Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Searts Podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Colin Blumstone, lead singer of The
Speaker 1: Zombies and so Much Moork. Colin, you just said you
Speaker 1: realize you have allergies. Tell me about that.
Speaker 2: Well, just know, I've been forty eight hours in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: I've realized I don't know anything about allergies. Is it
Speaker 2: hay fever or whatever. But I just realized I do
Speaker 2: suffer from that. And I was just going to apologize
Speaker 2: to you in case I started sneezing while we're doing this,
Speaker 2: while we're doing this interview. That was all I was
Speaker 2: going to say, was if I start sneezing, I've just
Speaker 2: realized that I have this problem.
Speaker 1: You know, there are pills for that now, but it
Speaker 1: begs the question, why would you not have a problem
Speaker 1: in England, a different weather, different thing.
Speaker 2: You know, I think I have had this problem, but
Speaker 2: I've thought, for some strange reason, I've thought I've got
Speaker 2: a cold rather than I've got allergies. It's just the
Speaker 2: realization that, yeah, hay fever affects me. And I'm seventy
Speaker 2: nine years old and I've just found that out, which
Speaker 2: is a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 1: Really. How's your health otherwise?
Speaker 2: Actually pretty good. I have to say the usual aches
Speaker 2: and pains that people coming into the autumn of their
Speaker 2: careers will suffer from, but generally speaking pretty good.
Speaker 1: Actually, yeah, okay, you know, we are a generation they
Speaker 1: thought we were going to rule till we die, but
Speaker 1: we are going to die. Okay. So I found I
Speaker 1: turned sixty and it was like I've seen the trick.
Speaker 1: But once I turned seventy, it's a whole new thing.
Speaker 1: So what's your perspective of aging?
Speaker 2: Well, I think my wife always says it's just a number.
Speaker 2: If I try to talk about it with her, It's
Speaker 2: just a number. Just get on with it. I think.
Speaker 2: Actually that's important things to just keep busy, you know,
Speaker 2: find something that intrigues you, interests you, and throw yourself
Speaker 2: into it. That's what I would say, and that's what
Speaker 2: I try and do. I love music. I'm always trying
Speaker 2: to write. I'll record at the drop of a hat,
Speaker 2: and I'll tour at the drop of the hat too.
Speaker 2: I love doing that and as a complete alternative, it's
Speaker 2: just great. When I'm not working, I love to be
Speaker 2: at home with my family.
Speaker 1: So Rod Hargen had a stroke. He's not hitting the
Speaker 1: road anymore, that's right. So to what degree are you working,
Speaker 1: whether it be live or recording.
Speaker 2: Well, I've always had a solo band, I'll be honest
Speaker 2: with you. I've never said this to Rod, but I
Speaker 2: wondered how long he would keep touring because I was
Speaker 2: very successful songwriter. He's been a very successful producer in
Speaker 2: his time. He really doesn't need to be getting out
Speaker 2: on the road and not sleeping and all the things
Speaker 2: that go with being out on the road. But he
Speaker 2: loves playing. And we got together in nineteen ninety nine,
Speaker 2: and I wondered how long he would keep touring, and
Speaker 2: we've kept it going to twenty twenty four. It was
Speaker 2: last year that he had his stroke. But I wondered
Speaker 2: how long he would keep touring, and so I always
Speaker 2: kept a solo bang going. I've sort of had that
Speaker 2: tucked up my sleeve, and so now I slipped back listen.
Speaker 2: I would have loved to kept this Zombisky for as long.
Speaker 2: We always said that for as long as we're physically capable,
Speaker 2: we want to keep this guying. We're having such a
Speaker 2: great time, and also it's so unexpected. The band finished
Speaker 2: in sixty seven. It's insane. What are we doing playing now?
Speaker 2: I don't understand. It's a mystery, but I don't have
Speaker 2: to understand it. I love it, so let's keep going.
Speaker 2: But I always get when there's a break. I would
Speaker 2: I would tour and record with my solo ban which
Speaker 2: I must admit. The band has changed personnel over the years,
Speaker 2: as these band as bands do, but it's a really
Speaker 2: nice group of guys at the moment. I've just come
Speaker 2: back from Germany and Holland. Just a few days before
Speaker 2: I came over here and I was with my solo man.
Speaker 2: It was great, playing a completely different program to what
Speaker 2: I would play with the Zombies. I play. She's not
Speaker 2: their time of the season. This will be our year.
Speaker 2: That's about it. Otherwise it's completely different tunes and it's
Speaker 2: it's nice to to break things up and do you
Speaker 2: know a completely different repertoire?
Speaker 1: So you playing in Germany? Do they know your solo
Speaker 1: material the audience.
Speaker 2: I wish you hadn't asked me about Germany. Actually, it
Speaker 2: is not one of my not one of my great
Speaker 2: success areas some doing some don't should we say that?
Speaker 2: But if you wishes mentioned Holland, it's a different, different
Speaker 2: kind of fish. It always intrigues me. These countries are
Speaker 2: right next door to one another, or you can say
Speaker 2: Holland and Belgium. They have different hits, they know different artists,
Speaker 2: and you have to be aware of where you're going.
Speaker 2: What do they know any of your songs? And if
Speaker 2: they do, what songs are they because they'll be expecting
Speaker 2: to hear them. And in Holland, I've had a lot
Speaker 2: of hits and it's always a thrill to go back there.
Speaker 1: Let's say you're playing like someplace like Germany where the
Speaker 1: audience doesn't know all your material. How do you perform
Speaker 1: such that you win them over and keep their attention.
Speaker 2: Well, I think the first thing is to have a
Speaker 2: bit of a pep talk before you go on stage
Speaker 2: and you just say, okay, come on, guys, this we've
Speaker 2: really got to pull it out of the bag this time.
Speaker 2: Attle bit like with the sports team, you know, and
Speaker 2: say it's going to be tough. We know that it's
Speaker 2: going to be tough, but I think an audience always
Speaker 2: appreciates a hundred effort. I mean, listen, you have to
Speaker 2: have a degree of professionalist and you have to understand
Speaker 2: your instrument or be able to sing the songs. Of
Speaker 2: course you do, but they appreciate one hundred percent commitment
Speaker 2: and you can usually bring people around if you go
Speaker 2: out there and give one hundred percent. That's the best
Speaker 2: you can do.
Speaker 1: Okay. As you mentioned earlier, Rod wrote some of the
Speaker 1: hits alone and in addition had a success with his
Speaker 1: band eponymously named Origent. But you were not a member
Speaker 1: of the Money tends to be in publishing. So are
Speaker 1: you working because you have to or because you want
Speaker 1: to or both?
Speaker 2: Well, in the Original band, I was very much working
Speaker 2: because I had to, And you're right. I think I
Speaker 2: think that the writers should of course be paid in full,
Speaker 2: and you know I'm I'm not in any way after
Speaker 2: their money. I always say, if you haven't got a
Speaker 2: good song, you can all pack up and go home.
Speaker 2: This is before you start. You're wasting your time if
Speaker 2: you haven't got good songs. So we should treasure and
Speaker 2: nurture the writers. And we had two great writers in
Speaker 2: the Zombies and Rod Argent and Chris White, and we
Speaker 2: were extremely lucky to have them. It does happen, though,
Speaker 2: that their income stream is completely separate to the band
Speaker 2: and of course they're living a different life to the
Speaker 2: three non writers, and that was one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why the band finished. That the three non writers had
Speaker 2: no money, so it was tough. Over the years, I've
Speaker 2: managed to establish a career, so I'm fortunate enough now
Speaker 2: that no, I don't have to work, but I love it.
Speaker 2: And also at the back of my mind, I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: at this time in my life, if I was to stop,
Speaker 2: it would be very hard to start up again. And
Speaker 2: that's a motivation in itself. I think, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: going to be in my eighties soon. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to have a gap and come back at eighty five.
Speaker 2: It's it's not going to happen, So I want to
Speaker 2: keep it going. You know what does it use it
Speaker 2: or lose it?
Speaker 1: Right? Okay, you have a new documentary. We'll get to
Speaker 1: that in a second, but it talks about when the
Speaker 1: Zombies break up. You get a job an insurance office,
Speaker 1: and it goes through your ups and downs. You go back,
Speaker 1: you record under Neil MacArthur. Since that time, have you
Speaker 1: been forced to get a day job?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no, no, no, no no, I mean from
Speaker 2: the time a little bit after my Neil MacArthur episode.
Speaker 2: I went back to my real name, and I had
Speaker 2: regular hits for the next twenty something years, and then
Speaker 2: there was a bit of a drought. The music business
Speaker 2: is peaks and troughs. You know, you've got to learn
Speaker 2: how to get through those. I think you need to
Speaker 2: have a degree of musicality, of course, but also you
Speaker 2: need to have tenacity. You have to learn how to survive,
Speaker 2: I think in the music business. I hope that doesn't sound.
Speaker 1: Too no, no, that sounds to.
Speaker 2: You know, well, there's going to be except for a
Speaker 2: minute percentage at the top of the business. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, the big names. Apart from them, you're going
Speaker 2: to have struggles, and you've got to learn how to
Speaker 2: get through those struggles and stay positive and stay energized
Speaker 2: when when it seems the world's against you. You have
Speaker 2: to do that. I'm sure that's happened to me over
Speaker 2: the years.
Speaker 1: Okay, so okay, let's break it down. Your solo records
Speaker 1: were not commercially successful in the US.
Speaker 2: They certainly weren't, so.
Speaker 1: You know, they were successful elsewhere, so it wasn't a
Speaker 1: matter of not being in the grooves. Were you aware
Speaker 1: of that time, were you frustrated. Why do you think
Speaker 1: they weren't successful in the States.
Speaker 2: I didn't think they've fitted in any format that might
Speaker 2: be something to do with it. I mean, my first
Speaker 2: of album, A lot of that album features a string
Speaker 2: quartet with wonderful string arrangements by Chris Gunning, just like
Speaker 2: Bartok esque arrangements, And for some reason radio in the
Speaker 2: UK accepted it. But I don't fully understand why they did,
Speaker 2: because there's nothing else like that. But it didn't work
Speaker 2: in America, and I never quite got a level of
Speaker 2: acceptance with the American media, particularly radio.
Speaker 1: And do you think it's possibly a lack of effort
Speaker 1: by the label or a manager, or that's just the breaks.
Speaker 2: Well, at the end of the day, I think it's
Speaker 2: just the breaks, isn't it. I mean, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to start pushing responsibility onto other people, a little bit
Speaker 2: of everyone, maybe including me. I mean, I don't think
Speaker 2: I really knew how to how did it go about
Speaker 2: things properly? You know, it's very dissipated everything I did.
Speaker 2: I don't think I still don't really understand the business
Speaker 2: at all, especially considering I've been in it so long.
Speaker 2: But I think that sometimes you know, certainly management could
Speaker 2: have been a bit better. The Zombies have been very lucky.
Speaker 2: They've they've fallen in with a very wonderful management company,
Speaker 2: and I think that's when things started to turn round
Speaker 2: for the second incarnation of the Zombies, when we signed
Speaker 2: with the Rocks, a new management company.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talked about the ups and downs and surviving.
Speaker 1: How do you survive emotionally and financially? I mean, you've
Speaker 1: had most people tend to have one peak, that's it. Okay,
Speaker 1: you had multiple peaks. You had peak with zombies, peak
Speaker 1: working under another name, peak working under your name. Then
Speaker 1: things lie out and then the zombies come back. How
Speaker 1: do you handle would financially and emotionally.
Speaker 2: Well, Financially it is tricky at times. You have to
Speaker 2: just cut back on what you spend. You know, you
Speaker 2: have to live at very what people wouldn't think that
Speaker 2: people in contemporary music would lift that kind of lifestyle.
Speaker 2: I mean there have been times when in the winter
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be able to put the heat on, I'd
Speaker 2: go to bed to keep warm. What age that would
Speaker 2: have been when I was probably forty or something like that,
Speaker 2: maybe in the mid eight I think the mid eighties
Speaker 2: were really bad for me. But what really saved me,
Speaker 2: I think, was that every so many years, quite possibly,
Speaker 2: when I might be thinking I've got to find something else,
Speaker 2: something would come along. And none of these records charted
Speaker 2: in America. So it's something in some ways it makes
Speaker 2: it more difficult to explain. But every four or five
Speaker 2: years I would be involved in a big record and
Speaker 2: that would bring the energy back, bring the self belief back,
Speaker 2: and you'd start again. It's just sort of a cycle,
Speaker 2: isn't it really, And you try to hang on to
Speaker 2: this bit of success while you can, but it's like
Speaker 2: trying to hold sand. You know you're desperately you can
Speaker 2: see it or draining out of your hand as you
Speaker 2: go along. And then the cycle goes on, and then
Speaker 2: I would find myself. The two things I used to
Speaker 2: do when things are really bad. And this sounds a
Speaker 2: little bit lightweight, but this is what I used to do.
Speaker 2: I'd get my address book and i'd start at a
Speaker 2: and I'd just go all the way through it to
Speaker 2: like and I always found someone who wanted to talk
Speaker 2: about maybe, yeah, just could there be a project there?
Speaker 2: Why don't we go together and have a chat? Always
Speaker 2: the other thing I would do, which is even perhaps
Speaker 2: a little stranger is I would get in the bath,
Speaker 2: because have you ever noticed when you get in the
Speaker 2: bath the phone rings.
Speaker 1: I noticed when I get in the shower. That's what
Speaker 1: I have all my clear thinking.
Speaker 2: Well as far as but if you get into a bath,
Speaker 2: I guarantee the phone will ring. And that was my
Speaker 2: last My last resort would be again in the bath
Speaker 2: at the phone would ring, and I just hope it's
Speaker 2: the offer of some work.
Speaker 1: Okay, So let's say you're going through your address book
Speaker 1: A Z, Yeah, you call me up. How hard a
Speaker 1: pitch would it be? How would you get to the point?
Speaker 2: Oh no, we'd be very conversational. What have you been doing?
Speaker 2: Tell me what you've been doing? Do you know anyone?
Speaker 2: I know anything I can grab hold of here? You're written,
Speaker 2: any songs? You know any projects? Anybody needs some singing.
Speaker 2: But I wouldn't say it in those words. I would
Speaker 2: just saying, how's things, what you been doing? Anything I
Speaker 2: can get involved in?
Speaker 1: But you would ultimately put it.
Speaker 2: Out there in a very subtle way.
Speaker 1: But the person on the other end could miss it.
Speaker 2: I hope not. Otherwise I'm wasting a time calling him.
Speaker 1: Okay, how about going to see people in person that
Speaker 1: were not in your address book, saying, well, maybe I
Speaker 1: have to go to London hang out. Maybe i'll bump
Speaker 1: into something.
