The Herald - The Herald Magazine
We didn’t make any money, and I mean no money, from three years playing live
Colin Blunstone tells of how the Zombies escaped obscurity to achieve global renown
COLIN Blunstone is an early riser. He has an hour at the beginning of the day to talk before heading off to rehearsal, packing and travelling at 5am the next morning to the Netherlands to begin a tour.
He’s 72 and says he’s having the best time of his life. Tours with his solo band and more often with the Zombies mean he is rarely at home but, at last, the music he had a hand in creating in the late 1960s is receiving plaudits.
The album Odessey and Oracle is 50 years old this year. On its release it disappeared without a trace, aside from one single, Time of the Season. Now it’s regarded as one of the greatest albums ever to come out of Britain; a regular fixture on lists detailing the best albums ever made.
“It is strange looking back and thinking, ‘How can it possibly get the recognition it does?” says Blunstone. “However, the significant difference between the album and others that appear on these lists is that they tend to be multi-million sellers. I think Odessey and Oracle perhaps had one week at number 98 in the Billboard chart – and that was when the Time of the Season was number one in the Cashbox charts and number three on Billboard. It’s never been a hit anywhere.”
The nature of their career has always made the Zombies something of a musician’s band. Figures as diverse as Paul Weller and Tom Petty have named Odessey as an inspiration.
The Zombies formed in St Albans in 1961. Blunstone, Rod Argent, High Grundy and Paul Atkinson were still at school so could only rehearse at weekends and were later joined by Chris White, who replaced original bass player Paul Arnold. Playing their first gig the following year, they built up a strong local following, got on the road and signed to Decca in 1964. “We won some kind of competition for the contract,” says Blunstone, “but even if we had been playing on something of an amateur basis, it gave us a good apprenticeship at that age. We had bought an old van and got on the road. It was tough, but at that age it’s fun.
“When I look back, what strikes me is how naive we were. When we recorded She’s Not There, Rod and I were 18 and it was a hit pretty much immediately. From there it was non-stop recording and touring until the band finished after recording Odessey and Oracle in 1967.”
Those three years show a progression in writing and recording only seen in the rapid development of the Beatles. Blunstone feels that when you listen to all the Zombies’ recorded output you can hear that. “Something is happening. I haven’t really spoken about this much before, but when you listen to songs like She Does Everything for Me, which was a B-side, it’s quite different to what others were doing at the time.
“So when it came to Odessey and Oracle, Rod and Chris came into a wonderful writing period. Every song on that is a classic and if you don’t have the songs you should go home.”
Even the uninitiated will have heard a few of those songs. Mad Men fans will have heard This Will Be Our Year at the end of an episode, a song also covered by Foo Fighters and OK Go for the John Tucker Must Die soundtrack. Time of the Season was sampled by Eminem for Rhyme or Reason and is featured in countless movies as a late 1960 scene-setter, including last year’s All the Money in the World. Also last year, the record-breaking S-Town Podcast used A Rose for Emily for its main theme.
“It helps with recognition when songs are used in that way,” says Blunstone. “In a way it’s a bit like having a hit single because it leads to people coming to the shows.”
It also helps with the bank balance. Like many of their contemporaries, the Zombies weren’t “advised well” as Blunstone puts it. “We didn’t make any money – no money – from three years of playing live and working constantly. And you can phrase it anyway you like, but the result was none of the money made its way to us. We weren’t alone. Look at someone as successful as the Small Faces – they were dealt the same hand. There were a lot of unscrupulous managers dealing with people who were no more than kids.”
As songwriters, Argent and White had something of an income stream but Blunstone, Grundy and Atkinson were in financial trouble by the time Odessey and Oracle was released. “When the world ignored the album the three of us had to get jobs. People make quite a thing of this, having been in a rock band. Within about nine months, though, Time of the Season had become a big hit in the US and my phone started to ring again about singing. Although I was working in insurance, I wasn’t sure I wanted to get back into the music business. I had been so disappointed at what happened with the Zombies.”
Tentative steps back via a few singles under a pseudonym led to Blunstone recording a solo album with Argent and White called On Year, resulting in hits such as Say You Don’t Mind.
The solo careers of Blunstone and Argent intertwined at times and it was around 20 years ago that they decided to revive their joint legacy. “The first time Rod and I got back together it was to do six concerts, and here we are. Initially there was never any idea of reforming the band, but when we were out performing, we realised there was a huge interest in the Zombies’ repertoire. And of course, a lot of that material had never been played live because we split when Odessey and Oracle was recorded. There have also been three albums of new material since 1991.
“So, from playing in very small venues in 1999, we have now played most of the major venues in the world.”
We didn’t make any money from three years of playing live and working constantly
Blunstone and Argent are the two original members on stage. They were dealt a blow when Jim Rodford, who had also played bass with the Kinks, died just days after they finished a US tour in January. “Jim was a wonderful character, loved by all who knew him. He was a great bass player and vocalist, a musician’s musician who loved music, and seemed to know every band we ever played with. They would come to our dressing room and usually walk straight past Rod and I, asking, ‘Is Jim around?’”
The show goes on, with Jim’s son Steve Rodford on drums, Tom Toomey on guitar and Soren Køch on bass.
There are Zombies shows throughout the year, including Edinburgh this month. “We usually do a mini Odyssey and Oracle, plus the classics and a few newer songs. It’s a broad representation of what we’ve been doing since 1964.”
And for those who might have been shaking their heads at the misspelling of odyssey … “It’s true that it was a misspelling,” says Blunstone. “The cover is actually a painting. The idea came from a guy called Terry Quirk, who was sharing a flat with Rod and Chris. They saw the painting, just the rough idea, then we went off on tour. When we came back they saw the finished thing and immediately spotted the spelling mistake – but it had already gone to the printers.”
Even Blunstone didn’t know the truth for decades. “Rod and Chris made up this quite unconvincing story that they deliberately misspelled it because it’s a play on the word ‘ode’. They told me that in 1967. About four years ago we were doing a radio interview and Rod admitted it had been a misspelling. I looked at him and said, ‘I can’t believe you’ve told me that other story for about 50 years.’ Terry Quirk went to the same school as me and I can’t spell either, so I blame our school.”
A mint copy of the original album will sell for several hundred pounds and the cover painting, currently hanging in the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, will be going up for auction soon.
“I have original copies in the house, but I don’t know where,” Blunstone laughs. “It seems the worse an album did the more collectible it is now. Still, I wouldn’t want to record now, only for it to flop and wait a few decades for it to become valuable. I might not be gigging as often in 20 years.”
The Zombies play Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh, on June 16