String driven thing
How an exhausted insurance clerk made a baroque’n’roll classic. By Jim Irvin.
THE ZOMBIES formed in St. Albans as schoolboys, had their first worldwide hit with She’s Not There in 1964 and then, after three years’ solid touring, problems with management and nobody wanting to issue their brilliant
Odessey & Oracle album, fell apart in 1968. At that point, singer Colin Blunstone was, he once told me, “An exhausted 22-year-old, drained mentally, emotionally and physically.” And given that it was still a relatively new form, it’s no wonder he thought, ‘That’s it then, I’ve done pop music,’ and signed up to become a clerk in a company selling insurance.
The following year, producer Mike Hurst started calling Blunstone at work and persuaded him to sign a new deal with Deram under the name Neil MacArthur, a project beginning, rather bizarrely, with a cover of She’s Not There (a minor hit). “I don’t know why we did that,” Blunstone said.
But it spurred him to start writing material for himself again, influenced and assisted by his flatmate at the time, the superb acoustic guitar player, Duncan Browne. Aware of developments like Crosby, Stills & Nash, Blunstone saw a way his sweet, melodic style could fit into the current climate and began to gather contemporary songs that would suit it, like Tim Hardin’s Misty Roses and Denny Laine’s Say You Don’t Mind, a song The Zombies had covered live.
Ex-bandmates Rod Argent and Chris White were starting new band, Argent. They invited Blunstone to watch them rehearse, He was blown away and inspired. Out of the blue, White and Argent suggested they produce a solo album for him and arranged a deal with their label, Epic. One of them had the idea of setting Say You Don’t Mind for a string quartet, which led to arranger Chris Gunning, whose sound turned the record into a baroque gem, a natural extension of George Martin’s arrangements for The Beatles, and nudging what Jeff Lynne was trying with ELO. In fact, Blunstone toured supporting ELO, taking along a string quartet and a four-piece band who’d alternate songs and then all play together for the finale.
That’s roughly what you’re hearing on that gorgeous 1971 solo album, One Year
HHHH (Sundazed), now celebrating its 50th year on earth with a new expanded 2-LP edition that adds an extra disc of demos and outtakes long buried in the archive of Chris White, where they were recently unearthed by his sons. Most of these feature just Blunstone and acoustic guitar accompaniment (four of them with Browne) and illustrate how he could also have made an intimate, Pink Moon-style record, stripped to the bare essentials, his lovely breathy voice curling around the songs like smoke, as it does at the start of Misty Roses. Instead, One Year opts for drama and grandeur. Misty Roses develops into a fullon chamber quartet piece. The following Smokey Day opens with sinister cellos and the singer doubletracked over further strings and harp. First single, Mike D’Abo’s Mary Won’t You Warm My Bed has an expansive, almost Northern soul feel, combining both rhythm section (featuring the whole of Argent) and strings by Tony Visconti.
Gunning’s bold quartet arrangement for Say You Don’t Mind gave Blunstone his first solo hit in 1972 when it was the third single drawn from the album. Years later, the distinctive use of strings on this record inspired Jeff Buckley’s A&R man Steve Berkowitz to suggest they add some to Grace, helping create another album that swerves between heavy rock and chamber hush in support of an extraordinary voice.
One Year is an idiosyncratic classic that deserves to be more widely loved. This is a reissue to treasure.
“His breathy voice curling around songs like smoke.”