Speaker 2: I'm not so good at that. Years ago, when I
Speaker 2: was younger, I would even just going to London is
Speaker 2: I used to live in the center of London, and
Speaker 2: I think I just sort of kind of London's wonderful,
Speaker 2: you know, But as you get older, it's it's frantic,
Speaker 2: it's full of people, it's very noisy, and I find
Speaker 2: it quite challenging just to go to London, let alone
Speaker 2: go to meet people. No, I'm not very good socially,
Speaker 2: and i'd tell you another reason why. It might be
Speaker 2: if you're in a band, you're used to people coming
Speaker 2: to you socially, and that happened to me a lot
Speaker 2: in my formative years. So when I was a teenager,
Speaker 2: we're playing, people would come up. This sounds like such
Speaker 2: a silly thing to say. I find it hard to
Speaker 2: go up and talk to people, and I'm embarrassed to
Speaker 2: say it, but I do. And so I'm not very
Speaker 2: good at, you know, circulating and meeting people in music
Speaker 2: business circles. I'd go to something like that, and I
Speaker 2: would stand in the corner all on my own and
Speaker 2: just sulk out of the door. Eventually when no one
Speaker 2: speaks to me.
Speaker 1: So okay, So let's say you're home now with your wife,
Speaker 1: and your wife says, hey, you know someone invited us.
Speaker 1: Let's go. Are you going to say, ok, let me
Speaker 1: get ready? You're going to say, I don't think I
Speaker 1: want to go?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm afraid yeah. It would be the second I
Speaker 2: al would say how much do you want to go?
Speaker 2: How much do you want to go? Trying what's a
Speaker 2: put too much pressure on them? How much do you
Speaker 2: want to go? And she said I really would like
Speaker 2: to go? I said, okay, let's go.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back a step back. When the Zombies
Speaker 1: had their original hits, recording contracts were horrific in terms
Speaker 1: of the percentage the acts got. In addition, as we
Speaker 1: established earlier, most of the money is in publishing. Have
Speaker 1: you ever gotten a royalty on a record, whether it
Speaker 1: be the Zombies or anything else?
Speaker 2: I have, not on many, I hasten to add, but
Speaker 2: I have, and some very healthy ones, but only on
Speaker 2: a few. It's mostly the Zombies. The Zombies sell a
Speaker 2: lot of requords. There's a big mystery in the Zombies.
Speaker 2: I don't Okay, So you're a member of a band,
Speaker 2: there's five people in the band and you have a
Speaker 2: shitty deal. Was the deal renegotiated at some point? I
Speaker 2: think there's a lot of it. Again, I'm embarrassed to
Speaker 2: say this. I'm not sure I fully understand everything that happened.
Speaker 2: But what I will tell you is we didn't sign
Speaker 2: to a record label in the sixties. We signed to
Speaker 2: a production company and they signed to the record label.
Speaker 2: So all of our masters reverted to us. Oh that
Speaker 2: made a huge difference. Okay, you know a lot of
Speaker 2: acts made deal sixties or seventies. It was a standard provision.
Speaker 2: You get twenty five years, you get the record back,
Speaker 2: the Errol Smith, a lot of other racks to get
Speaker 2: another bite at the apple. They got rid of that
Speaker 2: to a great degree. Was somebody smart making the deal
Speaker 2: or that was just a standard deal. I just think
Speaker 2: we were lucky. We met someone. It was a friend
Speaker 2: of Chris White's uncle. Bizarre thing. Who was going to
Speaker 2: look look at the contracts we've been offered. We're eighteen
Speaker 2: years old, we know nothing, and at the end of
Speaker 2: the evening. Look at these contracts we've been offered. He said,
Speaker 2: I'll tell you what. We this production company that he
Speaker 2: earned his name was Ken Jones. He became our producer
Speaker 2: and he had a partner called Joe Roncroni, and he said,
Speaker 2: we will offer you better than these deals. And we
Speaker 2: went with them, and they did look after us, they
Speaker 2: really did, and they protected us from the worst of
Speaker 2: the of the things that had happened to you with
Speaker 2: a record company. I think where we came unstuck really
Speaker 2: was in live performances. We never really made any money
Speaker 2: on the road, and we worked all the time.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's stay with the record today. Could you live
Speaker 1: off the royalties alone?
Speaker 2: Yes?
Speaker 1: Wow, that's pretty amazing, considering multiple members of the band, etc.
Speaker 2: I know it's good, isn't it. Hey?
Speaker 1: You know it's been sixty years. Has it gone up
Speaker 1: and down in this last twenty five years, been a
Speaker 1: renaissance going up? Or has it always been consistent?
Speaker 2: No renaissance going up? And the eighties around there, it
Speaker 2: didn't seem to be making a lot of money. And
Speaker 2: then slowly but surely I remember sort of the first
Speaker 2: check coming through that was really worth having. I'm on
Speaker 2: the phone to Rod, you got the post yet? This
Speaker 2: check just going what's happening? And I don't know what
Speaker 2: is happening? And gradually the checks and we used to
Speaker 2: get to we've just negotiated a new deal. But in
Speaker 2: these old, these old checks, we would get two a
Speaker 2: year and every six month. You know, my hands are
Speaker 2: shut when the postman goes has the bubble burst? But
Speaker 2: it didn't. And if I say I don't fully understand
Speaker 2: what's happened with the Zombies, I'm embarrassed to say it,
Speaker 2: but it's honestly the truth. The Zombies records sell in
Speaker 2: very healthy quantities around the world and have done for
Speaker 2: the last twenty or twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Okay, how much? This is hard to split up, but
Speaker 1: I'm gonna try anyway. You have the original in America,
Speaker 1: Original two Hitch, She's not there to tell her no
Speaker 1: Bam breaks up. You have Time Sea of the Season.
Speaker 1: But that album grows Out've see an Oracle grows in
Speaker 1: reputation over the years. Is it about the hit or
Speaker 1: is it about the album that is driving this mania?
Speaker 2: I think it's the album. And it's almost as though
Speaker 2: the album did it on its own, because no one
Speaker 2: was promoting it, No one was marketing it. It had
Speaker 2: gone you know, it was really never a hit. I
Speaker 2: looked it up. It went to ninety eight in Billboard
Speaker 2: for one week and disappeared. Rolling Stone named it as
Speaker 2: one of the top hundred albums of all time. And
Speaker 2: you see the albums around it, you know, it's the
Speaker 2: Beatles and Simon and Garfunk, all these wonderful classic albums,
Speaker 2: and there's little old honesty on Oracle right in the
Speaker 2: middle that was never really a hit. And there's just
Speaker 2: there is a mistique about that album. It's just word
Speaker 2: of mouth. People like Tom Petty in America and Dave
Speaker 2: Gohl and Susannah Hoffs and people have quoted it so
Speaker 2: often as a favorite album, and it's really helped.
Speaker 1: Okay, general question. You're the singer, you're the front person.
Speaker 1: You're not writing the lyrics. That is relatively rare. There
Speaker 1: are bands like Rush where the drummer wrote the lyrics.
Speaker 1: What's it like singing somebody else's lyrics, especially I won't
Speaker 1: say they're unbelievably personal, but they're delivered in a very
Speaker 1: personal way.
Speaker 2: Well, I think I was, you know, I was brought
Speaker 2: up doing that all about three formative years. I never
Speaker 2: contributed to the songs. I don't want to say that
Speaker 2: I did in any way at all, but Rod always
Speaker 2: worked with me with the songs. The phrasing of the
Speaker 2: songs is always very important. There's nothing thrown together about,
Speaker 2: especially our laser performances. Rod has always got a vision
Speaker 2: on how a song should be phrased, and we spend
Speaker 2: a lot of time on that, and so it feels
Speaker 2: very natural to me when I'm performing it for real
Speaker 2: as if I wrote it, because we spent a lot
Speaker 2: of time on it, and I hope I fully understand
Speaker 2: what he's trying to say and how he's trying to
Speaker 2: say it, and most importantly, how he's trying to phrase it.
Speaker 2: And he's very patient, and he knows what he wants
Speaker 2: and he's determined to get it too. He's very tenacious.
Speaker 1: I tell you, Okay, in your solo career, you have
Speaker 1: a noted song about an ex girlfriend, Caroline. How did
Speaker 1: that come to be an What did she say about it?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if she was all that pleased. Really,
Speaker 1: it came about you know, I was just a fledgling writer,
Speaker 1: and you know you're a teenager or early twenties or something.
Speaker 1: You write about heartbreak. That's how you most people start anyway,
Speaker 1: And so I did. I just wrote down what was happening.
Speaker 1: But I always planned to change the name.
Speaker 2: Of course. I wasn't going to use the real name.
Speaker 2: And the recording day came out and can you think
Speaker 2: of another name that would It's a little late now perhaps,
Speaker 2: but I often say that to people, if you can
Speaker 2: think of another name that fits. Maybe it's a bit late,
Speaker 2: but maybe we could slit the other name in. And
Speaker 2: so I took a chance and I recorded it with
Speaker 2: the real name in there. And a journalist knew the
Speaker 2: story who worked for a national newspaper in England, and
Speaker 2: he did a full page story about that. That's it
Speaker 2: wasn't a hit, he just did it. But I think
Speaker 2: she was very beautiful and it was a way of
Speaker 2: getting a picture of a girl in a bikini into
Speaker 2: the newspaper because it was about her as much as
Speaker 2: the song, and the secret was out, you know, and
Speaker 2: it's I mean, I don't think it's anything to be
Speaker 2: too embarrassed about. But it wasn't my intention to use
Speaker 2: the real name.
Speaker 1: So did you ever hear from her about it?
Speaker 2: I've met her, but she's never really said much since then.
Speaker 2: I've never really discussed it with her, but I mean,
Speaker 2: I hope she wouldn't be offended. There's nothing to be
Speaker 2: offended about in there. But I am a little bit
Speaker 2: self conscious about it. Okay, us the real name.
Speaker 1: Okay, just to go back, you did have a relationship
Speaker 1: with her, right, I did. Okay, It wasn't something from
Speaker 1: Afar being no no, no, no no. So how long
Speaker 1: did it go on? Oh?
Speaker 2: It was a couple of years. And she was very young,
Speaker 2: and I think she was so was I. She was
Speaker 2: about seventeen, I think, and I was nineteen or something
Speaker 2: like that. And I, you know, I was always a
Speaker 2: huge romantic. And it's funny because the guys in the
Speaker 2: band would always say I would be the first one
Speaker 2: to be married. At the time, I thought we would
Speaker 2: be married, and I honestly it's terrible, but seventy nine,
Speaker 2: I'm talking about a romance I have when I.
Speaker 1: Was nineteen actual.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, anyway, she got a partner film in Spain,
Speaker 2: and this is how my mind worked at that time.
Speaker 2: I thought, this is okay, she's going to be away
Speaker 2: for six months. If we can get through this six
Speaker 2: months apart, then we really should get married. How presumptuous,
Speaker 2: you know. I didn't say that to her. It's just
Speaker 2: what I was thinking. And of course she met someone
Speaker 2: on the film and she married him. That was That
Speaker 2: was the end of the relationship, but it was the
Speaker 2: beginning of the song. You see, every cloud has a
Speaker 2: silver lining. And so I lost the girl, but I
Speaker 2: found the song.
Speaker 1: Now, this woman was an actress, however young. How'd you
Speaker 1: meet her?
Speaker 2: There was a some kind of presentation night for the
Speaker 2: zombies and she was involved. David Bailey, the photographer, named
Speaker 2: her as the face of the year.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: I can't remember what year it was, but it was
Speaker 2: a long time, right right. I named her the face
Speaker 2: of the year, and part of her prize for being
Speaker 2: the face of the year was to be at this
Speaker 2: presentation thing that we went to, and I just said
Speaker 2: to her, would you like to come to a club afterwards?
Speaker 2: And that's how I met her.
Speaker 1: Okay, you've been married how many times?
Speaker 2: Twice though I don't always count the first time.
Speaker 1: So how old we were married the first time?
Speaker 2: Old enough to know better.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to know better because.
Speaker 2: Because I married a total stranger when I was blind drunk.
Speaker 1: There's more to the story than that you met the person.
Speaker 1: How long after you met her did you marry her?
Speaker 2: About seven or eight days?
Speaker 1: Tell me the story.
Speaker 2: Well, I was hoping you'd say that I signed a
Speaker 2: Rocket Records and I've made a record with Gus Dudgeon,
Speaker 2: super bloke, great producer. We spent a lot of money.
Speaker 2: I had lunch with Elton and shortly after we'd made it,
Speaker 2: and you know, I said what do you think of
Speaker 2: the album? And he may not have used these words,
Speaker 2: but you know, he said, well, I don't really like it.
Speaker 2: And we spent I felt terrible. We spent a fortune.
Speaker 2: And he said to me, you know what I think
Speaker 2: you should do. You go to California and record, as
Speaker 2: you know, West Coast Rock album, which is what I did.
Speaker 2: I came over here and I recorded with Bill Shne
Speaker 2: and wonderful group of musicians, and I recorded in LA
Speaker 2: and I ended up back in England. Now I've I've
Speaker 2: recorded the record. Right for recording two albums, Now I'm
Speaker 2: up to a huge amount of money. I dread to think.
Speaker 2: And because the Zombies finished at the end of the seventies,
Speaker 2: I haven't played live since the end of the seventies
Speaker 2: and the sixties, sorry, the end of the sixties, this
Speaker 2: is the mid seventies. I've spent probably one hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty one hundred and seventy thousand pounds, which would be
Speaker 2: more in dollars, and they wanted me to come back
Speaker 2: here and promote it and play some live dates and things.
Speaker 2: That's the weight on my shoulders for the responsibility of
Speaker 2: spending this money, and then the anxiety of can I
Speaker 2: still perform live? And it was getting very close to
Speaker 2: flight time to come over here, and I met a
Speaker 2: very beautiful, vivacious, confident young lady who helped me get
Speaker 2: carried away with the whole spirit of the time. I
Speaker 2: drank a lot of champagne to take the edge off
Speaker 2: my anxiety. I found myself married. That was it, really.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's break it down. Did you end up doing
Speaker 1: the West Coast dates? The live date?
Speaker 2: Actually most of them seemed to fade away. I did
Speaker 2: lots of interviews. I don't remember actually performing live, so
Speaker 2: that was a relief. But I did do lots of interviews,
Speaker 2: and having just met this young lady about two days
Speaker 2: after we got married, might have been the next day,
Speaker 2: I can't remember. I came to California. So when I
Speaker 2: was doing this, I had literally just got married to someone,
Speaker 2: and of course then I had to go home and
Speaker 2: we had to face up to what we've done. And
Speaker 2: it was a tricky one. It was a tricky one.
Speaker 1: But how long did it last?
Speaker 2: Not very long, I'm afraid. I mean like two weeks,
Speaker 2: three years, a few months, I would maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit longer than that, maybe a little bit longer.
Speaker 1: Okay, So how did it end? And we're both people
Speaker 1: happy or were certain people unhappy?
