[1] In 1965, he signed songwriter Graham Gouldman,[2] a founder member of 10cc,[3] who Lisberg also managed, along with Godley & Creme,[4] Tony Christie,[5] Barclay James Harvest, Gordon Giltrap, Sad Café, Wax and others.

At age eleven, Lisberg attended Salford Grammar School, graduating in July 1962 as a Bachelor of Arts in Commerce from the University of Manchester.

Lisberg oversaw the production of several football-related songs, some recorded at Strawberry Studios, and performed and/or written by future members of 10cc, e.g. "Boys in Blue" (1972),[10] "For Ever Everton" (1972),[11] and "Willie Morgan on the Wing" (1974).

's Derek Everett,[21] who suggested producer Mickie Most,[22] who in turn agreed to work with the band after seeing them perform in Bolton on a prepaid return air ticket from Lisberg.

[23] Soon signed to EMI, their first single was the Gerry Goffin and Carole King composition, I'm into Something Good (with B-side Your Hand in Mine, co-written by Lisberg),[24] which went to Number 1 in the UK charts in September/October 1964.

[25] As George Tremlett put it in his book The 10cc Story:[26] And so began the career of Herman's Hermits, with Harvey Lisberg as their manager and Mickie Most, their producer.

Herman also appeared in three film musicals.In autumn 1964, Lisberg enlisted Graham Gouldman,[27] to write songs at his office for a modest weekly retainer.

Lisberg then tried to get the song heard by The Beatles when they were playing the Hammersmith Odeon, and via Ronnie Beck was introduced to the support act's manager, Giorgio Gomelsky[30] who placed it with his band The Yardbirds.

Under Lisberg's wing Gouldman's output proliferated with a string of hit singles for various artistes such as "Look Through Any Window" and "Bus Stop" for The Hollies, "Pamela Pamela" for Wayne Fontana, and before long even Mickie Most capitulated by releasing a total of three Gouldman-written hit singles for Herman's Hermits namely "Listen People", "No Milk Today" and "East West", which was later covered (with new lyrics inserted in the third verse)[33] by Morrissey in 1989.

[40] Lisberg spent much of his early career globe-trotting with Herman's Hermits,[41] who capitalized on a string of hits in the US and later in the UK, but he also represented acts such as Little Frankie,[42] The Herd, The Measles,[43] Eric Woolfson, The Mockingbirds,[44] John Paul Joans[45] and Julie Driscoll.

Always particularly interested in the song, he signed up an array of singer/songwriters such as Harvey Andrews, Peter Cowap,[46] Barry Greenfield,[47] Mark T. Jordan,[48] Ramases[49] and notably Kevin Godley and Lol Creme.

In the mid-1960s, the then unknown songwriters Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice approached Lisberg in the hope that he would place a new song titled "Any Dream Will Do" with Herman's Hermits.

The song was rejected by Mickie Most as a Herman's Hermits single, but Lisberg nevertheless signed the duo to a development deal when he heard their sketches for a musical called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.

[50] At the time there were no takers for the sketches, but the show, which morphed into a pop cantata written for schools and then became a concept album before being staged on the West End and later as a Broadway production, has since exceeded all original expectations.

[51] As Sir Tim Rice put it:[52] Harvey was one of the very first to recognise potential in Andrew Lloyd Webber and myself but he was probably too far ahead of his time in this regard as we were still a year or so away from making our own mark in the music industry.

This we did with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat which Harvey spotted as a winner way before it became one.Lisberg managed Wayne Fontana after he left the Mindbenders,[53] allowing guitarist Eric Stewart to step-up to lead vocals on "A Groovy Kind of Love", which reached No.

[58] Lisberg procured a deal for Gouldman to move to New York and write songs for Super K Productions, the 'bubblegum' hit factory owned by Jerry Kasenetz and Jeffry Katz.

[citation needed] Even if the Strawberry Bubblegum sessions[60] did not yield much memorable musical output,[61] they did bring Stewart, Gouldman, Godley and Creme together on various polyonymous pre-10cc vinyl incarnations, made in their own studio in provincial Stockport, England, a new destination for international artists from Neil Sedaka to Joy Division.

It lay dormant for more than three decades until it was lip synced as a video by UK comedian Peter Kay,[69] and some celebrity friends for the 2005 Comic Relief charity drive.

[75] After supporting The Moody Blues on tour as Hotlegs,[76] and their acclaimed work as studio band for Ramases,[77] Kasenetz-Katz, Neil Sedaka and others,[78] the four session musicians decided to pool their talents as a unit.

1 single, "Dreadlock Holiday", later used in the 2010 Mark Zuckerberg biopic The Social Network,[97] but "[t]he 10cc hit machine effectively ground to a halt when Eric Stewart was involved in a car crash in January 1979".

[50] After hearing their demo tape in early 1977 and declaring the group chart certainties, Lisberg decided to manage Sad Café who he placed with RCA Records.

(1980)[112] and their eighth, Ten Out of 10 (1981),[113] which,[114] at Lenny Waronker's instigation debuted Andrew Gold as co-writer and guest musician on three tracks including their only 1980's UK top 50 hit Run Away.

[116] When 10cc disbanded in 1983, Gouldman and Gold reconnected and formed Wax who signed to RCA for three albums, Magnetic Heaven (1986), American English (1987) and A Hundred Thousand in Fresh Notes (1989).

[122] In 1987, Lisberg colluded with Brian Berg of Polydor to reunite the two camps on one compilation which manifested as Changing Faces – The Very Best of 10cc and Godley & Creme, the best-selling 10cc album to date.