How Len Fairclough's son changed my life - the story of the man who invented modern pop management
manchestereveningnews.co.ukIt was at the Hartford Community Centre in Davyhulme in July 1963 that Harvey Lisberg realised he was into something good. He and a friend, Charlie Silverman, had been writing "pretty rubbish" pop songs that no one wanted to record.
He was about to set up a talent contest through the Manchester Evening News to find a local unknown band who would record them when a friend of a friend mentioned a local group he should check out.
As Harvey now recalls: "That night in July 1963 changed my life." At the time he was working for Binder Hamlyn, one of the biggest accountancy firms in Manchester for a "pittance" of £10 a week compared to the £70 a week he had been making doing 80 hours a week at the Wall's sausage factory as a summer holiday job - the equivalent of £1,450 a week today.
But the band he went to see - Herman and His Hermits - as they were called then, would be his route to a fortune. For the Jewish lad from Salford with a BA in Commerce from Manchester University, his ambition of being a stockbroker would soon being extinquished for rock n roll excess and all the financial clout it can bring.
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