Speaker 2: Well, she went off around the world and she just
Speaker 2: take quite a long time in La actually, and she
Speaker 2: lived with a very famous rock and roll manager here
Speaker 2: longer than she lived with me. I mean, you don't
Speaker 2: know whether to laugh or cry in these situations, do
Speaker 2: you really? And then she went off to Japan and
Speaker 2: eventually she came back and we sorted things out. I
Speaker 2: was a huge learning experience for me.
Speaker 1: Well, other than the fact I don't get married after
Speaker 1: you meet someone drunk in a bar, what were the
Speaker 1: other lessons?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, don't yeah, don't marry a total stained stranger
Speaker 2: when you're blind drunk. That was the main one, right,
Speaker 2: And it certainly will hit you financially, that's for sure. Right,
Speaker 2: they were the two main lessons I think.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, so how all were you when that happened?
Speaker 2: Oh, thirty three?
Speaker 1: Okay? So when did he get married the second time?
Speaker 2: The second time, it's a different kettle of fish. I
Speaker 2: met a wonderful lady who was actually an airline stewardess.
Speaker 2: But I didn't meet her on an aeroplane. I just
Speaker 2: met a few friends, you know, And I think I
Speaker 2: was about forty two when I got married. We've been
Speaker 2: married for thirty eight years and we have one daughter.
Speaker 2: It's wonderful. She's a doctor, and it's been a wonderful marriage.
Speaker 2: And you know, maybe I learned something from that. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm embarrassed about that first marriage, for my sake and
Speaker 2: for the person I'm marriage. You know, I would apologize
Speaker 2: to everyone concerned. I should have known better. But I
Speaker 2: learned a lot out of that.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I learned marriage is a very serious commitment and you
Speaker 2: have to work at it, and you have to be
Speaker 2: sure of the person you're marrying and they have to
Speaker 2: be sure of you. And for the second marriage, it's
Speaker 2: really worked out incredibly well. And maybe it wouldn't have
Speaker 2: worked out if I hadn't done that insane thing. How
Speaker 2: did we get onto the subject of marriages.
Speaker 1: Because we're asking about the song about Caroline.
Speaker 2: Or perhaps that's what it was. Yeah, and you said
Speaker 2: how many times have you been married?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And I said, well, kind of twice, Okay.
Speaker 1: The nature of being someone who is successful in the
Speaker 1: public eye first, I mean, I'm just speak in English here.
Speaker 1: Many people are attracted to performers and songs in a
Speaker 1: different way from movies starts, because the performers embody the song,
Speaker 1: it is them. So yes, when you're in the public eye,
Speaker 1: I would think there are people who had attracted you
Speaker 1: because of that. And then there's also your identity, and
Speaker 1: there's relative power struggles as opposed to just meeting people
Speaker 1: in your hometown. Did you experience that? Oh?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, of course all musicians have experienced that. And I
Speaker 2: think when I was younger, I didn't really understand the
Speaker 2: difference between meeting people on the road, you know, backstage,
Speaker 2: and meeting someone in your hometown. It is different. I
Speaker 2: can always remember I was managed for some time by
Speaker 2: the same person who managed Cat Stevens, and I remember
Speaker 2: him saying to me you you you know, meet people,
Speaker 2: go out with people that you meet on their own.
Speaker 2: Well what everybody did, right, you know, he couldn't believe it,
Speaker 2: And I think you have to be on your guard
Speaker 2: for the people at the show's sake and for your sake.
Speaker 2: But you know, I'm married now, there's.
Speaker 1: Right, right we're talking about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's there's an imbalance. You know, if you're
Speaker 2: a performer and someone is attracted to you as a performer,
Speaker 2: it's not fair on them. There's saying something that's that's
Speaker 2: not there, and so you just have to be you
Speaker 2: have a responsibility to protect them and yourself. Really, I think,
Speaker 2: I mean it's easy for me to say that now.
Speaker 2: You know, I said earlier I'm seventy nine. Now I've
Speaker 2: been married for thirty eight years. But I still believe
Speaker 2: that's true.
Speaker 1: Okay, So you make your present wife where she for
Speaker 1: familiar with you in your career.
Speaker 2: A little bit, I think, But it was more a
Speaker 2: meeting of mutual friends, you know. I think she was aware, yeah,
Speaker 2: but not over impressed.
Speaker 1: Okay, So she's a flight attendant, you're a rock and roller.
Speaker 1: How does your daughter end up a doctor?
Speaker 2: Well, she's very academic she enjoys taking exams. And I
Speaker 2: tell you what happened. She used to go to a
Speaker 2: summer school, and then as she got older, she became
Speaker 2: a helper at the summer school. And there was a
Speaker 2: problem with someone in a swimming pool. You know, they
Speaker 2: could have died, and she, as a young teenager, helped
Speaker 2: to revive them, and she felt something about what had
Speaker 2: happened there. And from then on there was part of
Speaker 2: her that definitely wanted to explore, at least the idea
Speaker 2: of being a doctor. And she went on and she
Speaker 2: did it. She's very bright and very tenacious as well.
Speaker 2: And now she qualified years ago, but she's now a
Speaker 2: psychiatrist actually, and she said that there are probably two
Speaker 2: or three treatable traits in me that should be attended to.
Speaker 2: I haven't actually asked what they are, but obviously she
Speaker 2: sees traits in me that could do with a little
Speaker 2: bit of work. Maybe I'll get one of her friends
Speaker 2: to try and psychoanalyze me.
Speaker 1: Or whatever they do.
Speaker 2: I don't know what.
Speaker 1: They do, Okay, unfortunately, or fortunately I know what they do.
Speaker 1: But being on the other side of the or being
Speaker 1: on the couch, so to speak. But your daughter's obviously
Speaker 1: very successful. You're a musician. Is this totally self directed?
Speaker 1: Or when she was growing up, were you and your
Speaker 1: wife saying, hey, pay attention to your school, do this,
Speaker 1: do that?
Speaker 2: No, but she did. She would come home from school
Speaker 2: to get her school book books out, and she would
Speaker 2: do homework. But what we would do was we would
Speaker 2: keep the house quiet, TV's off, you know, we would
Speaker 2: try and make it easy for her. But we never
Speaker 2: had to say work. The one thing I regret this,
Speaker 2: the one thing I did do was one evening she
Speaker 2: was singing, and the conversation went along the lines of,
Speaker 2: you know, could me and my friends could we make
Speaker 2: a record? And I really regret this, but it's a
Speaker 2: tough business, you know, and especially perhaps for girl singers
Speaker 2: as well. They're very vulnerable and there's so many good
Speaker 2: girl singers out there. And I said no, no, no, don't.
Speaker 1: I wish.
Speaker 2: I really regret it, but I said don't. And she
Speaker 2: just wanted a bit of fun.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: I think she would have liked to have made a
Speaker 2: record with her friends. And I don't know, I don't
Speaker 2: do that, don't do that. And I wish I'd have
Speaker 2: said I'll fix the studio, let's make a record with
Speaker 2: you and your pals. I wish i'd done that, But
Speaker 2: that was the only time that I kind of closed
Speaker 2: her down on something she wanted to do, just because
Speaker 2: I was concerned. I knew how often tough it was,
Speaker 2: and I was trying to protect her. But the memory
Speaker 2: of it embarrasses me.
Speaker 1: You know, Okay, she grows up and you hear about
Speaker 1: the progeny of people who are not impressed with the
Speaker 1: success of their parents. How did she feel about you
Speaker 1: and your success?
Speaker 2: Well, she certainly wasn't impressed when I was young. When
Speaker 2: she was young, I'm sorry. I think no, she wasn't
Speaker 2: impressed at all. As she's got older. I think first
Speaker 2: it became intrigue that people were interested in me. I
Speaker 2: think she found that quite interesting herself. Why are they
Speaker 2: talking to my dad? Why is this happening? And then
Speaker 2: she started coming to gigs and so, you know, she
Speaker 2: is a doctor, she's a psychiatrist. She's thirty seven or
Speaker 2: something like that, but she comes to gigs. She comes
Speaker 2: to festivals with her husband, and sometimes she'd bring the
Speaker 2: little baby along as well. She likes festivals and I
Speaker 2: think she really enjoys it now. But when she was
Speaker 2: a teenager. First of all, I think she was in denial,
Speaker 2: and secondly, I think she was a bit embarrassed. Probably
Speaker 2: her friends were all parents were all investment bankers and
Speaker 2: diplomats or whatever they were. They weren't near rock and
Speaker 2: roll singers in the parents group at her school.
Speaker 1: It's only me, okay, from my life, You're the only
Speaker 1: person I've ever known named Blundstone. Yes, if you're in
Speaker 1: England or are there other Blundstones or does she say
Speaker 1: I'm so and sold Blunstone said, oh is your father Colin?
Speaker 2: I think people do say that to her. But there
Speaker 2: is only one family, I believe, but most of them
Speaker 2: are in the north of the country. My father came
Speaker 2: from the north of the country. But if someone's called Blunstone,
Speaker 2: then as far as I know, we would be related. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but people do say that to her because it's an
Speaker 2: unusual name.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So where exactly do you grow up?
Speaker 2: I grew up just north of London in a place
Speaker 2: called Hatfield, and I went to school in a place
Speaker 2: called Saint Albans, which is four or five miles away,
Speaker 2: and that's where all the zombies all went to school.
Speaker 2: In Saint Albans and that's the connection.
Speaker 1: Okay, but you know people in America are not that savvy.
Speaker 1: From the center of London. How far was the town
Speaker 1: that you grew up in.
Speaker 2: Probably about twenty five twenty eight miles quite close.
Speaker 1: And could you take the train in if you wanted to?
Speaker 2: Half an hour on the train.
Speaker 1: And did people in your town did some of them
Speaker 1: take the train to go to work?
Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely, yeah, it was it was commutable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, And your parents did what for a living?
Speaker 2: Well, my father really was. He was say, a gentleman's hairdresser.
Speaker 2: Some people might say Barbara, that was his trade. Really.
Speaker 2: My mom when she was younger, she was a dancer,
Speaker 2: but then later on, you know, she worked in offices
Speaker 2: and she was a mom. She didn't particularly have a career,
Speaker 2: but she was a wonderful personality because she'd been on
Speaker 2: the stage, you know. I mean, she would love to
Speaker 2: sing at the drop of the hat and was very good.
Speaker 1: Okay, the war has just ended, we hear you know
Speaker 1: the metaphor I always say, You know, ultimately in England
Speaker 1: went from black and white to color. It was different
Speaker 1: in America. So it's nineteen forty five, you're not conscious
Speaker 1: but as you become conscious the end of the forties
Speaker 1: and early fifties, especially with in retrospect, were there limits
Speaker 1: could you feel the hangover the war? Were there things
Speaker 1: you couldn't get? What was it like?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it was very austere in the UK after the war.
Speaker 2: I've heard people say that it was tougher after the war.
Speaker 2: I mean I was a child, so I wasn't aware
Speaker 2: of this, but I've heard people say it was tougher
Speaker 2: after the war. And it was during the war and
Speaker 2: most things were Russian. So food was ration and you
Speaker 2: and you know it really if to see an orange,
Speaker 2: you might see an orange at one orange at Christmas,
Speaker 2: that would be it. Clothes were rationed, Petrol was rationing,
Speaker 2: so you know, you could only use so much pet
Speaker 2: petrol in a week. You had you had a ration
Speaker 2: book and you could only use so much petrol. And
Speaker 2: I think butter was Russian. It was quite tough. And
Speaker 2: on top of that from people have told me, I
Speaker 2: think it was nineteen forty eight, it was a very
Speaker 2: very bad winter and it's very hard to get hold
Speaker 2: of coal to heat your house, so it was tough
Speaker 2: in the late forties and fifties. And I think that's
Speaker 2: part of the reasons why the sixties exploded in such
Speaker 2: a way, because we were just coming out of that
Speaker 2: post war austerity in the late fifties and into the sixties,
Speaker 2: it was still a hangover. If you drove up to
Speaker 2: London in the fifties, there were huge areas that where
Speaker 2: it had been bombed that were just there were no
Speaker 2: houses there, and you knew why there were no houses
Speaker 2: there because that lort Ha got bombed.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're an only child. Some only children, all the
Speaker 1: wholes dreams of the parents are invested. They say how
Speaker 1: great they pushed the kid. Other family if they treat
Speaker 1: the kid more as an adult. What was your experience
Speaker 1: growing up?
Speaker 2: Well, I was very supported and loved growing up. I
Speaker 2: was so fortunate. I really loving parents who just wanted
Speaker 2: the best for me. Really, that's all. I don't think
Speaker 2: they were over ambitious because they were in a way.
Speaker 2: Not to talk down about them, they were wonderful people,
Speaker 2: but they were working class people and so they just
Speaker 2: wanted me, wanted me to be happy. Really, that was it.
Speaker 1: Okay, you're going to school, you know, in America, public
Speaker 1: school is one thing, and in the UK public school's
Speaker 1: private school. But it was a regular government school, right, yes,
Speaker 1: And what was that like?
Speaker 2: It was fine. I went to a nice local school
Speaker 2: up till eleven and I could walk to school, and
Speaker 2: they were quite interested in music. Not guitars or rock
Speaker 2: and roll, but there was an interest in music. And
Speaker 2: I established actually even then that I had a little
Speaker 2: bit of a boy as a young boy. They got
Speaker 2: me to sing some solo pieces, but that kind of
Speaker 2: faded away. I forgot that that wasn't going to lead
Speaker 2: to a career in a rock and roll band at
Speaker 2: eleven in those days, and in some areas in the
Speaker 2: country they still do this. They have an exam it's
Speaker 2: called the eleven plus and if you pass that exam,
Speaker 2: you go to a more academic school. And I went
Speaker 2: to a more academic school. I went to Saint Albans
Speaker 2: Grammar School in St Albans. It was an all boys
Speaker 2: school and I got a shock because there were a
Speaker 2: lot of bright people there and I, you know, I
Speaker 2: certainly wasn't amongst them. I was very average. But it
Speaker 2: was a good school. And also I discovered a love
Speaker 2: for sport while I was there, and I probably did
Speaker 2: too much sport. I should have been at home, helping
Speaker 2: out at home really, but you know, every night I
Speaker 2: would stay on and do one sport or another, and
Speaker 2: I loved it. And then at about fifteen, the guy
Speaker 2: in front of me, we were it's a strict school,
Speaker 2: and we were arranged enough better ordered by our surnames.
Speaker 2: No one ever called us by a Christian names. And
Speaker 2: the guy in front of me was a guy called Arnold,
Speaker 2: Paul Arnold and Colin blunts and sat behind him. And
Speaker 2: he turned around to me and he said, I've got
Speaker 2: a mate who's putting a band together. Yeah, you've got
Speaker 2: a guitar, haven't you? And I said, yeah, I have
Speaker 2: got a guitar actually, And he said, do you want
Speaker 2: to be in the band? And that basically was that's
Speaker 2: my audition for the Zombies.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back. You say you're a very average
Speaker 1: student when you're less than eleven. Are you someone who's
Speaker 1: more of a loner or are you someone who has
Speaker 1: a lot of friends? What kind of kid are you? No?
