Troupers Deliver So Their Fans Can Keep the Old Flames Burning

Becoming teen idols was easy. Peter Noone, Davy Jones and Bobby Sherman just had to be who they were--young, cuddly-cute and capable of singing a catchy ditty--and let the mysterious power of unleashed puppy love do the rest.

Their role was to absorb waves of girlish adoration, to do nothing that would prick the bubble of fantasy and belief and to graciously accept the inevitable hook when the young girls who adored them became older girls who adored real boys and more mature pop acts.

Now their task is more complicated. As the principals in the Teen Idols tour, which plays the Orange County Fair tonight, this trio of fiftysomething troubadours can’t ride a wave of hormonally driven mass hysteria. Their job is to suspend an audience’s disbelief--to look good enough, sing well enough and act chipper enough to let nostalgia cast middle-aged crowds back to the poster-lined bedrooms of their youth.

The erstwhile teen idols need to embrace a type of humility. In a star culture--where “don’t look back” is scripture, where reinvention is the obsession of the biggest bigshots, where the phrase “oldies but goodies” has a ring of condescension and where the tastes of girls with crushes are never taken seriously except by those who can profit from them--there is probably nothing more humbling than to admit, as a grown man, that “teen idol” is the best drawing card you can play.

The most admired pop figures--Sinatra, Presley, the Beatles--started as teen idols and had the depth, staying power and gravitational pull to keep fans in their orbit for a lifetime.

These are the other guys.

“They want me to sound like I did on the records, and they want me to dance like I did when I was 15, because they want to feel like they’re 15 again,” said Noone, who had his slice of teen-idoldom as Herman of that most frothy of British Invasion bands, Herman’s Hermits.

In separate telephone interviews last week, each of the Teen Idol headliners had a story to tell about learning to walk a humble path and be proud of it. What they share is the professional’s refusal to see entertainment as “mere” entertainment. Each spoke of relishing the surprise and the enchantment they’ve seen on fans’ faces while they keep the oldies coming on their summerlong package tour of carnivals, fairs, amusement parks, amphitheaters and small stadiums.

Sherman is the idol with the charmed life, a man who, unless he is skillfully hiding a seething, embittered core behind a persuasive mask of equanimity and contentment, has cruised through his 55 years with the breezy, unruffled, neurosis-free attitude embodied in his 1970 hit “Easy Come, Easy Go.”

He grew up in the San Fernando Valley, singing along to Rick Nelson records and performing casually in a high school rock band. He was studying child psychology, about to transfer from junior college to UCLA, when one of those serendipitous show-biz fairy tales overtook him: His girlfriend, who had Hollywood connections, took him to a big cast party for the 1965 movie “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” where, by coincidence, the band consisted of buddies from his high school combo.

They invited Sherman to step up and sing Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”; afterward, Sal Mineo, Natalie Wood and Jane Fonda approached him to ask who his agent was.

Soon Sherman was a regular on “Shindig,” ABC’s mid-’60s rock ‘n’ roll variety show. His job was to sing other peoples’ hits. That led to a featured part in the weekly TV series “Here Come the Brides,” which in turn led to a recording career in which Sherman sang jaunty, brassy, generally forgettable stuff that mainly was written, chosen and arranged by others.

When his run of hits stopped in 1972, he moved on, happy to enjoy the cushion of a well-invested teen-idol windfall (he credits his longtime manager for that), take the occasional TV part and do some soundtrack scoring and production at his home studio in the San Fernando Valley.

To safeguard his two sons, now their mid-20s, Sherman learned first aid, then took it further: For the past 10 years, he has been a part-time emergency medical technician and medical training officer for the Los Angeles Police Department.

As a medic, Sherman has delivered five babies; the former teen heartthrob now regularly finds himself laboring to get hearts throbbing again after they’ve gone into cardiac arrest.

“I’ve had a couple of instances where my patients would look up and say, ‘Hey, you’re Bobby Sherman,’ he said. “It turns into a kind of placebo effect. It works every time”--the medically stricken turn star-struck and relax a bit.

Not counting a few benefit shows for the police department, the Teen Idols tour marks Sherman’s return after 25 years away from performing.

“I made a decision to give myself a break and do stuff I wanted to do,” he said of his long absence. “Being a teen idol afforded me so many different things in my life. God bless the fans. They made me a teen idol, and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Monkee Shines

Jones, 52, is sustained by the trouper’s ethic he grew up with. Years before he ever harmonized on the refrain, “Hey, hey, we’re the Monkees, people say we monkey around,” he had established himself in musical theater, starring as the Artful Dodger in the original production of “Oliver!” in London and on Broadway.

While still hoping that his life will take wonderful, surprising turns like that of once-kaput but now reinvented and reinvigorated former teen idol John Travolta, Jones said he’s never had qualms about getting up and singing “Daydream Believer,” “Valleri” and other nuggets from the Monkees’ run as the Prefab Four.

From 1966 to 1969, the cute, zany, made-for-TV band carved an endearing and deservedly enduring musical chapter through sheer liveliness of personality and astute application of pop craftsmanship.

