They first invaded in 1964, now, thanks to fans such as Alex Turner, Dave Grohl and Beck, the Zombies are back
Pete Paphides
About ten years ago Tom Petty said: “If a group like the Zombies appeared now, they would own the world.” After ten minutes spent in their company, the glowing testimonial brings a smile to your face. Petty might have added, though, that if the four solicitous sixtysomethings gathered at a London hotel were offered ownership of the world, they would probably be too polite to accept it. And it seems that they always were. Asked about the title of their 1968 album Odessey & Oracle, the reunited Zombies tell you that they decided to run with the wrong spelling of “odyssey” because none of them had the heart to tell the sleeve's designer, Terry Quirk, about his mistake.
About ten years ago Tom Petty said: “If a group like the Zombies appeared now, they would own the world.” After ten minutes spent in their company, the glowing testimonial brings a smile to your face. Petty might have added, though, that if the four solicitous sixtysomethings gathered at a London hotel were offered ownership of the world, they would probably be too polite to accept it. And it seems that they always were. Asked about the title of their 1968 album Odessey & Oracle, the reunited Zombies tell you that they decided to run with the wrong spelling of “odyssey” because none of them had the heart to tell the sleeve's designer, Terry Quirk, about his mistake.
As the Zombies prepare to take that album on the road for the first time, the world has come around to agreeing that Quirk's spelling is pretty much the only imperfection on Odessey & Oracle. The album sank on its release, but word-of-mouth has slowly but dramatically installed the Zombies' baroque pop swansong in the pantheon of classic albums. Recent converts to its period charms include Alex Turner, Belle & Sebastian, Dave Grohl and Beck, while, back in the days of the Jam, Paul Weller called it one of his favourite albums. “That made me sit up and take notice,” recalls the Zombies' keyboard player, Rod Argent. “The idea that one of these angry young musicians went on record to say they liked the Zombies.”
Argent's humility is more surprising for the fact that it withstood the surreal scenes experienced by any band that achieved Stateside success in the Sixties. By scaling the US charts in 1964, She's Not There effectively turned Beatlemania into a full-on British Invasion. Sipping tea, singer Colin Blunstone talks of having to change hotels constantly: “You had to, if you stood any chance of slipping away from these screaming schoolgirls.” Argent recalls one fan snipping off half his scarf with a view to moving on to his hair.
Throughout all this the group from St Albans, Hertfordshire, never seemed to shake off a feeling that stardom was something that happened to other people. That they were grammar school boys initially offered up a press angle that accentuated their apartness. Reviewing She's Not There, Disc magazine said: “You'd never guess the group had 50 GCEs between them.”
It may have also contributed to the sense of outsiderdom. Drugs may have been a rock'n'roll staple, but Blunstone says that he never saw any. “I saw far more musicians eating greasy 2am breakfasts at the Blue Boar services on the M1 than I ever saw popping pills.”
Nonetheless, without or without drugs, in 1966 the Beatles, the Byrds and the Beach Boys cut loose from notions of what could and couldn't be done within a pop group. The Zombies wanted to follow suit, but they were saddled with a producer who wanted them to stick close to the formula of She's Not There. So they produced Odessey & Oracle themselves. “Producing it ourselves was a matter of pride,” says Argent. “If we could just fulfil our creative potential then we could go out on a high.” Chris White, the band's bass player, suggests that much of what later came to be termed “psychedelic” was really just “a realisation that you could write songs about all sorts of things”.
And they did. Brief Candles was inspired by a book of Aldous Huxley stories. In Care of Cell 44 Argent's lyrics addressed a lover as she awaited release from prison. Odessey & Oracle was recorded around the same time - and at the same studio, Abbey Road - as Sgt Pepper. Common to both albums is an innocence that accrues extra poignancy with the passing of time. Friends of Mine was a paean to the band's courting friends. Only one of the couples mentioned is still together. “They must be getting a bit worried,” laughs the drummer Hugh Grundy.
And it's hard to read a title such as This Must Be Our Year without pondering the irony of what followed. For what followed was not a lot. Odessey & Oracle failed to find its way on to CBS's release schedules until the following year. By the time it yielded an American hit with Time of the Season - late 1968 - White and Argent had formed Argent. As they pressed on with a loss-making tour of America, at least three other fake Zombies formed to milk Time of the Season's belated success. Back in London, Blunstone fared little better. “I didn't know what I was going to do, really.”
So while Argent and White indulged their proggier pretensions with Argent, Blunstone - the owner of possibly the most quintessentially English pop voice of its generation - got a job in the burglary claims department at Sun Alliance Insurance. Odessey & Oracle's eventual success has conferred a pleasing symmetry upon this story. It was the record that precipitated their split. Now, with NME placing it in its selection of the top 50 British albums, it's the record that has sparked this reunion. Unfinished business? “No,” says Argent, “I'm here and the guys are here and, with that in mind ...”
As ever, Blunstone's interjection sees him trying to accommodate the wishes of the wider world “... it would be impolite not to, don't you think?”
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