Speaker 2: I think I had I had, I had friends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then in your house, your mother was a dancer.
Speaker 1: Did they play music in the house?
Speaker 2: Not an awful lot, No, But any excuse she would
Speaker 2: sing and dance. I don't remember, but she had five brothers.
Speaker 2: I used to go a lot to my grandparents' house,
Speaker 2: which was about ten miles away, but like two or
Speaker 2: three nights a week. I don't quite understand how we
Speaker 2: got over there in those days. We didn't always have
Speaker 2: a car. It would have to be on the bus.
Speaker 2: But we went there a lot. And my mother had
Speaker 2: five brothers and they all played instruments. Most of them
Speaker 2: played two or three instruments really well, sort of semi professional,
Speaker 2: And so I heard a lot of music in that house.
Speaker 2: At Christmases were wonderful. They would do a fanfare for
Speaker 2: the Christmas pudding to come through. It'd be two trombones
Speaker 2: and a trumpet. And then after the meal we'd have
Speaker 2: a we had a dance band, so we we would
Speaker 2: we would experience live music when these guys you know,
Speaker 2: chose to play it was. It was wonderful. But I
Speaker 2: don't remember an awful lot of the radio. BBC Radio
Speaker 2: didn't play a lot of contemporary music. They would play
Speaker 2: like light classics or else it was talk music. It
Speaker 2: wasn't till the till the Pirates came about and they
Speaker 2: were playing records and the beeB had to compete and
Speaker 2: so then they started playing records too. The BBC before that,
Speaker 2: they didn't play records for one reason or another, one
Speaker 2: being that the musicians' union was very strong and they
Speaker 2: didn't want records played. They wanted musicians to be employed
Speaker 2: to play live music. And it used to be called
Speaker 2: needle time. BBC only had so much needle time when
Speaker 2: they could play records. It's very old fashioned and very
Speaker 2: different to radio here. Now, we followed you very much
Speaker 2: and it's it's similar over there to the radio set
Speaker 2: up here.
Speaker 1: Let's go back a step. You say you go to
Speaker 1: I think it was Saint Albans, the second school, and
Speaker 1: you become very interested in sport. So what sports did
Speaker 1: you play and how good were you?
Speaker 2: Well, my favorite sport was rugby, and for the first
Speaker 2: rehearsal when I turned up, Paul Arnold asked me to
Speaker 2: go along to rehearsal on a Saturday morning. On the
Speaker 2: Wednesday afternoon, I broke my nose playing rugby quite badly
Speaker 2: and my nose was nearly in my ear and they
Speaker 2: I had to go to hospital and they'd strapped me
Speaker 2: with white tape across the face and I had two
Speaker 2: black eyes. And I turned up for the first rehearsal
Speaker 2: and they were scared of me. What surprised time would
Speaker 2: have been scared to. Rhodes told me that we were
Speaker 2: standing on this street corner. Paul Arnold is the only
Speaker 2: guy I know from my school. Rod had got some
Speaker 2: guys from another school, so the other people didn't know me.
Speaker 2: And Rod was standing under his breath. God, don't say that,
Speaker 2: rough guy, And it was me. Yeah, but yes, I
Speaker 2: love to play rugby. I would have loved to have
Speaker 2: been a good rugby player, but I wasn't really good enough.
Speaker 2: I was a sprinter, so I was very fast. You know,
Speaker 2: it seems silly to say this now, but I was
Speaker 2: a schoolboys sprint champion at school of the County, which
Speaker 2: would perhaps be like the state. And actually I had
Speaker 2: a national trial at basketball, believe it or not, because
Speaker 2: basketball is not a big sport in the UK, and
Speaker 2: that's probably why I got a national trial because there
Speaker 2: weren't many other people. There weren't many many other people
Speaker 2: playing it, so they were the three sports that I play, Rugby,
Speaker 2: athletics and basketball.
Speaker 1: Okay, you talk about the BBC not playing records, but
Speaker 1: in the fifties rock and roll starts to happen. You
Speaker 1: have Rocket Ada, you have Rock around the Clock, you
Speaker 1: have Elvis, you have Little Richard. Is this on your radar?
Speaker 2: It is, and it's always intrigued me. Where did I
Speaker 2: hear it? I used to, at quite a young age,
Speaker 2: hang out at this sort of cafe place that had
Speaker 2: a jukebox. That was one place I heard it. They
Speaker 2: occasionally played things on the BBC, but it's really not
Speaker 2: very much, but I was aware of it. Elvis especially.
Speaker 2: I don't even think we had a record player at
Speaker 2: home when I was really younger. Later we did, but
Speaker 2: I heard Elvis's early records. So the three for me
Speaker 2: that got me interested were Elvis, Little Richard, and Chuck
Speaker 2: Berry and I I just thought they were one for
Speaker 2: all Americans. And this is the thing I always say
Speaker 2: to American people is that British musicians always want to
Speaker 2: come to America. It's the home of the blues, jazz,
Speaker 2: rhythm and blues and rock and roll. This is where
Speaker 2: it all happened, and British musicians always want to come here,
Speaker 2: and nearly always they get interested in music through American musicians.
Speaker 2: Maybe not always, but mostly they do. And certainly my
Speaker 2: generation did.
Speaker 1: Okay, how did you end up with a guitar? Well?
Speaker 2: I loved the kind of people we're talking about, and
Speaker 2: then later on very much. Ricky Nelson was huge for me,
Speaker 2: and Buddy Holly.
Speaker 1: Did as an heiot show play. No, it didn't know,
Speaker 1: so you didn't get Ricky playing at the end.
Speaker 2: No. I saw occasional clips on the TV. It's it's
Speaker 2: a mystery to me how anybody ever heard these songs,
Speaker 2: but we did because because we you know, we loved
Speaker 2: the music and you just five ways to do it.
Speaker 2: I begged for a guitar, and it was a big
Speaker 2: sacrifice for my parents to get me a guitar. I
Speaker 2: think it cost twelve pounds. It was a famous Atlantis
Speaker 2: and I think it was made in East Germany. And
Speaker 2: it was quite a nice acoustic guitar and I could
Speaker 2: play a few chords on it, you know, I loved
Speaker 2: I think my father was a bit worried it was
Speaker 2: going to be a three day wonder, but it didn't
Speaker 2: work out that way. I loved to play. I would
Speaker 2: play for hours on end.
Speaker 1: Okay, how'd you learn?
Speaker 2: Mostly? I taught myself mostly? Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay, So when Paul Arnold says, hey, these guys are
Speaker 1: forming a band. You just played your acoustic guitar at home. Yes,
Speaker 1: you didn't play out anywhere. It wasn't like you went
Speaker 1: to friend's house and picked up the guitar and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you're the famous guy who plays the guitar.
Speaker 2: No, not very much. I don't think I might have
Speaker 2: done it a little bit, but no, I just played
Speaker 2: at home and I joined the Zombies as a rhythm guitarist.
Speaker 2: Rod Argent was going to be the lead singer, and
Speaker 2: at that first rehearsal there was a we we played.
Speaker 2: We just played an instrumental called Malaguena. It's like a
Speaker 2: classic song that people play. And because it was an
Speaker 2: instrumental and Rob was going to be the lead singer,
Speaker 2: of course he didn't actually do anything. But there was
Speaker 2: a break in the middle of the first rehearsal. We
Speaker 2: had a coffee and there was an old, broken down
Speaker 2: piano in the corner, and he went over and he
Speaker 2: played not Rocker by Bee Bumble and the Stingers, and
Speaker 2: he was just so much better than us. We were
Speaker 2: really ordinary and I just I've only just met him,
Speaker 2: so I wasn't too sure of what his name was,
Speaker 2: but I went over. I thought this was quite bold. Actually,
Speaker 2: I went over to him and I said, you know,
Speaker 2: whatever your name is, you should play keyboards in this band.
Speaker 2: You're really good. And he said, no, no, we don't
Speaker 2: want keyboards in this band. It's a rock and roll band.
Speaker 2: That's three guitars. And he was adamant. And then at
Speaker 2: the end of the rehearsal, just as I was putting
Speaker 2: my guitar away, I just started singing a little bit
Speaker 2: to myself and it was I know, its a Ricky
Speaker 2: Narsen song and I think it was it's late, but
Speaker 2: I'm not absolutely sure. And he just turned around and
Speaker 2: said he heard me singing, and he said, if you'll
Speaker 2: be the lead singer, I'll play keyboards. And essentially that
Speaker 2: was the Zombies. It was all so so much chance,
Speaker 2: you know. I mean, you have conversations like that, you
Speaker 2: be the lead singer, and I'll bet you're not thinking
Speaker 2: that sixty years later we'll be touring the world and
Speaker 2: having had hit records and being inducted in the Rock
Speaker 2: and Roll Hall of Fame. I said, well, okay, I'll
Speaker 2: give it a go, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Really okay, So you had a whole scene in the
Speaker 1: UK that didn't happen in America. The skiffle bands. Okay,
Speaker 1: when you formed the band, I believe in nineteen sixty one,
Speaker 1: was that a thing? I mean, like, after the Beatles
Speaker 1: hit in America, everybody here formed the band. Okay, So
Speaker 1: in sixty one were a lot of people starting bands
Speaker 1: or were you more of the outliers.
Speaker 2: No, there were a lot of people in bands, yeah,
Speaker 2: but not skiffle right had come and gone. So it
Speaker 2: was it was rock and roll. It would have been
Speaker 2: you know, the American greats, and then in the UK
Speaker 2: it would have been people like Cliff Richard perhaps and
Speaker 2: Joe Brown and Marty Wilde and people like that. But
Speaker 2: I think we were more looking towards America. In fact,
Speaker 2: as time went by, we renamed the Zombies. Were called
Speaker 2: as Zombies R and B for quite a long while
Speaker 2: because we were trying to explore the R and B artists.
Speaker 2: But then, of course we realized I'm skipping ahead a
Speaker 2: bit here, but we realized we had two guys in
Speaker 2: the band who could write, and that changed everything.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you get there, yeah, you're playing an acoustic guitar.
Speaker 2: I had a little pickup on him, which my dad
Speaker 2: I think someone gave it to me. My dad managed
Speaker 2: to stick it onto the guitar. I mean it it
Speaker 2: looked very cumbersome, but what do you do for an
Speaker 2: e app Well, that first rehearsal, Rod's cousin Jim Rodford,
Speaker 2: who was twenty years in the Kinks and then twenty
Speaker 2: years in the Zombies as well. Sadly he's passed away
Speaker 2: quite recently. But Rod's cousin, Jim Rodford, was in the
Speaker 2: big band in Saint Albans who were called the Blue Tones,
Speaker 2: and they were really good, and they had all the
Speaker 2: Fox equipment and a full drum kit and everything, and
Speaker 2: Jim managed to persuade them to let us borrow their
Speaker 2: gear on that first rehearsal. So we thought we sounded
Speaker 2: pretty wonderful through these ants and drums. Jim much later,
Speaker 2: you know, fifty years later, admitted that when he heard
Speaker 2: us play and I'm thinking we sound wonderful, Jim was
Speaker 2: listening and watching and he thought no chance, no chance.
Speaker 2: He'd waited fifty years and he'd only said it in
Speaker 2: a very light way. We just died laughing because we
Speaker 2: thought we were great. But he thought we were terrible.
Speaker 2: Then the next rehearsal we had of course, we didn't
Speaker 2: have all their equipment. We had one handmade, broken down
Speaker 2: old amplifier that everyone had to plug into, and a
Speaker 2: handmade speaker, and our drummer, Hugh Grundy, had two drumsticks
Speaker 2: and he played on that. They were his drums, and
Speaker 2: I we had a microphone that was like a shot put.
Speaker 2: It was really very heavy to hold, and that was
Speaker 2: a real wake up call. That was our second rehearse
Speaker 2: and you think, God, we're hopeless. We haven't got any gear,
Speaker 2: and we just It took us a year, you know,
Speaker 2: to save and buy bits and pieces before we played
Speaker 2: our first little gig at a youth club and again
Speaker 2: I thought it was fantastic to actually play. And in
Speaker 2: the last song, they used to always try and put
Speaker 2: the lights down in the last song so they could
Speaker 2: do a close dance. And we were doing an instrumental
Speaker 2: called Nivram, which is a song from The Shadows, and
Speaker 2: there's a bass solo in the middle of the song
Speaker 2: and when they put the lights down, Paul Arnold at
Speaker 2: that time was playing bass and he got onto the
Speaker 2: wrong threat because the lights had come down and you
Speaker 2: play this whole based solo, a semitone sharp to what
Speaker 2: we were playing, and I think it sounded it sounded
Speaker 2: very modern, something Miles Davis might have tried.
Speaker 1: You know, it was okay in that year. How many
Speaker 1: times are you getting together and at what point do
Speaker 1: you guys say we're committed.
Speaker 2: I don't remember a discussion about being committed or not,
Speaker 2: but most sundays we got together to rehearse. And it
Speaker 2: got a bit much for Paul Arnold. He wanted to
Speaker 2: be a doctor. He's very aware of having to keep
Speaker 2: up on his studies, and so he was the only
Speaker 2: guy who left. He's the only guy who escaped. And
Speaker 2: Chris White turned up.
Speaker 1: What happened to Paul Arnold in life?
Speaker 2: Became a doctor and he's in Edmonton and we've played
Speaker 2: up there quite a few times and he always comes
Speaker 2: and we always introduced him to the audience. I think
Speaker 2: he really enjoys it. Actually gets the spotlight on him
Speaker 2: and he really likes it. And Chris White came and
Speaker 2: took over. But it was very interesting. I'm not I
Speaker 2: don't really know where Chris White came from exactly. I
Speaker 2: don't know who approached him. He just arrived, and what
Speaker 2: intrigued me was usually bass playing. The Drama are very
Speaker 2: tight because they played together well. Chris had been coming
Speaker 2: in and playing bass for about five or six weeks,
Speaker 2: and Hugh Grundy, our drummer, came up to me and
Speaker 2: very quietly whispered in my ear. He said, who's this
Speaker 2: book who keeps coming in and playing base? I realized
Speaker 2: that he'd been coming in for five or six weeks
Speaker 2: to play bass, and Hew had never spoken to him,
Speaker 2: and he didn't know who he was. And I think
Speaker 2: there's something of the Zombies in that that things just
Speaker 2: used to happen and no one really knew. No one
Speaker 2: really knew why or how. I don't know where Chris
Speaker 2: came from.
Speaker 1: Okay, so playing in B and B. Believe me, I
Speaker 1: was never any good. There's always one person who says,
Speaker 1: we got to get a gig. They're like the business person.
