Vault 69 -

Vault 69 — Keith Hopwood And Friends

Pluto Music (TH030751)

Vault 69 opens a rare window into the songwriting partnership behind one of the biggest British Invasion bands of the 1960s. With one exception, every track here is a demo written for Herman's Hermits by the group's own guitarists, Keith Hopwood and Derek Leckenby, between 1966 and 1969 — recorded during the very earliest days of Pluto Studios in Stockport, the studio Hopwood and Leckenby would go on to found.

The twelve songs, including "Sleepy Head," "Uncle Ernest," "Ain't Nobody Like You" and "The Sultan's Daughter" (the latter co-written with Roger Brook), capture the pair testing out ideas in a way that never made it to a Herman's Hermits record but shows exactly how their songwriting worked behind the scenes. Leckenby (credited here as "Lek") and Hopwood share guitar, bass and drum duties throughout, with additional playing from Pete Cowap, who also contributes the album's sole outside composition, "Summer Deutschland Evening."

Among the collection's more unexpected turns, "You're a Big Girl Now" features Just Four Men's Dee Christopholus on lead vocals — a version of the song that later surfaced on the Bam Caruso compilation The Wimple Winch Story Volume 2: 1966–68, The Psychedelic Years (1991), tying this vault of Hermits demos into the wider story of the era's British psych and beat scenes.