Imagine being Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits in 1963. You’d be playing the UK dive-bar circuit with a bunch of other soon-to-be-legendary groups. But you’d get a sense that something big was in store.

“We knew that something was going to happen, we just didn’t know it would happen to us,” Noone said this week. “In England we used to have what we called show bands — big groups with backing singers and a brass section, that needed a whole bus to get around. Then the Beatles came along, and they were just four guys in a van with two roadies — four boys onstage who loved each other and loved the songs they were playing. No more 25-year-old people trying to sing like they were 16. We knew we had something nobody else had, and that was enthusiasm.”

The Hermits’ run of success was brief but glorious; between 1964-67 they managed 15 hit singles, two movies and endless tours. “We wanted to be big in America — My first question was, ‘Do I get to meet Johnny Cash?’ There was one news clip I saw after 50 years, about the time I met Elvis, and it said ‘This was Peter’s only day off in a 320 day tour.’ And I thought that wasn’t possible, we didn’t really do 320 days. So I looked up the schedule — and yes, it was 320 days.”

Classic 45’s like “I’m Into Something Good,” “There’s a Kind of Hush” and “No Milk Today” will all be in the set when Noone and his current Hermits play two shows at  City Winery on Sunday. Of those hits  Noone says, “We didn’t really make records for people, we made them for the BBC. If they liked it, you had a hit, that’s what we grew up on. And our producer Mickie Most was brilliant at finding those songs. It became a joke in the studio — if one of his artists didn’t like a song he’d say ‘Give it to Herman.’ That happened when Donovan didn’t like ‘Museum,’ he said ‘Give it to Herman and it will be Number One everywhere.’ So I did it and it wasn’t Number One anywhere. But it’s a great record.”

He admits to being less fond of “I’m Henry VIII I Am,” the music-hall knee-slapper that was the group’s biggest U.S. hit. “I like it now, because it always gets people to sing along. I have a theory that a hundred million people didn’t really buy it, they just know it because the radio played it to death. It is the shortest recording (at a mere one minute, 50 seconds) that ever got to Number One in America. But it feels like the longest.”

If you’ve seen Noone before, you know there’s also a lot of comedy in his show. “For awhile I was trying to be the English Don Rickles — I’d spot someone with an old Herman’s Hermits album and go on about that. Then I realized people like it more when the jokes are self-deprecating.” For him it goes back to a ‘60s tour with his friend Gerry Marsden, of Gerry & the Pacemakers. ”We were going through U.S. Customs and I was about to put ‘musician’ as my occupation. And Gerry said ‘Don’t say that — Tell them you’re an entertainer. If you’re an entertainer, then the musicians all stand behind you.”

Herman’s Hermits in 1964. From left to right, they are guitarists Derek Leckenby (back) and Keith Hopwood, drummer Barry Whitwam, singer Peter Noone and bass player Karl Green (back). (Photo by Evening Standard/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)