Speaker 1: She happened. Usually this is a drummer. What happened in
Speaker 1: the Zombies.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not so sure about We've got to get
Speaker 2: a gig? But musically it was always Rod. It was
Speaker 2: Rod's but Rod formed the band. It's Rod's band. He's
Speaker 2: the leader of the band. He was head and shoulders
Speaker 2: better than us musically, and he was the first one
Speaker 2: to start writing as well. So the whole musical direction
Speaker 2: came from Rod. But I think we all knew if
Speaker 2: we're going to do this, we have at some point
Speaker 2: we've got to we've got to try and perform. And
Speaker 2: I think we all tried to get gigs. Really, it
Speaker 2: wasn't all down to the drummer as he has been
Speaker 2: in your experience. I think we all tried to get gigs.
Speaker 2: And I remember I got them into some youth clubs
Speaker 2: around hat and then I got them into my rugby club.
Speaker 2: And this is when you're taking your life into your
Speaker 2: because these guys they're quite physical and they drink lots
Speaker 2: of beer and a bit crazy, you know, And I
Speaker 2: was very relieved. Apart from anything else, they really took
Speaker 2: to us. And the rugby club dancers used to be
Speaker 2: very poorly attended, but it really built up into something.
Speaker 2: That's when we started to build a local following at
Speaker 2: the rugby club I played for, and then we played
Speaker 2: at other rugby clubs as well, and it was really
Speaker 2: shortly after that we won a big rock and roll competition.
Speaker 1: Before you get there when you're rehearsing, what material are
Speaker 1: you playing?
Speaker 2: Well, until we got into the beat until the Beatles happened,
Speaker 2: we were trying to get into as much rhythm and
Speaker 2: blues and blues as we could, although we did play
Speaker 2: pop tunes as well. When we first started, we played
Speaker 2: a lot of instrumental but gradually they started to drop out,
Speaker 2: and I used to play guitar, you know, But they
Speaker 2: gradually dropped out, and then we mostly just played songs.
Speaker 2: I think they got I think they got a little
Speaker 2: bit frustrated because when they played instrumentals and I was
Speaker 2: gradually stopping playing guitar. It's really uncool this, but they
Speaker 2: would do instrumentals and I get off the stage and
Speaker 2: dance with a pretty girl. And I don't blame them.
Speaker 2: It's very unprofessional, you know. And then at the end
Speaker 2: of the song, I'd have to rush back up and
Speaker 2: start singing again. So more and more we were just
Speaker 2: playing songs.
Speaker 1: What happened first, the Battle of the Bands or the Beatles?
Speaker 2: The Beatles happened first.
Speaker 1: Okay, so tell us about the Beatles. Fabulous, I mean,
Speaker 1: how did you hear them?
Speaker 2: But I think by then the BBC were playing a
Speaker 2: few or maybe we were listening to the pirates stations.
Speaker 2: You know, they were on ships out in the sea,
Speaker 2: and so they weren't regulated by the government. So I
Speaker 2: think by then we could we could listen to the music,
Speaker 2: and they just took our breath away. They were just sensational,
Speaker 2: and they wrote their own songs. They changed everything, and
Speaker 2: so this is one of the problems we had. Later on,
Speaker 2: we'd started playing lots of Beatles songs. Well, if you
Speaker 2: have a hit record, you can't your live show can't
Speaker 2: be based on another band. So it created a bit
Speaker 2: of a problem for us. But I know it was
Speaker 2: the Beatles first because in the rock competition that we won,
Speaker 2: one of the songs we played was you Can't Do That,
Speaker 2: which was a B side for the Beatles, a really
Speaker 2: good song actually, and that was one of the songs
Speaker 2: that we played.
Speaker 1: Okay, what is the general tone. Everything happened in America
Speaker 1: a year and a half later. Really, the Beatles in
Speaker 1: UK is sixty two sixty three. Doesn't happen in America
Speaker 1: until sixty four. And then it's a tsunamiavacts Herman Hermon's Billy,
Speaker 1: you know Kramer in the Dakotas. You know, you're still
Speaker 1: trying to make it. Do all these bands start to
Speaker 1: have success and are you aware of them?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Yeah, But I thought they were in a separate
Speaker 2: world to us, and thought never crossed my mind that,
Speaker 2: you know, we would be playing some of the same
Speaker 2: dates as them, perhaps not the Beatles, but the other ones.
Speaker 2: I thought, you know, we'd just keep playing locally. Really,
Speaker 2: Then we were entered into this rock competition and there
Speaker 2: were one hundred bands, but there were ten bands a
Speaker 2: night for ten weeks, so I know there are one
Speaker 2: hundred bands, and we won our our heat. You know,
Speaker 2: it's really surprised, and this is not false modesty. I
Speaker 2: thought that was fantastic, you know. And then we got
Speaker 2: into the final. I believe it. We won it out
Speaker 2: of all those bands. And one way or another, and
Speaker 2: all the guys in the band remember this differently, but
Speaker 2: one way or another, it led to a contract with
Speaker 2: Decca Records. From memory, I think it was only for
Speaker 2: a single. It wasn't for an album, but we got
Speaker 2: the chance to record in Decca studios.
Speaker 1: Okay, at what point in this story do you stop
Speaker 1: going to school.
Speaker 2: I had just stopped. So Chris White was the oldest
Speaker 2: he'd gone to art school and he just finished three
Speaker 2: years at art school. And Hugh Grandy were roughly the
Speaker 2: same as Rod and I are only ten days apart,
Speaker 2: and we had all worked for a few months. I
Speaker 2: think he was in a bank, Rod was working in
Speaker 2: a the offices of a factory, and I was working
Speaker 2: in an office as well. None of us had embarked
Speaker 2: on huge career projects, you know, So when things started
Speaker 2: to happen with the band, it wasn't a hard decision,
Speaker 2: you know, that we were going to stop doing those jobs.
Speaker 1: But everybody finished school.
Speaker 2: Everybody had finished school. Oh no, I'm sorry, Paul Arnold.
Speaker 2: Paul Atkinson was a year younger than us, so he
Speaker 2: went straight from school into the band, playing professionally.
Speaker 1: Okay, from the time you first started playing out, which
Speaker 1: was a year after you first started playing, how long
Speaker 1: from then until the one hundred BM competition?
Speaker 2: From when we first started playing, well, we first started
Speaker 2: playing in sixty one and the band competition was in
Speaker 2: sixty four. It was in the spring of sixty four.
Speaker 1: Okay, so the first year you just would shedding in
Speaker 1: those two intervening years, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: We're playing anywhere? That would have us anywhere. I remember
Speaker 2: playing at what they would call working men's clubs, but
Speaker 2: you know, probably older men would go there and drink
Speaker 2: beer and talk about the war, probably, and they and
Speaker 2: we would play, and they wouldn't want us to play, really,
Speaker 2: but we would play anyway. We'd play at schools, we
Speaker 2: would just play anywhere, at the youth clubs, anywhere that
Speaker 2: they would have us.
Speaker 1: And were you making any money?
Speaker 2: It wasn't a money making thing. I think from memory,
Speaker 2: I think we would charge six pounds a night. It's
Speaker 2: a precise figure. I know that's what we charged, So
Speaker 2: that would be seven or eight dollars. But the six
Speaker 2: pounds we would use one pound for expenses for everyone
Speaker 2: getting there, and the five pounds we would reinvest in equipment,
Speaker 2: because you know, we still had pretty awful equipment.
Speaker 1: So by time you go to the one hundred band competition,
Speaker 1: what equipment do you have and how good is it?
Speaker 2: That's an interesting point. We had the equipment that we
Speaker 2: recorded She's not there on and some of it was homemade.
Speaker 2: But a big thing for us was Rod discovered a
Speaker 2: keyboard player called a honer pianette, and up until then
Speaker 2: he just had to use whatever piano was there, and
Speaker 2: we put a microphone in the piano and we'd have
Speaker 2: to tune to the piano because often they're tuned down
Speaker 2: and you could never really hear him properly. And I
Speaker 2: used to gauge how well the band had gone by
Speaker 2: how much blood was coming out of his thumb, because
Speaker 2: he used to do these Jerry Lee Lewis blisses and
Speaker 2: if it was going well, he'd really dig in and
Speaker 2: his thumb, you just blood would be dripping out of it.
Speaker 2: And I think that gig went really well tonight. Look
Speaker 2: at Rod's thumb, And that's how we had to do
Speaker 2: it until he got this Honer pianette, and that's a
Speaker 2: whole different ball game. We could hear him properly. The
Speaker 2: unfortunate thing was it had a strange system where it
Speaker 2: had arms that used to go down with little stickers
Speaker 2: on the end of it, and they'd pull off and
Speaker 2: that would pull the note. But we would play, especially
Speaker 2: at these rugby clubs, it would get very hot and sweaty,
Speaker 2: and these stickers wouldn't work properly, and thinking back, I
Speaker 2: don't know how people would put up with this, but
Speaker 2: so that wouldn't work, so Rob would just say, oh,
Speaker 2: we just have to stop for a bit now, and
Speaker 2: he would get his hair dryer out and take up
Speaker 2: the top of the p and dry the stickers. In
Speaker 2: the honer, we'd just I don't know what they did.
Speaker 2: If it's a rugby club, they'd probably be drinking and
Speaker 2: then okay, it's drying out, we start up again. So
Speaker 2: it had its disadvantages to Honah, because if it was
Speaker 2: really hot, it would stop playing.
Speaker 1: But okay, prior to the one hundred billion gig, how
Speaker 1: often are you playing?
Speaker 2: I think we play most weeks, and sometimes it would
Speaker 2: be Friday and Saturday, but sometimes it might only be once.
Speaker 1: And did you rehearse it all or just live?
Speaker 2: We would rehearse on a Sunday and play on either
Speaker 2: a Friday or a Saturday.
Speaker 1: Okay, you win the competition. What happens next?
Speaker 2: We all remember it differently, but eventually we were introduced
Speaker 2: to this guy Ken Jones.
Speaker 1: How long after the competition.
Speaker 2: It must have just been weeks because she's not there.
Speaker 2: Came out July the twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four. My
Speaker 2: birthday is June the twenty fourth. Please send big presents
Speaker 2: because it's coming up, and I know the record came
Speaker 2: up month after my birthday, so it must have all
Speaker 2: happened really quickly, and it was a hit quite quickly.
Speaker 1: Wait, a little bit slower. So you win the competition.
Speaker 1: In the part of the competition is you get a
Speaker 1: single deal with Decca, which Ken Jones is now voisted
Speaker 1: on you. Do you meet Ken Jones because of that
Speaker 1: contrag deal?
Speaker 2: No, he was a friend of Chris White's uncle. This
Speaker 2: is a bit bizarre connection. You know. I didn't know
Speaker 2: Chris White's uncle. I didn't know Ryan Jones. But he
Speaker 2: sat down and read through all these contracts and he said,
Speaker 2: but we can do better than this for you, and
Speaker 2: we went with him. He got us to deal with
Speaker 2: Decca and it was decided we recorded Decca Studios. And
Speaker 2: this is how crazy things are. It would seem to
Speaker 2: be the cool thing to record. Often they would record
Speaker 2: through the night, but we'd started at seven o'clock, so
Speaker 2: we're going to record at least through the evening, if
Speaker 2: not the night. And we were given a very successful
Speaker 2: recording engineer. He had a great track record, but because
Speaker 2: we started at seven at night, he'd been I know
Speaker 2: this sounds bizarre, but he'd been at a wedding all day. Unfortunately,
Speaker 2: he was blind drunk when we turned up, but more
Speaker 2: than that, he was really aggressive as well. And we
Speaker 2: go into the studio at seven o'clock. This guy can
Speaker 2: hardly stand and he's shouting and screaming and coming through
Speaker 2: the headphones really really loud, the language terrible, and I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: after about twenty minutes of this, taking into account I've
Speaker 2: been in the music business for sixty years. After twenty minutes,
Speaker 2: I thought, this isn't for me. This is not for me.
Speaker 2: But then we had a luck. He passed out. We
Speaker 2: had to carry him out of the studio two flights
Speaker 2: of stairs up into a black London taxi and actually
Speaker 2: I never saw him again, and his assistant took over,
Speaker 2: and his assistant was Gus Dudgeon. Really, isn't that bizarre. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's Gus Dudgeon's first session ever. He never forgot that,
Speaker 2: and it was our first session ever. I never forgot
Speaker 2: it either. And in that first session we recorded four
Speaker 2: or five tracks, four maybe, and one of them is
Speaker 2: She's not there.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go a little bit slower. I want to understand.
Speaker 1: You won the competition, and with that came the ability
Speaker 1: to record. What was the prize exactly?
Speaker 2: Well, this is we all disagree on this. If you
Speaker 2: if Rod was here, he would tell you pass. The
Speaker 2: prize was a deal with Decca, and I'd probably say okay,
Speaker 2: because I don't want to argue it's not true. It's
Speaker 2: not true. We won two hundred and fifty pounds. But
Speaker 2: the interest in having won the competition led us to
Speaker 2: talking to people. It was sponsored by a big newspaper
Speaker 2: and it created an interest. We were introduced to three managers.
Speaker 2: I remember apart from Ken Jones. This is the first
Speaker 2: time manager. One was definitely a crook and he wanted
Speaker 2: to give us drinks and we were so scared of him.
Speaker 2: We wouldn't have a drink. We would hardly sit down,
Speaker 2: and that wasn't going to happen very flash. The second
Speaker 2: guy greeted us at his flat door in a silk
Speaker 2: dressing gown, and I thought, I don't think this is
Speaker 2: really for us. And he floated around and mentioned a
Speaker 2: few things, but then he came to the door to
Speaker 2: see us off, and he locked himself out of his
Speaker 2: flat in his silk dressing gown. I thought, if he
Speaker 2: can't get that together, he's not going to manage this band.
Speaker 2: We had to go around to the back of this
Speaker 2: lack of block of flats and they had a system
Speaker 2: on hoists for getting dustbins up to the flats and
Speaker 2: down like that. I mean, he has it's quite an
Speaker 2: older gentleman. And to get this older gentleman into this
Speaker 2: kind of open box. It had sides on it, but
Speaker 2: it didn't have a back in the front, and he
Speaker 2: had to crouch down in this thing where the dustbin
Speaker 2: would go, and we had to hoist him up to
Speaker 2: his flat, which is on the first and the second one.
Speaker 2: Bloody dangerous, I think first or second one. I thought, firstly,
Speaker 2: please don't let me look up and see what's happening
Speaker 2: under the silk dressing gown. So I'm definitely looking at
Speaker 2: the floor while I'm pulling on this rope. And secondly,
Speaker 2: please don't let him manage the band because he can't
Speaker 2: even sort out his door key, let alone manager band.
Speaker 2: So that that went, and then yeah, we got a manager.
