soap opera star and former Broadway headliner who hosts a ’60s show on satellite radio —  sprinkled in droll local references.

Our highway signs still appear after you’ve missed your turns, inevitably taking you to Parsippany, just like they did before COVID-19.

The jokes still get laughs. And those old Hermits tunes — Mrs. Brown, No Milk Today, Silhouettes, A Must to Avoid, Dandy, Listen People, Leaning on a Lamp Post, Can’t You Hear My Heartbeat, I’m Into Something Good, There’s a Kind of Hush, and yes, a sing-along I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am — still bring smiles, and even standing ovations, as they bounce along like Amazon trucks on west-bound Route 78.

After so many postponements, there’s some comfort in that.

Sixties fans got a nostalgia bonus: Midnight Confessions (thankfully, well before bedtime) from an opening act that sounded an awful lot like The Grass Roots, despite the absence of any original members.