It's that "Time of the Season" to "Tell Her No," but uh-oh "She's Not There"!

Lucky for us, sixties hit-makers the Zombies are still here, composing, recording, and touring — check out their old hits and their new single "Merry-Go-Round"

Rock ’n’ Roll with Me is an email newsletter presenting one or more of my favorite danceable rock ’n’ roll songs, from the sixties onwards, along with some fun facts and memories.

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Our songs of the day

If there is a band from the 1960s that has an entirely unique and immediately recognizable sound, it is the Zombies.

That sound was there from their very first song. Penned by founder, leader, and keyboardist Rod Argent, “She’s Not There” got them a contract with Decca and took them to number two on the Billboard Hot 100. Santana also had a hit with a cover that spent 14 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1977. Rolling Stone ranked the song number 297 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and it was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016.

Not a shabby start for a band formed by schoolboys in St. Albans, a small cathedral town just 30 minutes up the M1 motorway from London in the beautiful Hertfordshire countryside. I’ll say more about how surprising that is in a moment, but first let’s listen to the Zombie’s highly successful debut release in July 1964:

I myself lived in St. Albans for a time and witnessed the pimply and awkward schoolboys in their suit-like school uniforms walking the streets and hanging out in the town center. Rod formed the band at age 15, and it’s hard for me to reconcile my image of those schoolboys with the sophistication of what the Zombies produced a few years after graduating. Especially when the five of them went to all-boys schools.

It makes more sense when you discover that Rod and two other members of the band, guitarist Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy, attended the elite St. Albans School. Founded in 948 (over a thousand years ago!), the school has an unbelievable roster of famous and influential alumni, and you can bet these guys had the benefit of a top-notch music program judging by what’s on offer now. Rod also benefitted from being a chorister in the elite St. Albans Cathedral Choir and Hugh and lead singer Colin Blunstone from singing in the choir at the ancient and historic St. Etheldreda’s Church in nearby Hatfield.

It also makes sense when you discover that Rod’s father led two semi-professional dance bands and Hugh’s father was an amateur violinist who made Hugh his first drum, while bass guitarist Chris White’s father played double bass in big band-style and swing dance bands. All five boys in the Zombies — Rod, Paul, Hugh, Colin, and Chris — brought impressive music pedigrees to the band. (Note that Chris White replaced original member Paul Arnold, who came up with the band’s name but left before it took off to train as a physician.)

Besides the high level of musicianship, another defining feature that makes the Zombies unique is Colin Blunstone’s voice, which combines what has been called a “smoked-silk” or “menthol” quality with excellent grammar school enunciation. Although working class, Colin comes across as a cool, well-heeled lothario lamenting the naughty girls he can’t seem to resist or control. To illustrate, here’s their second big hit, “Tell Her No”:

Released as a single in December 1964 and on their debut album The Zombies in January 1965, “Tell Her No” reached number six in both the U.S. and Canada.

Whereas Rod admitted to being influenced by the lyrics of John Lee Hooker on “She’s Not There,” it was the music and lyrics of Burt Bacharach and Hal David that influenced him in the writing of “Tell Her No.” He would also go on to write their biggest hit, “Time of the Season,” on the very morning of their last recording session for their critically and commercially successful album, Odessey and Oracle. (Bassist Chris White also contributed well-regarded songs to their albums.)

Beyond writing ‘cool boy contends with naughty girl’ hits, Rod’s psychedelic keyboard work, and in particular his fast-paced improvisation on “Time of the Season,” was another element that defined the unique Zombies sound. Here’s Rod zipping all over the keys, and Colin still sounding fantastic, on their U.S. Going Coastal tour ten years ago as they perform my personal favorite, “Time of the Season,” with its trademark ‘aah’ sounds:

In one of those bittersweet twists of fate, “Time of the Season” became a hit only because of the efforts of two persistent enthusiasts. One was musician-producer Al Kooper who discovered the Odessey and Oracle album on a scouting trip to England and insisted that head of CBS Records Clive Davis buy this “rose amongst thorns” no matter how much he had to pay. Clive had already passed on it, but to his credit he agreed. The song “Time of the Season” was only released “as a last gasp” after another song on the album, the anti-war “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914),” had flopped, and it only caught on after a DJ in Boise, Idaho started to play it repeatedly and its popularity grew through organic word of mouth. Slowly but persistently the song climbed until it reached the top of the charts in the U.S. and Canada in March, 1969 — too late for the Zombies, however, as the group had already disbanded.