Speaker 1: Okay. In the movie it says that Ken Jones says, well,
Speaker 1: you know, if you want to write some original material,
Speaker 1: and it says Rod goes off and write, She's not there.
Speaker 1: What really happened.
Speaker 2: It's true. He was giving us a pep talk two
Speaker 2: weeks before the session, and this is just a part
Speaker 2: of the pep talk. I can't remember what you should rehearse, guys,
Speaker 2: this is really important, you know, and you get one
Speaker 2: by the Apple. I can't remember what he said, but
Speaker 2: in the middle of it he said, you know, you
Speaker 2: could always write something for the session, and then went
Speaker 2: on and spoke about other things. It. You know, I
Speaker 2: couldn't think in terms of a band writing their own songs.
Speaker 2: I should have, really, because the Beatles had already started
Speaker 2: doing that. But Rod and Chris went off and wrote
Speaker 2: two songs in the next two or three days. Rod
Speaker 2: wrote She's Not There and Chris wrote the B side,
Speaker 2: which is a good song too, you Make Me Feel Good.
Speaker 2: And that was it.
Speaker 1: Okay, before you went into the studio to cut them,
Speaker 1: did you rehearse them?
Speaker 2: We did. We rehearsed them a lot, and I think
Speaker 2: we all thought that they were special songs. Sometimes I
Speaker 2: say to myself, but I knew She's Not There was
Speaker 2: really special. But I'm going to be really honest with you.
Speaker 2: We were in two minds whether She's Not There or
Speaker 2: the B side You Make Me Feel Good was the
Speaker 2: better song when we were recording it, so it was
Speaker 2: only afterwards that She's not there was chosen. It's funny,
Speaker 2: isn't I mean? Now, of course it's a fantastic song,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 1: Okay, you record four songs the first night.
Speaker 2: Then what happened, Well, the A side was chosen and
Speaker 2: it came out very quickly. Things always moved very quickly
Speaker 2: back in the sun. How quickly, well, I think it was,
Speaker 2: you know, four or five weeks through or four weeks
Speaker 2: something like that.
Speaker 1: Okay, the record is done. Let's you know, it's totally different.
Speaker 1: I don't know. You're recording the one track back, then
Speaker 1: recording mono.
Speaker 2: We're recording fast four track.
Speaker 1: Okay, so it's four track, you know, normally forget you're
Speaker 1: all playing at the same time.
Speaker 2: No, the band played, and then we did the vocals
Speaker 2: they did back in vocal Rodin christed, but we're on
Speaker 2: one track. Roden Christ did back in vocals, run one
Speaker 2: mic and I'm here in the same room at the
Speaker 2: same time singing the lead vocal. And of course it's
Speaker 2: all one.
Speaker 1: Take, okay, and the instrumental part. Those were on how
Speaker 1: many tracks and how many times did it take to
Speaker 1: get that?
Speaker 2: Oh, it's really quick. I mean, yeah, they might have
Speaker 2: done four or five takes, but that would that would
Speaker 2: have been it. I think based in drums is on
Speaker 2: one guitar and keyboards was on another track, and then
Speaker 2: lead vocal and backing vocals were on separate tracks. It
Speaker 2: was something like that.
Speaker 1: Okay. So I mean, now there's so much equipment, but
Speaker 1: you record, then you have to mix. In the modern world,
Speaker 1: there's been this way for decades to this point. You
Speaker 1: might add compression, you might add weaverb you might take
Speaker 1: a whole day to do one song. Okay, so everybody
Speaker 1: touched the stuff. Do you remember what it took and
Speaker 1: when it was that it was mixed down to the single.
Speaker 2: Well, this is a bone of contention with us. Ken
Speaker 2: Jones was very strict with us and he would never
Speaker 2: let us go to the mixes and so that was
Speaker 2: all done. You know, we weren't there, We weren't involved
Speaker 2: in the mixes at all. I know, for instance, that
Speaker 2: he put a lot of compression on She's not there
Speaker 2: because people are always talking about the breaths, you know, right,
Speaker 2: I can't remember where it comes down. And told me
Speaker 2: about her the way she liked that's the thing. And
Speaker 2: I mean some of that's real, but some of it
Speaker 2: is helped by the compression that's on the track. But
Speaker 2: I think overall, and she's not there, sounds great. I think.
Speaker 1: That's the whole thing. Yeah, it sounds not rough at all.
Speaker 1: It sounds very modern to this day.
Speaker 2: I agree with you. I agree with you. But after
Speaker 2: that session, I think we always struggled as a band
Speaker 2: accepting the mixes, and there were some quite fierce arguments
Speaker 2: about why we weren't allowed to go into the mixes.
Speaker 2: But that first session and summertime also, I think is
Speaker 2: a lovely track, and you made Me feel good. And
Speaker 2: there was another real punky song that Rod wrote, It's
Speaker 2: Alright with Me. We played that really recently. It's mad song,
Speaker 2: but it's like a punk song, and all of those
Speaker 2: I think, so that was it. I think it was
Speaker 2: four tracks and I thought they all sounded great. But
Speaker 2: after that we were never really happy with the mixes.
Speaker 2: And I know, I keep moving forward. But the last
Speaker 2: one we did was a cover of Little antonin the
Speaker 2: Imperials going Out of My Head, and they mixed it
Speaker 2: while we were out of the country. Well, we wouldn't
Speaker 2: have been in the mix mixing studio anyway. But anyway,
Speaker 2: we came back and we were so disappointed. It had
Speaker 2: been no resemblance to how we left it in our minds,
Speaker 2: and that was the end of our And it was
Speaker 2: a fairly friendly breakup with Ken Jones. And that's when
Speaker 2: especially Rod and Chris decided they wanted to make an
Speaker 2: album with them in the production chair. And that's when
Speaker 2: we recorded Odyssey on Oracle. There was no independent producer
Speaker 2: in the studio. It was Rod and Chris produced that
Speaker 2: with the help of the wonderful Abbey Road engineers Jeff
Speaker 2: Emerick and Peter Vince, absolutely wonderful engineers.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back the first night you're recording the
Speaker 1: four songs recorded on four tracks. Do they do a
Speaker 1: rough mix, you know, instantaneously so you could hear it,
Speaker 1: or did you never even hear everybody together?
Speaker 2: I think I probably heard a rough idea of it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it is sixty something years.
Speaker 1: I guess what I'm saying is I'm wondering what the
Speaker 1: experience is when you actually hear it, go, Holy fuck,
Speaker 1: this is this is unbelievable. Was that after the mix
Speaker 1: or never until it became a hit.
Speaker 2: I didn't think I ever really felt like that. I'm
Speaker 2: trying to remember. I think I thought it was pretty good.
Speaker 1: Okay, it comes ounds very it comes out in like
Speaker 1: three weeks. Yeah, I mean we're in America, it's different.
Speaker 1: It's already hit in England by the time it gets here. Yeah,
Speaker 1: how did the ascension on the track? How did it break?
Speaker 2: Well, I'll tell you one thing that happened. There was
Speaker 2: a TV show in the UK called Jukebox Jury, so
Speaker 2: they'd have five stars would vote on whether the particular
Speaker 2: record would They would pay play thirty seconds of a
Speaker 2: record and then they'd vote whether this is going to
Speaker 2: be a hit or a miss. And on the week
Speaker 2: when She's Not There came out, George Harrison was on
Speaker 2: the panel of Jukebox Jury and they played She's Not
Speaker 2: There and he loved it. And I remember, and I
Speaker 2: won't try and do a Liverpool accent, but I remember
Speaker 2: he said, well done, Zombies. Obviously he didn't know us,
Speaker 2: he didn't know us from Adam, but he said, well done, zombies.
Speaker 2: That was a thrill when.
Speaker 1: Oh, sure it was.
Speaker 2: When George Harrison said She's Not There was a good
Speaker 2: record well, blimey, yeah, that really took my breath away.
Speaker 1: Okay, it was on TV. That's a huge step. But
Speaker 1: when did it start to become successful really quickly?
Speaker 2: It's funny because I don't think Deca were particularly keen
Speaker 2: on it. I don't know. I'm sure they weren't, but
Speaker 2: it was a hit very quickly. Funnily enough, it came
Speaker 2: out in America about three months later on Parrot on
Speaker 2: Parrot and London Records who owned the Parrot, they weren't
Speaker 2: keen on it either, But although it came out later,
Speaker 2: it was a hit quite quickly in America as well.
Speaker 2: It's funny, isn't it.
Speaker 1: The record is a hit. This was a lark. Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: What's going through your mind? And what happens?
Speaker 2: I think when you're young, you see, I don't know
Speaker 2: the answer to that question, but I think when you're
Speaker 2: young you take an awful lot for granted. It's you know,
Speaker 2: you just get on with it, don't you. Really. So
Speaker 2: one day you're an amateur band playing at the local
Speaker 2: rugby club and the next day, inexplicably, you're on huge tours.
Speaker 2: They used to these package tours in the UK, and
Speaker 2: our management company was very involved in that. So shortly
Speaker 2: after we played the old Varion Alium's rugby club, and
Speaker 2: where Rod's drying his keyboard with the hair with the
Speaker 2: hair dryer, We're touring with the Searchers, Deal Morriic and
Speaker 2: the Isisley Brothers and some other artists as well around
Speaker 2: some of the major venues in the UK. Wasn't a
Speaker 2: big gap and we just had to get on with it.
Speaker 1: How was the reception in those multi gig tours insane?
Speaker 2: I often said that, certainly for the first couple of years,
Speaker 2: I needn't a bothered singing at all. Really, I don't
Speaker 2: think anybody heard anything very very noisy on those tours.
Speaker 1: How many songs would you play?
Speaker 2: Not many? Two or three? Four? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Okay, So now the records are hit, how often are
Speaker 1: you working?
Speaker 2: We were working at a lot, working all the time,
Speaker 2: and at the same time the pressure's on from Decca Records.
Speaker 2: We need another single in six weeks and that was
Speaker 2: all the time we were with Decca. Another single in
Speaker 2: six weeks. But the problem we had was the challenge
Speaker 2: that we had was that Rod Argent and Chris White
Speaker 2: had only just discovered that they could write songs, so
Speaker 2: they didn't have a back catalog of songs, and they're
Speaker 2: trying to write as we're going along, but we're touring
Speaker 2: all the time, so there wasn't much time. The pressure
Speaker 2: really went on for a follow up, and Rod had nothing,
Speaker 2: and Chris White had one song and it was a
Speaker 2: song called leave Me Be, and none of us thought
Speaker 2: instead of hope and hell, of being a single. But
Speaker 2: we we didn't understand enough about the record industry to
Speaker 2: dig our heels in and say, well, you'll just you'll
Speaker 2: have to wait, And so leave Me Be was released.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately it wasn't a hit, and it's it just seems
Speaker 2: so such a short sighted way of doing things that
Speaker 2: Decker would put the pressure on like that. It's almost
Speaker 2: you know that in a very short period of time
Speaker 2: your career is going to be over because they want
Speaker 2: singles all the time, and no one can keep producing
Speaker 2: singles self for what's the word, I can't think there's an.
Speaker 1: Extreme fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 2: Self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, you can't keep putting out singles
Speaker 2: every six Well, I mean, I suppose the Beatles did,
Speaker 2: but they were the exception. We certainly couldn't.
Speaker 1: So how does tell her no come to be recorded.
Speaker 2: I you know, we were kept on by Decker even
Speaker 2: though we'd had this flop record, And again we were
Speaker 2: recording through the night, and I can't remember how many
Speaker 2: other songs we recorded, but I remember how one of
Speaker 2: the trigger for writing that song for Rod because we
Speaker 2: toured with Dean Morrick and she was singing a lot
Speaker 2: of Bert Baccarak songs and Rob was really impressed with
Speaker 2: those songs and the kind of chords that they've made
Speaker 2: up those songs. He's not copying anything in the songs,
Speaker 2: but he's just I can hear it now, Yeah, tell
Speaker 2: her those sounds like a really simple song, and melodically
Speaker 2: it is, but if you get someone to try and
Speaker 2: play it, it's not simple. It's not simple at all.
Speaker 2: And he'd used the idea of some of those chords
Speaker 2: from Burt Bacharak, So that's how that came about. Again,
Speaker 2: we were recording late, and as it happens, they did
Speaker 2: all the tracks first, and I fell asleep and they
Speaker 2: woke me up to same tell him, and I went
Speaker 2: up there and I sang it, but the second chorus
Speaker 2: I was still half asleep, and the second chorus I
Speaker 2: just mumbled my way through it, but I kept going.
Speaker 2: And then I went into the control room aarters and
Speaker 2: I said to Kenja's I'm really sorry. You know, I
Speaker 2: just mumbled through that second chorus. I mean, can you
Speaker 2: drop me in and I'll just do that. Don't worry
Speaker 2: about that. That's fine, that's fine. And obviously he understood
Speaker 2: the record industry better than me, because there's a mumbled
Speaker 2: second chorus. The record went to number six in America
Speaker 2: and pretty much sold a million copies, so he understood
Speaker 2: it better than I did.
Speaker 1: Okay, so now you have the success, when's the first
Speaker 1: time you get a check?
Speaker 2: Well, I know we were getting checks. It's funnily enough,
Speaker 2: I don't. I think we did quite well out of
Speaker 2: the records, not thousands and thousands, but enough to live.
Speaker 2: But I remember getting checks more for time of the
Speaker 2: season than I do for.
Speaker 1: I'm actually asking question less about the checks. You're just
Speaker 1: dirt bags hanging out in your hometown. Now you have
Speaker 1: a hit record. When you go back home, there are
Speaker 1: people who love you, and there are people will hate you.
Speaker 1: I mean, you come back the conquering heroes.
Speaker 2: Exactly what you said. I think there were people that
Speaker 2: admired us, but you know, a lot of young guys
Speaker 2: could be problems. And I can remember, this is my
Speaker 2: sort of attitude to it. Always it's not going to
Speaker 2: change me. This is not But it's really naive to
Speaker 2: think like that because it changes other people. Doesn't matter
Speaker 2: whether you change or not, they change. And I used
Speaker 2: to love to go to the rugby clubs. I'd love
Speaker 2: to go to the pub and have a few pints
Speaker 2: and some guy becoming up, who do you think you are?
Speaker 2: Before you know where you are? You know, they're rolling
Speaker 2: their sleeves up and they want to fight, you know.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there were a few challenges locally. I was
Speaker 2: never a very good fighter, but I did get involved
Speaker 2: in a few fights. And I can't fight my way
Speaker 2: out of a paper bag. I think famously at Rod's
Speaker 2: twenty first, he sort of turned away for a minute
Speaker 2: and I got in a fight. He said, I turned around,
Speaker 2: You've got one sleeve pulled off your pullover and blood
Speaker 2: streaming down your nose. I need to turn around for
Speaker 2: a second. And this guy, you know, just to get
Speaker 2: him frisky, and you're off. So there was a little
Speaker 2: bit of that.