Speaking from a home in Brentwood (one of three residences; he spends most of his time at a house near Harrisburg, Pa., where he raises racehorses), Jones talked nonstop about career and continuing ambitions.

In conjunction with the Teen Idols tour, he has updated “They Made a Monkee Out of Me,” the 1986 autobiography that came out when Monkeemania exploded a second time thanks to reruns on MTV. Monkee-business continues, although Jones says there was friction during a 1996-97 reunion that produced “Justus,” the first Monkees album entirely written, performed and produced by Jones and his cohorts, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith.

Apparently there is a gulf between Jones, the most theatrical Monkee, and Nesmith, the most musicianly (Nesmith sat out the 1986 reunion). “When Nesmith joined, we lost the fun,” Jones said. “Unless it’s his idea, it can’t be done.

“I have escaped the Monkees somewhat at this point, and hopefully forever,” said the father of four daughters ages 10 to 29. Still, he’s too much the trouper to rule anything out--including a possible Monkees movie he says is being discussed.

As long as he plays pop shows, Jones isn’t about to deny the fact that when they made a Monkee out of him, it was permanent. He likes to mix up his Teen Idols set with songs that aren’t Monkees oldies.

“But I don’t want to cram it down their throats, saying, ‘This is who I am now.’ You’ve gotta deal with who you are, and who I am to most people is Davy Jones from the Monkees.”

Jones has continued to act on television and on stage (where he has graduated from the Artful Dodger to Fagin). He is enough of a daydream believer to think that raising his profile on the Teen Idols tour could lead to a lucky, career-transforming acting role.

“I have nothing to prove at this point but everything to gain by being out there, on the chance some smart young director might see me differently and change my life again. The unknown has always been very appealing to me. It makes my heart beat.”

Yet the Teen Idols tour has nothing to do with the unknown. It’s about making hearts beat nostalgically to tunes they know by heart. Jones, a self-styled modern-day “vaudevillian,” is willing.

“‘I’m understanding of why they want it, and I don’t see anything wrong in it.”

Hermit in Public

Noone’s path to becoming a teen idol in the 1960s was much different. Herman’s Hermits didn’t enjoy the instantaneous celebrity afforded by a platform on network television. In 1964, the toothy 15-year-old may have been the cutest, jauntiest and frothiest of the British Invasion singers, but he and his Hermits were nevertheless a band, shaped by the experience of clawing their way up from nowhere (actually, Manchester, also Jones’ hometown) via gigs and recordings.

Noone chatted amiably about being taken under the Beatles’ wing in the early days and of rooming with Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones and managing to emerge not too badly debauched: “I was extremely naive, which was my best asset.” Innocent charm, and a knack for mining the British vaudevillian tradition, gave Herman’s Hermits a run of hits from 1964 to 1968, among them “I’m Henry VIII, I Am,” “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” and “There’s a Kind of Hush.” In 1965, they outsold the Beatles in worldwide record sales.

Yet that’s not what ticked off the Fab Four when they threw Noone bodily out of their recording studio a few years later, Noone recalled. Invited to listen to a new track, “Lady Madonna,” he figured he would show his teenage sagacity by opining that “It’s not bad, but the bass is too loud.” The Beatles were so impressed that “they pushed me out the door, with expletives.”

*

When the hits dried up for Herman’s Hermits, Noone was ready to move on to a solo career, but nothing significant materialized. Old fans wanted Herman, not Peter, and new fans didn’t care.

“That’s a hard lesson for a rock ‘n’ roll guy,” he said. “We thought we were rebels. But we had to do exactly what the audience wanted.”

Noone resisted that fact through the ‘70s and most of the ‘80s. At one point he collaborated with a still-unknown David Bowie, scoring a British hit with Bowie’s glam-rock anthem “Oh! You Pretty Things.” In 1980, Noone had his ego boosted when his Los Angeles-based band, the Tremblers, got signed based on its music, without the label knowing the singer was the former Herman. But the Tremblers didn’t cause a ripple commercially.

Noone said he finally embraced nostalgia in 1987 when a backup band newly hired for a Canadian tour insisted on playing his oldies.

“I went 12 years without singing those songs, and it was insane. Bit by bit, I started to sing my old tunes, and while I was singing them, I thought, ‘I’m home. This is what I do.’ ”

Noone, 50 and the father of an 11-year-old daughter, also has kept up a profile with a bit of acting and musical theater and a five-year stint in the early ‘90s as host of the VH1 oldies show “My Generation.” To him, being a teen idol means embracing the trouper ethic.

“Davy and I have had these heart-to-heart conversations about what we should be doing with our careers. Sometimes you just have to give the people what they want.”

Touring as a nostalgic teen idol, Noone says, means that fans’ hearts, although no longer young and tender, are still riding on how he looks, how he sings and what he projects.

“The worst thing you can do is come out and be fat and sing out of tune and not treat them with the respect they deserve. That’s a heartbreaker for sure.”

* Teen Idols, with Peter Noone, Davy Jones and Bobby Sherman, plays tonight at Arlington Theater at the Orange County Fair, 88 Fair Drive, Costa Mesa. 7 and 9 p.m. Included with $6 fair admission. (714) 708-3247.