With the estimated additional £50million that he’d have earned over the years, he imagines he would have been flying around in private planes, with a yacht in the South of France, mansions and villas.
It also would not have helped the gambling addiction he has long had, which he’s since harnessed under control.
“If I had kept Rice and Lloyd Webber, I doubt whether I’d be here today, because I would have been totally impossible. I was bad enough on that success, but if you multiply that by ten…” he imagines with horror.
As it was, he already lived the high life when his act Herman’s Hermits — who he discovered — and then nice Jewish Manchester boys 10cc were riding the waves of success. “I was seduced by the life. The life we were living was ridiculous. Bon viveur was the word.”
Harvey, second left, at his eighth birthday party in Manchester
He had a flat in Park Lane, next to the Dorchester, In New York he stayed in a suite at the Waldorf. He travelled first-class and always had a chauffeur. “I never drove a car,” he admits.
When he met his wife Carole she told him he had better start driving as she didn’t want a third person in the car all the time.
While he does have slight regrets, he concedes that had he not had that attitude, maybe his management career would not have taken the trajectory it did, going on to include sports and the production of football songs, some of which were recorded at Strawberry Studios in Stockport.
“Because maybe you had to be the insane gambler to spend your life trying to convince people how good somebody was when they didn’t believe it.”
Born to Jewish parents in Manchester in 1940, Lisberg was evacuated with his mother to Blackpool for the duration of the war while his father served in the army.
When the family were reunited back in Manchester, Lisberg was sent to Jewish Day School, and then the former Carmel College in Oxfordshire, where he was the youngest boarder and kept trying to escape.
Living the high life: Harvey (left) with Herman’s Hermits (Alamy)
He played piano as a child, then guitar in his teens, starting to write songs that would one day become B-sides on records he put out (such as Your Hand in Mine, the B-side to Herman’s Hermits’ 1964 hit I’m Into Something Good). When, as a 22-year-old accountant, he heard the Beatles’ Please Please Me, he pictured himself as Manchester’s answer to Brian Epstein.
Herman’s Hermits were his first hit band, at one stage at No 1 over The Beatles with I’m Into Something Good in 1964. Lisberg remembers receiving the red-carpet treatment, and mingling with the rich and famous.
So in demand was their frontman, Peter Noone, that his fans failed to notice Gina Lollobrigida and Elizabeth Taylor striding along in their vicinity, as Lisberg accompanied the young rock star at MGM’s studios in Hollywood.
“They were walking hand in hand within ten yards of me, and 500 stupid screaming kids were jumping trying to get to Peter.
“It was kind of weird.”
Talking about my generation: Harvey (back row, second right) with the Hermits and their parents (Alamy)
It was Lisberg’s uncanny ability to pick up on what would become a hit for which he credits his success. When he heard For Your Love, written by 10cc’s Graham Gouldman, he knew it had the potential to be a number one.
It did eventually become a chart-topper for the Yardbirds in 1965, although he had initially envisaged it for the Beatles.
“I said, ‘I want to get this to the Beatles,’ and everybody laughed. But everybody laughed about Herman’s Hermits, so I was used to people laughing.
"Everybody in Manchester told me I am wasting my time with this stupid band. ‘Are you mad?’ We got lots of insults, but I was pigheaded.”
He was persuaded to give it instead to the Yardbirds, its commercial pop sound leading Eric Clapton to leave the band, with Jeff Beck taking his place.
“They did a wonderful job on the record,” he says. “There it was. So having had all my success with Herman’s Hermits, then this started. It’s a rollercoaster.”
His advice to anyone starting out in the music industry, therefore, is persistence, not taking no for an answer, and having a thick skin. “You have to believe what you believe in and go for it,” he states, recalling his persistent efforts to get a deal for Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat before the then-unknown Rice and Lloyd Webber had released Jesus Christ Superstar, to no avail.
Harvey on the day of his bar mitzvah
“I was the second most powerful manager in the world, and I couldn’t get a record company to even be interested in it, and they insulted it as well. And that became a huge success.”
As Lisberg’s lifestyle moved far away from his childhood, when his father toiled daily at the family textile factory, was there a point when he pinched himself? “No,” he says, without doubt.
“I was a supreme optimist, cushioned by being an only child and much-loved firstborn to family, and my grandparents. I was Jesus Christ in our family, so I could do no wrong. So I had that comfort that built love, confidence that I could do anything. And it made me very sociable. I have no fear.”
That confidence was how he managed to break all protocols when he met the then Prince Charles some decades back, as director of the Palace Theatre in Manchester, when 10cc were there to perform a concert with the Hallé Orchestra.
“You don’t ask questions, of course, but that doesn’t apply to me,” he says with a chuckle, recalling how he dared to ask the now King if he enjoyed the show and his surprise at the royal’s response that he didn’t actually know 10cc.
“I said ‘You’ve probably heard I’m Not in Love on the radio, haven’t you?’ [He said] ‘Oh no, actually I don’t listen to the radio very much. I listen to Radio 4 on the way to Ascot.’ And I thought, ‘Here’s the future king of England, who doesn’t know anything about the biggest industry explosion: music. This is unbelievable!’”
In addition to failing to get Joseph published, Lisberg’s other main monetary regret is missing the opportunity for him and Gouldman to purchase 48 paintings by David Hockney, including those from his Blue Guitar series, for £24,000, something they only turned down because of the works’ size. “We’d nowhere to put the bloody things. So that was kind of a mistake,” he laughs.
The most challenging aspect to managing bands, he says, is that you “create the monster that bites you”. This leads to discussion of the weird and wonderful requests he witnessed from bands over the years.
One, which sounds more rock myth than reality, was a superstar band asking a Manchester hotel to change the position of the wall in their room so that they could have the mirror on a different side. “Some meshuggahs!” he says, his disapproval evident.
“It’s crazy. And Michael Jackson, we had to build a bloody playground at the back of the stage, for them to play around in. That was a bit insane.”
Despite the challenges, he says nothing can beat the experience of discovering artists early on, and seeing them explode with success thanks to his work.
“It’s the greatest feeling,” he gushes. He recalls returning from holiday in Israel to Gouldman telling him he’d written a new song, and coming straight over to his house to play Bus Stop from start to finish.
“I thought, ‘this is fantastic’. And that became No 1 worldwide. You can’t imagine that feeling.”
He had that feeling, too, when he was sent the demo for the Mamas & The Papas’ Monday, Monday.
“When you hear works of art…” he enthuses, “I was making money, but to give pleasure to people, that is the only real satisfaction you can feel that your life has achieved in the music business.
“For instance, I’m totally responsible for [Tony Christie’s] Amarillo ever being put on disc. It’s just a great thing.”
Harvey Lisberg’s autobiography “I’m Into Something Good: My Life Managing 10cc, Herman’s Hermits & Many More!” is out on March 30 (Omnibus Press)