Speaker 1: What'd your parents say?
Speaker 2: I think my parents they weren't too keen on the fighting.
Speaker 2: But I think my parents are immensely proud actually, and
Speaker 2: I'm very encouraging. You know. They were wonderful people.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what point did you start discussing going to America.
Speaker 2: It was quite soon, I guess when it was a
Speaker 2: hit record. I know when we arrived here. We arrived
Speaker 2: here just before Christmas nineteen sixty four, and we played
Speaker 2: Murray the Kay's Christmas Show and we opened on Christmas
Speaker 2: Day and we would play six, seven, eight shows a day,
Speaker 2: but you only played two tunes, and there was fourteen
Speaker 2: or sixteen acts Shangri Las, Dean Warwick again, Benny King,
Speaker 2: the Charell's, Chuck Jackson, lots of wonderful life, and we
Speaker 2: had to follow Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells. How would
Speaker 2: you remember, We've only just come into the business and
Speaker 2: we're standing in the wings watching herb bring the house down.
Speaker 2: They were wonderful and we had to follow them. But
Speaker 2: it was okay, it was all right. And that was
Speaker 2: a little bit of a nerve wracking moment. I've got
Speaker 2: to be honest, But okay, all those acts are there
Speaker 2: at the Brooklyn Fox. Are you all hanging together being friends. Yes,
Speaker 2: to a large extent we were. There was great camaraderie
Speaker 2: backstage because although we are abroad, you know, we're British
Speaker 2: and there American. We opened on Christmas Day. They're away
Speaker 2: from their families on Christmas Day the same as we are.
Speaker 2: So yeah, they were very supportive and there was really
Speaker 2: great camaraderie backstage for the most part.
Speaker 1: How what was it being in America.
Speaker 2: It's very different. I was thinking about it on this
Speaker 2: trip over here. Now America and the UK are much
Speaker 2: more similar now, but then it was very very different.
Speaker 2: Got off the plane and we're walking into you know
Speaker 2: where you show your passports and everything. This guy's got
Speaker 2: a bloody gun. He's got a gun. I've never seen
Speaker 2: a gun before. It was really scary. Anyway, this is
Speaker 2: what happened to me. My mom never quite got into
Speaker 2: the swing of me being in a band and everything
Speaker 2: like that. So we went to the airport. There were
Speaker 2: lots of people seeing us off at the airport. She
Speaker 2: fought her way through and gave me a pack lunch
Speaker 2: with an apple to take on the plane. And so
Speaker 2: I think I had eaten the sandwiches, but I hadn't
Speaker 2: eaten the apple. So the man with the gun opens
Speaker 2: my bag. He took my mom's apple out of my
Speaker 2: bag and he ate it in front of me. I thought,
Speaker 2: this is really not very cool. Anyway, I kept quiet.
Speaker 2: He got a gun, and then the next guy I
Speaker 2: spoke to took me off out of the line and
Speaker 2: he had a gun too. Took me off out of
Speaker 2: the line. I'm in trouble. He walked me across the
Speaker 2: hall and into a phone booze and made a phone call,
Speaker 2: and he said, this is my daughter. Would you just
Speaker 2: say hello to I thought I was going to be arrested.
Speaker 2: So that was that was our entry into America. And
Speaker 2: then we were met by two big Cadillac or Lincoln
Speaker 2: limousines and run to the airport. And the next day
Speaker 2: the record company sent us the bill for the You know,
Speaker 2: I would have taken the subway if I'd known we're
Speaker 2: going to be built for them. So that then that
Speaker 2: was our entry into America.
Speaker 1: Okay, you go back. I assume you tour until you
Speaker 1: come back to go on the Dick Clark tour.
Speaker 2: M I don't remember too much about what happened when
Speaker 2: we went back to the UK, but yes, we came
Speaker 2: back and toured on the Dick Clark Tour, which but
Speaker 2: because with Mary the Kay we'd just been in New
Speaker 2: York and I think we played on the first Hullablue
Speaker 2: TV show. Jack Jones was the compare. The New Christian
Speaker 2: Minstrels were on there, and you know, and we were
Speaker 2: on there, and then we went home and we came
Speaker 2: back for the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars and we
Speaker 2: were on a bus for for six weeks with Del
Speaker 2: Shannon and the ad Libs, the Valvelettes, lots of wonderful acts.
Speaker 2: Well I've forgotten who some of them were. Now, isn't
Speaker 2: it awful?
Speaker 1: Okay? But you're on the you know, it's different now
Speaker 1: many acts prefer a bus to going commercial plane anyway,
Speaker 1: but they have these births. You're going on a regular
Speaker 1: bus and you got to sit there and you got
Speaker 1: to sleep on the bus. What's that like?
Speaker 2: It was tough, I tell you, because some of the acts,
Speaker 2: I mean, we weren't being paid very much. But some
Speaker 2: of them we've been paying so little that they couldn't
Speaker 2: afford a hotel every night. So on alternate nights we
Speaker 2: would leave the gig as slowly as possible, and they
Speaker 2: would drive through the night very slowly, so we'd we'd
Speaker 2: sleep on the bus but in regular seats, you know,
Speaker 2: and and we'd arrive and hope that we could get
Speaker 2: into the hotel the next night. So it was it
Speaker 2: was challenging. But we were young, but it was it
Speaker 2: was quite tough.
Speaker 1: Okay. So the American perspective is, we're just living our lives.
Speaker 1: The Beatles hit, there's a British invasion, you're part of that.
Speaker 1: We see you as equal to all the other racks. Okay,
Speaker 1: did it feel like that to you?
Speaker 2: We weren't. I think that. I think there were there
Speaker 2: were the top, the top ones, you know. I mean
Speaker 2: obviously the Beatles were that they were on their own,
Speaker 2: the Stones probably, and then there are other ones that,
Speaker 2: funnily enough, were really successful here that weren't so successful
Speaker 2: in the UK. So Herman's Hermits were huge here. We
Speaker 2: played with them and I saw the audience reaction they got,
Speaker 2: but they weren't so big in the UK. The Dave
Speaker 2: Clark five weren't so big in the UK as they
Speaker 2: were here, and we weren't on a par with them,
Speaker 2: So it was kind of like a league, you know,
Speaker 2: they were the top ones, and I think we were Oh.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you were seen as top tier from the
Speaker 1: American perspective. So you go on the second American tour
Speaker 1: that's sixty five. In the movie the documentary, you talk
Speaker 1: about going to the Philippines. When does that happen?
Speaker 2: That was towards the end of the band. That was
Speaker 2: in sixty seven, and it.
Speaker 1: Was wait, wait, wait, so let's not go there. Okay,
Speaker 1: walk me through what happens between the Dick Clark tour
Speaker 1: leading up to the end of the band.
Speaker 2: Well, I think that in many ways things were slipping.
Speaker 2: The records weren't charting, well, they were charting, but very
Speaker 2: low down, you know. And also I think that we
Speaker 2: concentrated or put our attention too much towards the UK
Speaker 2: and America. These are the charts that we followed. Because
Speaker 2: when the band finished, we realized that the Zombies always
Speaker 2: had a hit somewhere in the world the whole time
Speaker 2: we're together, which seems insane, but there was no Internet
Speaker 2: in those days, and often you might you might never
Speaker 2: find out that you'd had a hit, but you also
Speaker 2: might find out months later that you'd had a hit,
Speaker 2: And of course you would have liked to have been
Speaker 2: there to promote it and maybe hopefully play some dates,
Speaker 2: you know, but we never knew. The Zombies always had
Speaker 2: a hit somewhere, but they didn't know it, and so
Speaker 2: so it seemed as though that most awful of things
Speaker 2: in Koreas, if you like, we started at the top
Speaker 2: and then gradually slipped down the pole, you know, even
Speaker 2: though I think we were getting better as a band,
Speaker 2: there was that last record going out of my head.
Speaker 2: Because we were in America a lot we knew songs
Speaker 2: that were hits here that people in the UK didn't know,
Speaker 2: and that was one it hadn't been a hit, and
Speaker 2: I thought we did a really good version of it,
Speaker 2: and the mix was horrendous, and it was at that
Speaker 2: point we just couldn't work with Ken Jones anymore. And
Speaker 2: again I was kind of on the periphery of this
Speaker 2: because to some extent, the writers Rod Argent and Chris
Speaker 2: White were senior members of the band, if you like,
Speaker 2: and a lot of the negotiations were done with them.
Speaker 2: I don't even know if they realized that, but it
Speaker 2: was the case. We ended up getting a one record
Speaker 2: deal with CBO.
Speaker 1: Yes, just to be clear, this is before or after
Speaker 1: the Philippines. This is just after the phillip So tell
Speaker 1: us what happens in the Philippines. Well, it's an extraordinary experience.
Speaker 1: We were asked if we wanted to go to the Philippines.
Speaker 1: I'd be honest with you. I didn't really know where
Speaker 1: the Philippines was, and I thought we would go there
Speaker 1: and be playing. It was it was called the Aaronetta
Speaker 1: Coliseum where we were going, and I thought, maybe that's
Speaker 1: a hotel and we'd play in the foyer in the
Speaker 1: evenings and we'd sit on the beach and the day.
Speaker 1: I thought we were going for ten days, and I
Speaker 1: thought it would be fun. You know, this is my feeling.
Speaker 1: I think at the time the contracts were actually being
Speaker 1: sent to me. No one else wanted to do that.
Speaker 1: It just had to sign it.
Speaker 2: That wasn't doing anything other than signing contracts. And so
Speaker 2: we arrived there at three I think someone bought the
Speaker 2: cheapest ticket flight you could ever do. So we're flying
Speaker 2: to the Philippines and stopped in Paris, then Rome, then
Speaker 2: in the Middle East, then on both sides of India,
Speaker 2: and then in Hong Kong, where we had a seven
Speaker 2: hour layover and then we flew to Manila. You can imagine.
Speaker 2: I can't it was like thirty hours, or maybe that's
Speaker 2: an exaggeration. It was a long time, but you know,
Speaker 2: it probably was thirty It was a long time. Probably
Speaker 2: could have got there on a bike faster. Anyway, we
Speaker 2: arrive at three o'clock in the morning. There are thousands
Speaker 2: of people at the airport, so I'm thinking there must
Speaker 2: be someone famous on this plane. I'm getting off the plane,
Speaker 2: I'm looking over them. I'm looking backwards over my shoulder
Speaker 2: to see who was on the plane. And then they
Speaker 2: start putting up flowers and things around our neck, and
Speaker 2: I can see there's like a movie newsreel camera thing filming.
Speaker 2: It was totally unprepared for this filming us. And we
Speaker 2: go to the aeron Aaronessa Coliseum and at the time,
Speaker 2: I believe it was the second biggest call it arena.
Speaker 2: There was one in Texas that was bigger. There was
Speaker 2: like a hotel at the back and a restaurant where
Speaker 2: we stayed. It was huge, and we opened to twenty
Speaker 2: eight thousand people. Now those figures might not be absolutely accurate,
Speaker 2: but that's what I was told. I can tell you
Speaker 2: it was a shedload of people. It was big. We
Speaker 2: stayed for ten days. That was a Friday night. The
Speaker 2: Saturday we played a matin eight of fifteen thousand, and
Speaker 2: Saturday night we played to thirty two thousand, and it
Speaker 2: went on roughly like that for the whole ten nights. Sadly,
Speaker 2: we were being paid eighty pounds a night, out of
Speaker 2: which we had to play a manager and an agent,
Speaker 2: so we were probably playing for about five pounds each
Speaker 2: a night to twenty eight thousand people or thirty two
Speaker 2: thousand people on the Saturday night. And you know, we
Speaker 2: have never been people who are particularly motivated by money.
Speaker 2: But it just starts to get a bit ridiculous. You know,
Speaker 2: we've got the non writers, have got no money anyway,
Speaker 2: We're playing this huge venue in getting nothing, and it
Speaker 2: it just it turned very strange. We asked the promoter
Speaker 2: there who his name was, Aaronetta. It was his coliseum.
Speaker 2: He had a private army, you know, and he wanted
Speaker 2: to keep us in there. It's unbelievable, you know, very
Speaker 2: much in their power. He got our passports, he had
Speaker 2: armed guards who were used to circular and he wanted
Speaker 2: us to stay inside there. But we met people because
Speaker 2: there was a hotel and restaurant backstage. Lots of people
Speaker 2: would come backstairs and they would ask us to pass this,
Speaker 2: and we would go out in the boot of the
Speaker 2: trunk of their cars. These people had submachine guns on
Speaker 2: the doors of the stadium, so we would go out
Speaker 2: to passes and things like that. But at the end
Speaker 2: of the ten days we said, well, we'd like to stay,
Speaker 2: and we'd like to I didn't actually speak to him,
Speaker 2: but I know they asked for a couple of guys.
Speaker 2: Tour manager and someone else in the band asked for
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars a night and fifty percents at all,
Speaker 2: and you kicked him out and said, look, I paid
Speaker 2: for your flights here, I'm paying for your flights back,
Speaker 2: off you go. You know. So it got very difficult.
Speaker 2: We managed to get our passports back, but he made
Speaker 2: it very uncomfortable for us being in the Philippines. We
Speaker 2: went to Hong Kong whilst another promoter and tried to
Speaker 2: get us some dates, and eventually he managed to get
Speaker 2: us some dates. We went back to the Philippines and
Speaker 2: the first gig we got we were playing two on
Speaker 2: the first night. It was at the club called the
Speaker 2: Nile Club, and it was sort of the place to be.
Speaker 2: We'd sound checked, we'd had a meal, We're going to
Speaker 2: go on stage, and they said, sorry, you can't play,
Speaker 2: and it was very obvious they'd been threatened. So we
Speaker 2: didn't play. The second We went on to the second
Speaker 2: place and we did play, and in the morning we
Speaker 2: got on a plane to fly to another island. We
Speaker 2: got a newspaper and that second club burnt down in
Speaker 2: the night. Now I'm not like, maybe it was a coincidence,
Speaker 2: but that's that's what happened in the Philippines. The audiences
Speaker 2: were wonderful the Philippine and people were wonderful. But we
Speaker 2: just got involved in a very strange setup, and it
Speaker 2: was it was very difficult, Okay.
Speaker 1: In the movie, which I keep referencing, you talk about
Speaker 1: playing a gig for almost no money and then talking
Speaker 1: to the promoter, promoter says, you know, it's too expensive
Speaker 1: to have you back. Who was getting the money?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, in some ways I wonder whether I
Speaker 2: didn't say too much. And and but remember when you
Speaker 2: see the movie, I might have been talking for an
Speaker 2: hour and a half when I get to that bit,
Speaker 2: because no one's alive now that we're talking about so
Speaker 2: they can't speak, They can't give their side of the argument,
Speaker 2: you know, but it is true. I was talking when
Speaker 2: I spoke to a promoter and I'm just the place
Speaker 2: was heaving. This is back in the UK. The place
Speaker 2: was heaving, and I said, I see you next time.
