Hold On! (album)
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| Soundtrack album by Herman's Hermits | |||||
| Released | March 1966 (US) June 1966 (UK) |
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| Genre | Beat, British rock | ||||
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MMG (US/Canada) Columbia (UK) |
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| Producer | Mickie Most | ||||
| Herman's Hermits British chronology | |||||
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| Herman's Hermits American chronology | |||||
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| Allmusic |   |
The Hold On! EP by Herman's Hermits is the band's fifth EP and was released in the United Kingdom by EMI/Columbia (catalogue number SEG 8503.) In the US and Canada it was released as a full album. It was the third album released by MGM Records in the USA and Canada for the band.
It is the soundtrack album to a 1966 film featuring Herman's Hermits and Shelley Fabares, Hold On!
The producers had recruited Fred Karger, a Hollywood composer who had served as music director of the group's previous movie, When the Boys Meet the Girls, to write the songs for the movie. In an interview on a television documentary on The British Invasion, Peter Noone recalled that the original title of the film was There's No Place Like Space, for which Karger had written the theme song. However, the group and their manager Mickie Most agreed that the song wasn't right for them and, instead, asked co-star Shelley Fabares' then-husband, record producer Lou Adler, for help. Adler recommended songwriter P.F. Sloan to compose the title track for the film. Sloan's recollection was that the film was to be renamed A Must to Avoid, and he wrote a song for that title, with some contributions from his writing partner Steve Barri. When the studio vetoed that title, the film was then retitled Hold On! after another one of Sloan's songs.
Ultimately, the ten-song US soundtrack album included five songs written by Karger, including the lone song sung by Fabares, four songs written by Sloan/Barri, and one Hermits cover of a 1937 British music hall song. The six-song UK EP used all four Sloan/Barri songs and just two of the Karger songs.
"A Must to Avoid" and "Leaning on a Lamp Post" both reached the Billboard Top 10 as singles in the US, and "Hold On!" was a B-side. "A Must to Avoid" was also a top 10 hit in the UK.
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