Tony Hicks sits in his summerhouse, surveys the scene across his immaculate garden and reflects on his role in rock ‘n’ roll history. It’s another cold spring morning but the sun is bright, and the views across the valley from Henley-on-Thames are beautiful.

“I’m proud of what we achieved and surprised,” says the singer, guitarist and member of The Hollies for 40 years.

And so he should be. With more than 30 chart singles to the band’s name, among them such enduring hits as Bus Stop, Carrie Anne, The Air That I Breathe, and He Ain’t Heavy He's My Brother, they remain one of the best-loved, and longest surviving groups of the 1960s.

For while most of their contemporaries have either faded away or retired, The Hollies continue. “When we had our first record we were just hoping to stretch this out for three years,” he says.

“The line-up of the Hollies is as good as it’s ever been and so are our stage performances.”

It comes as no surprise to find Tony, a native of Nelson in Lancashire, living on millionaires’ row in Henley. Indeed, he is in good rock company. “George Harrison’s old place is over the road,” he says.

“The Deep Purple boys are here and Benny from Abba lived here for many years. Dusty Springfield lived here too, and indeed is still here in the local cemetery.”

“It’s a great place to live though; still within striking distance of London, and it’s amazing the number of nights I manage to get home after shows.”

Tony is one of those artists who was destined to become a star. By the age of 12 he was in a band, Les Skifflettes, and was already doing reasonably well in another band, Ricky Shaw and the Dolphins, before being invited to join The Hollies to replace original guitarist Vic Steele.

Tony remembers the night he first heard the band play live. “I was happy as a semi-professional musician,” he says. “And when the manager of an unknown band called The Hollies asked if I wanted to join, I said ‘no’.”

He was told the band would be playing at Manchester’s Twisted Wheel club and was in town anyway, having caught the bus from Nelson to see The Beatles play the nearby Oasis.

“Afterwards I went down the road to the Twisted Wheel,” he recalls. “I didn’t want to go in though, so I listened through the air vent on the street — and I liked it. I started talking to [founder member] Graham Nash and quit my job.”

Immediately, the band took off, their fame based on the distinctive three-part vocal harmonies of Tony, Nash and the band’s other founder member Allan Clarke. Performing a combination of their own songs and those penned by other writers, they built up a spectacular catalogue of hits.

Perhaps inevitably, the band have gone through a substantial roll-call of personnel, with 14 former members. Indeed with songwriter Nash leaving in the ’60s (reportedly after the band rejected his song Marrakesh Express — with which he went on to have a hit alongside Stephen Stills and David Crosby in the supergroup Crosby, Stills & Nash) and Clarke retiring from the industry in 1999, Hicks and drummer Bobby Elliott are the band’s longest-serving members. Yet, they have never broken up, and, with Tony at the front, continue to tour. And, he says, they are busier than they have been for years.

“We did drop out of international touring 10 years ago because of the travel and the security at airports, which was so different from what it used to be,” he says.

“But recently we’ve been to South Africa and did two trips to Australia and New Zealand and found it enjoyable, so we are working more. And at home we have a regular pattern of 35 dates in 18 months.”

And with nearly 70 singles to choose from, they have no shortage of material. “The set always changes, but you’ve got to have all the hits,” he says. “Though we do play around with the arrangements every now and then to keep people on their toes!”

Those hits include the Top Five singles Just One Look, I Can’t Let Go, I’m Alive, Bus Stop, On a Carousel, Here I Go Again, Stop Stop Stop, Carrie Anne and 1969’s He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother (which featured Elton John as a guest), and 1974 smash The Air That I Breathe — their last to dent the Top 10.

And does he get bored playing the same songs over the decades? “Absolutely not,” he says. “You forget about the songs and look at the audience. When we are playing The Air That I Breathe, we could stop and let the audience take over.”

While the band have seen their albums mixed at such iconic studios as London’s Abbey Road, their latest release, a double live album, was produced far closer to home — in fact, in the very summerhouse in which he now sits. It was produced by Tony’s son Paul, a triple-Grammy award-winning sound engineer. “It was produced where I am sat at this moment,” says Tony. “He called it the Summerhouse Studio, but it wasn’t a studio — he just brought in all the equipment.”

At their height, The Hollies were among the biggest bands in the world, regularly hanging out with The Beatles and the Stones. So what was it like? “Well, for a start the whole ‘groupie’ thing didn’t exist,” he says.

“When you played a theatre you were hustled out and couldn’t just grab someone. We did all go to the London clubs which were happening at the time, though. There would be a couple of Rolling Stones, someone from The Who and an Animal, and we’d drink whisky and Coke or bottles of Mateus Rosé — which was popular.

“But I have never been a ‘pubby’ sort of person, and, I’m sorry to disappoint, we have never really gone in for parties, which is why we were never in the News of The World, or anything like that. We were Northern lads brought up correctly, and that’s stuck with us.

“We didn’t go crazy. Though I do remember one hotel we stayed in and obviously had too many drinks — because we woke to find the hotel piano on the end of the diving board!”

 

The Hollies
 

  • New Theatre, Oxford
  • April 14, 7.30pm
     
  • Tickets £22-£27 from atgtickets.com