Under industry pressure they made a half-hearted effort to generate some new tracks, but they’d already moved on to other pursuits. Rod wanted to get into progressive rock and formed the band Argent, with Chris coming onboard as a producer and songwriter, and their new group hit the top ten with “Hold Your Head Up” in 1972. Paul and Hugh went into A&R at Columbia, and Colin worked in an insurance company before embarking on a solo music career, including doing studio vocals for the Alan Parsons Project.

The good news for fans is that the band has re-formed in various configurations since 1989, has been touring and putting out new albums (which you can sample here), and was recognized for its 1960s contributions with induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019. During the pandemic, Rod wrote new songs in what he found to be a “joyful experience,” and the band subsequently recorded them at his home studio the old-fashioned way that they had enjoyed in the sixties — as a whole band where they could “capture some magic in a particular take.” They are now touring their new album Different Game — tickets available through their website. Here’s one of the songs off that album, “Merry-Go-Round,” which shows that these septuagenarians have not lost any of their songwriting and performing magic:

Some fun facts

• Members of ZZ Top — bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard — were part of a fake Zombies touring group in 1969, organized by a company that also fielded fake versions of the Animals and the Archies. Being a Zombie for even a short while and playing those tunes must have been a positive experience, because they formed ZZ Top with guitarist Billy Gibbons that same year.

• Director Robert Schwartzman made a feature-length documentary about the Zombies called Hung Up on a Dream (2023), which was an official selection for three film festivals, including the prestigious South by Southwest (SxSW). You can find a Den of Geek interview with the director and the band about the documentary and about the history of the band here.

• The Zombies were not happy with their recording experience at Decca’s studios in West Hampstead (North London) under their first recording contract. When they informed their previous producer, Ken Jones, that they had decided to self-produce their next album under their new contract with CBS, he kindly arranged for them to record at Abbey Road Studios where it was almost unheard of for a non-EMI artist to record. The Beatles had just finished their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album two months earlier, and the Zombies found themselves assigned to the same Studio 3 where the Beatles had recorded and to the same recording engineers, Peter Vince and Geoff Emerick.

• They also had access to the state-of-the-art recording capabilities demanded by the Beatles, and John Lennon had left his Mellotron Mark II, which Rod used on various tracks. Rod said they were like kids in a candy shop in terms of trying out their own ideas for dubbing tracks and creating sounds. One of these was the unique clap and breath exhalation sound effect on “Time of the Season,” which came to Rod as a “eureka moment” while listening to a playback of the backing track. The band found their experience at Abbey Road “exhilarating.” For a great deal more depth on their recording experience, check out this Sound on Sound article.

• Geoff Emerick had an equally positive experience with the Zombies, as related in his autobiography Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles: “I enjoyed working with them. They meshed well as a team and were also willing to try new things, and, just as important, they wanted to carve out a sound of their own, not just be a clone of the Beatles.”

• The title of the album was meant to be Odyssey and Oracle, but the artist who did the cover, Terry Quirk, a childhood friend of Colin and Chris, misspelled it as “Odessey.” The band had gone on tour and didn’t see it until it had already gone to the printer. Rod made up “a load of bollocks” about it being a play on words as a story to cover the gaffe, and even members of the band bought into it until Rod finally fessed up over 30 years later.

• In the Den of Geek interview, Rod passed on his personal advice about being a musician and songwriter: “You have to do it with love and put your whole self inside of it. And that would be my advice to anyone starting out. Don’t try and copy fashions or anything. Just do what excites you and then stick to it. Because if you don’t believe in it yourself, you’re not going to end up with something that’s really good. And you may not anyway, but at the same time, you get to the end of the process and you can look back and say, ‘Well, I gave it my best shot.’”

• Colin added: “I think you need to learn everything you can about music and everything you can about the business, and then it can see you through a lifetime’s career. If you get too much into the partying side of the whole thing — it’s very, very tempting — then maybe you will only have a two-year career.”

• And, of course, musicians cannot disregard the fact that there are some unusual streams of income that might come their way. “Time of the Season” has been used in numerous advertisements and soundtracks, including a 1999 TV campaign for Tampax tampons.

Questions for discussion in the comments

1. Do you expect to be rockin’ in your 70s? Or are you already rockin’ in your 70s?

2. Are the Zombies really zombies? Is it the St. Albans water? Having lived there, am I now one too?

3. What product or service would you sell using the song “Tell Her No”?

4. Where do you think the Den of Geek is located, and what do you think happens there?

5. Any other thoughts, reactions, encounters with cool guys distraught about naughty girls you wish to share?