It’s just the bass and tom-tom sound, but there’s something quite special about it.’” “When Geoff engineered ‘Time of the Season,’ I remember at the time thinking immediately: ‘I don’t know what it is. The Beatles’ engineer, the late Geoff Emerick, was also still sticking around. “There was an electric harpsichord, bits and pieces of percussion that we picked up,” says Argent. It was my first encounter with a Mellotron. “It’s John Lennon’s Mellotron,” says Argent. If the song “Changes” sounds like it grew out of “Strawberry Fields Forever,” it might be because the roots are there. Odessey and Oracle was recorded at Abbey Road Studios after The Beatles finished Sgt Pepper. “But I found out it was true many years later.” Elvis had three of The Zombies’ singles on his personal jukebox. “We did it really quickly because we felt he was just saying that about Elvis to be nice,” Argent recalls. Elvis’ father told the musicians the rock and roll icon would have loved to meet them and invited them in. The band even visited Graceland, but Elvis Presley was shooting a movie. “Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells brought the house down every time they performed, and we had to follow them,” remembers Blunstone. Luckily, they enjoyed it.”Īs the song “New York” from their 2015 album Still Got That Hunger celebrates, The Zombies also played the Brooklyn Fox Theater’s Murray the K Christmas Shows. To be accepted, they wanted us to sing for them.” Blunstone and Argent chose the Beatles’ “If I Fell” because “we’d done it as an amateur band and knew if we sang it acapella, the harmonies would sound quite striking. “There were some wonderful singers on that Caravan,” Blunstone says. We gave it our all and failed miserably.”īut The Zombies passed the audition for their seat on the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars, touring with other artists on the hit parade. “As rehearsals went on, they changed their minds. “Initially, they choreographed a full dance for us,” Blunstone says. “Oh my god, the very first TV we did, they put Colin, singing ‘Summertime,’ on the top of a huge ladder,” says Argent. The musicians, in turn, had to get used to soundstages, precariously playing on risers while effervescent dance troupes shook the world below. In their heads, if it wasn’t a guitar, they didn’t understand what was going on.” “When we came to the solo, the camera went straight to the drums. ![]() “Cameramen couldn’t get their heads around a piano player at all,” Argent laughs. The musical configuration confused network television. “Hopefully, you’ll think of ‘She’s Not There’ and ‘Time of the Season’ and more recent references to analyze it.” “I still don’t know what a zombie is,” Blunstone admits. “I’ll confide in you I had no idea what a zombie was.” Originally the domain of tropical island voodoo, George Romero redefined zombies with Night of the Living Dead, which came out the year The Zombies broke up. “The name came from our original bass player, Paul Arnold,” Blunstone says. ![]() Signed with Decca after winning a London Evening News competition, the group’s first single was a hit, and its mysterious sound matched the enigmatic credit on the disc. I could feel the natives getting restless, so I jumped before I was pushed and became an ex-rhythm guitarist.” One of our covers, The Shadows’ ‘Wonderful Land,’ had a lot of chords, and I kept making mistakes. “When we first got together in 1961, I was the rhythm guitarist, and Rod was lead singer,” Blunstone says. The Zombies always maintained a steady equilibrium, shifting weight as needed. There are real ballads contrasted with the energy songs. ![]() I could imagine Colin starting to sing and everything else coming in. “Tom worked it out note-for-note on the guitar,” Argent says. Rod, who formed the band ARGENT after the initial breakup of The Zombies, took an excerpt of a chord sequence from the piano solo of their biggest hit, “Hold Your Head Up,” for the new album’s “Love You.” The song’s soft opening didn’t fully work with piano. It also afforded more time for the arrangements. “But it gave me the unexpected benefit of being able to write nine of the ten songs.” “Because of COVID, we hadn’t played together for two years,” Argent says. Not wanting to track new material virtually, the group was temporarily grounded by the pandemic.
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