Speaker 2: It won't be a next time. What is it? Why's
Speaker 2: that you're too expensive? I knew what we remember, I said,
Speaker 2: I was signing the contracts. No one else wanted to
Speaker 2: do it. I knew what we were getting and I said, well,
Speaker 2: what did you pay for us? And he told me
Speaker 2: and it was three and a half times what we
Speaker 2: were getting. But listen, I don't want to get into
Speaker 2: too much details.
Speaker 1: Well who do you think was getting the money?
Speaker 2: Well, I can certainly tell you it wasn't us. Who
Speaker 2: do you think was getting the money?
Speaker 1: Do I think it's usually the manager who takes the money?
Speaker 2: Well you said that, not me?
Speaker 1: Okay, Just moving on. You're recording Odyssey and Oracle for CBS.
Speaker 1: Forget with hindsight when you're making it. Is it a
Speaker 1: good experience? Do you think it's good? Or the band
Speaker 1: is running on fumes? Let's just finish the record. What
Speaker 1: was going on?
Speaker 2: Well, again, I think we remember this differently. I'm a
Speaker 2: herd Rod say that we knew the band was going
Speaker 2: to finish, and we felt that we would like to
Speaker 2: make an album before the band finished. I didn't feel
Speaker 2: like that. I thought the band was still going. But
Speaker 2: that's not an argument with him. We just remember it differently,
Speaker 2: you know, I really enjoyed it. We had a really
Speaker 2: small budget. We had one thousand pounds from CBS, and
Speaker 2: somehow we managed to get into Abbey Road Studios, which
Speaker 2: was called EMI Studios at the time. It's in a
Speaker 2: road called Abbey Road, but it was called EMI Studios,
Speaker 2: but we weren't on EMI, and as far as as
Speaker 2: I know, very few or no non EMI artists had
Speaker 2: ever recorded in Abbey Road. So I don't know how
Speaker 2: we got in there, because it was at the time
Speaker 2: was definitely the best studio in the country. Because we've
Speaker 2: got a really small budget, we rehearsed really extensively before
Speaker 2: we went in. We knew what songs we were going
Speaker 2: to record, and what key and what the arrangement was.
Speaker 2: We're just looking for a performance and we went in
Speaker 2: and named check these engineers before I think it was
Speaker 2: mostly Pietervince, but Emeric certainly helped was recording as well,
Speaker 2: and he actually engineered Time of the Season. Jeff Emeric,
Speaker 2: and of course he worked with the Beatles and later
Speaker 2: on with Paul McCartney, and I remember it as a
Speaker 2: really good experience. We recorded quite quickly and I thought
Speaker 2: it sounded pretty good. The only time there was a
Speaker 2: little bit of tension was actually on Time of the Season.
Speaker 2: It was the last song that was written for the album,
Speaker 2: and it was the last song that was recorded, and
Speaker 2: we hadn't really fully rehearsed that particular song. It was
Speaker 2: finished in the morning before we recorded it, and Rod
Speaker 2: was trying to guide me through the phrasing of the song.
Speaker 2: And he's in the control room, and of course all
Speaker 2: the engineers and the band and everyone is in there,
Speaker 2: and I forgot that I've got the headphones on. He's
Speaker 2: trying it. No, Colin, can you be more on the
Speaker 2: beat with that phrase? Can you push this? Can you
Speaker 2: do it? And in front of me, I've got a
Speaker 2: big clock. I know we're running out of time and
Speaker 2: we're running out of money, and there was a red light,
Speaker 2: big red light underneath the studios live it's running out
Speaker 2: of time, and I'm getting more and more fraught, and
Speaker 2: the language between us is getting worse, and I forget,
Speaker 2: there's all other people, it's not just me and all
Speaker 2: the other people in there, and I can't really say
Speaker 2: the language. But it came to the point was listen,
Speaker 2: if you're so good, you come in here and you
Speaker 2: sing it. And he said to me, you're the bloody
Speaker 2: lead singer, your bloody stand there till you get it bloody, right,
Speaker 2: But it wasn't bloody that he was saying. And it's
Speaker 2: always made me smile because at the same time as
Speaker 2: we're having this kind of back and forth, I'm singing
Speaker 2: is the time of the season for love thing? And
Speaker 2: in between doing this, it's you bloody get that freak,
Speaker 2: come on, get it on the beat? Why can't you?
Speaker 2: And yeah, that was the background for that track. That
Speaker 2: was the only bit of tension, though otherwise I remember
Speaker 2: it as great fun.
Speaker 1: So how does the BM break up?
Speaker 2: Well, we were by now a single was released and
Speaker 2: they are in the UK. It was still a singles market.
Speaker 2: It was moving towards albums, but at this point it
Speaker 2: was still singles were all important, and CBS released care
Speaker 2: of Sale forty four, which I thought was probably one
Speaker 2: of all the most commercial track on the record, but
Speaker 2: it was nothing happened. A couple of nice reviews, one DJ,
Speaker 2: quite a famous DJ, really loved the album, a guy
Speaker 2: called Kenny Everett, who was very successful in the UK.
Speaker 2: But the media no interest in the album, all, the
Speaker 2: single at all, and it just seemed as though, you remember,
Speaker 2: we just had this experience in the Philippines which was
Speaker 2: really scary. The three non writers were broke by now.
Speaker 2: We didn't have a manager, we didn't have an agent.
Speaker 2: I remember we went and talked to an agent and
Speaker 2: I could tell he wasn't really interested in us at all,
Speaker 2: and everything seemed to be pointing towards it's time to
Speaker 2: move on guys. You know, Rod called a meeting at
Speaker 2: his flat. He shared a flat with Chris White, and
Speaker 2: the first thing that happened was Paul Atkinson said, guys,
Speaker 2: I've just got married. I have to get a job.
Speaker 2: I haven't got any money. And then from memory, Rod said, look,
Speaker 2: if Paul's leaving, I think we should finish the band.
Speaker 2: And I've always been embarrassed I didn't say anything. I
Speaker 2: wish i'd have said something, but I didn't say anything,
Speaker 2: and that was it.
Speaker 1: It was hard to feel.
Speaker 2: I felt deflated, sad, devastated, depressed. I didn't have a plan.
Speaker 2: B I didn't know what the hell I was going
Speaker 2: to do. I remember driving home feeling very lonely. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it was it was over.
Speaker 1: How long until you end up working in the insurance place?
Speaker 2: Fairly soon. It was two or three months. I actually
Speaker 2: heard my parents discussing my future from another room, and
Speaker 2: you know, they would have I need never have worked.
Speaker 2: They would have supported me if they possibly could have. Well,
Speaker 2: I mean they I don't know if they could have really,
Speaker 2: but I did. My dad say, well, you know, just
Speaker 2: because he's been in a band, he can't just sit
Speaker 2: around doing nothing for the rest of his life. He's
Speaker 2: got to do something. So I started getting on the
Speaker 2: phone and I literally took the first job I was offered.
Speaker 2: People always laugh at I ended up in it. I
Speaker 2: don't know anything about insurance. I ended up in an
Speaker 2: insurance company. But the first I went to three interviews,
Speaker 2: and the first one it was for a sales director.
Speaker 2: I thought this sounds pretty good sales. I could see
Speaker 2: myself in a slick suit, you know, maybe with a
Speaker 2: company car, and so a friend of mine drove me up.
Speaker 2: It's quite a long way to go there. I thought
Speaker 2: we'd make a day of it, and so I was relaxed.
Speaker 2: We went to the pub first and had a few beers.
Speaker 2: So I see, I was very inexperience, in naive. I
Speaker 2: would have smelled of beer when I went in for
Speaker 2: this interview. And also I was very keen on making
Speaker 2: eye contact. And this guy said, you do realize if
Speaker 2: you get this job, we would have to work together.
Speaker 2: Obviously he thought I had some kind of you know,
Speaker 2: mental violent problem or something. And then just as I
Speaker 2: was getting up to leave, he said, and how would
Speaker 2: you feel about selling ladies lingerie at retail? I thought
Speaker 2: I was going to be a director of sales of something,
Speaker 2: but it was selling ladies underwear into shops. I'm really
Speaker 2: quite relieved I didn't get that job. So people laugh
Speaker 2: at I'd got a job in insurance. I could have
Speaker 2: been selling ladies underwear. You know, I didn't get that.
Speaker 2: I went for a second interview and the guy, I mean,
Speaker 2: I was just very naive if some kind of electric
Speaker 2: putting alarms into factories, And he said, tell me in
Speaker 2: your own words, why do you want this job? And
Speaker 2: I said to him, well, I don't really want it.
Speaker 2: He said, let me stop me there, you won't get
Speaker 2: this job. But no one's ever said that before. Would
Speaker 2: you just stay and talk to me for a while.
Speaker 2: I'm quite interested. So we had a nice chat. I
Speaker 2: was just being open and honest to him. I didn't
Speaker 2: want the job. I needed a job. If he said
Speaker 2: why do you need this job? I would have answered
Speaker 2: it differently anyway. And then there was a job advertising insurance,
Speaker 2: and I don't think anybody else wanted to work in insurance.
Speaker 2: You know they were desperate.
Speaker 1: Okay, so what is it like? You know this is
Speaker 1: reference in the documentary You're there, everybody else ses. He
Speaker 1: is the lead singer of the Zombies.
Speaker 2: It was a tricky moment the first time I walked
Speaker 2: into the insurance company, because they did all sort of
Speaker 2: stare a bit. But there's not only lasted for a
Speaker 2: day or two. But the real tricky moment for me
Speaker 2: was the first time I had to answer the phone.
Speaker 2: I know nothing about insurance, absolutely nothing, and some of
Speaker 2: the accounts were worth millions. Very quickly I was given
Speaker 2: the British Army has social clubs and I don't know
Speaker 2: what it stands for, but everyone knows them as NAFFI.
Speaker 2: I don't know what that stands for, but it's the
Speaker 2: social clubs for the British Army. And they had the
Speaker 2: insurance for it, so I would imagine that's worth millions
Speaker 2: and millions of pounds. They gave that to me and
Speaker 2: the women. The woman who phoned me about it, you know,
Speaker 2: she was saying, using insurance terms, I couldn't tell you
Speaker 2: what it was all about, and she sucked me out. Really,
Speaker 2: I tried. I'm quite a good bluffer. I tried to
Speaker 2: give the impression I knew what I was talking about,
Speaker 2: but I only lasted about five minutes. She would talk
Speaker 2: to me after that. But I did handle some big
Speaker 2: accounts and I did manage to bluff it.
Speaker 1: How long did you last there?
Speaker 2: Well, the time of the season started going up the
Speaker 2: charts after about six months, and so every second call
Speaker 2: I got was from record companies and producers saying, you
Speaker 2: want to make records again because no one was interested
Speaker 2: when the Zombies finished. And I must admit, you know,
Speaker 2: I wasn't a person who got on the phone and pushed,
Speaker 2: but then the phone started ringing and a guy called
Speaker 2: Mike Hurst, who was a very successful producer at the time.
Speaker 2: He produced the early Cat Stevens records. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if there hits in America, but Matthew and Son we.
Speaker 1: All knew them. They weren't not regular radio hits, but he.
Speaker 2: Was big well, they were huge hits in the UK.
Speaker 2: And then he wanted to produce me, and I wasn't
Speaker 2: I was still devastated about the Zombers. I wasn't sure
Speaker 2: if I wanted to try again. But he said, look,
Speaker 2: I tell you what. I'll get Olympics, which is where
Speaker 2: the Stones used to record in Barns. I'll get that.
Speaker 2: I'll put some tracks together and you come along after
Speaker 2: the office and put some vocals on the tracks and
Speaker 2: let's see what happens. And he got the idea of
Speaker 2: re recording She's not there. That's bit of a strange idea,
Speaker 2: but I didn't know if it was going to lead anywhere,
Speaker 2: so I just said, well, okay, we'll do it. And
Speaker 2: then somehow I ended up with this name, Neil MacArthur,
Speaker 2: and I've seen him quite recently and I always thought
Speaker 2: it was his idea that I was Neil MacArthur. He
Speaker 2: thought it was my idea. So where that came from
Speaker 2: I don't know. But I ended up recording under the
Speaker 2: name of Neil MacArthur, a re recording if She's not there,
Speaker 2: and it was a hit in the UK and I
Speaker 2: was back in the music business. No one was more
Speaker 2: surprised than me or Neil. Neil was surprised too that
Speaker 2: it had happened.
Speaker 1: Okay, just go back a step. How do you find
Speaker 1: out the time of the season is catching on?
Speaker 2: People started calling me. I didn't believe them to start with.
Speaker 2: I thought the Zombies was over. I think maybe Paul
Speaker 2: Atkinson was calling me some people in America, because you know,
Speaker 2: it went through the charts very slowly, and so it
Speaker 2: was sort of you know what, Timember the Seasons come
Speaker 2: into the top one hundred in the state, No, can't
Speaker 2: have it came in and then over a period of weeks,
Speaker 2: you know, it's eighty sixty five and you're sort of
Speaker 2: dreading the next phone call it's going to have gone down.
Speaker 2: But in cash Box it actually went to number one.
Speaker 1: It was gigantic. There was no thought of reforming the band.
Speaker 2: Not one iota, never a conversation. Nothing. Mostly I think
Speaker 2: because Rod and Chris were really very involved in Argent
Speaker 2: at that point.
Speaker 1: So how did you feel that they restarted without you?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, what can you say? I mean, it
Speaker 2: was a strange feeling. It was a strange feeling. I
Speaker 2: was just a fan of Argent, you know. I thought
Speaker 2: Argent were incredible. I used to pay for tickets to
Speaker 2: go and see them. I just thought they were fantastic
Speaker 2: and I knew them. I went to some of their
Speaker 2: very early rehearsals, so I knew they were going to
Speaker 2: be good. I really did.
Speaker 1: How did they find Russ Ballen?
Speaker 2: Well, they let me get this right. They went to
Speaker 2: see Unit four plus two because they were after Bob Henryt,
Speaker 2: who was the drummer in Unit four plus two. And
Speaker 2: it's really funny because they went to see them play
Speaker 2: thinking they could creep in at the back and no
Speaker 2: one would see them. When there was no one there
Speaker 2: when they got, you know, this very small so they
Speaker 2: walked in and it was really obvious that they were
Speaker 2: there and they'd gone to see Bob Henritt. And I
Speaker 2: think that they Russ Ballard was in the band as
Speaker 2: well at that point, and I think they were very
Speaker 2: impressed with Russ and I think maybe, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is a little bit outside of my knowledge. Really it's
Speaker 2: been explained to me, but I maybe don't remember correctly.
Speaker 2: But either I think it was a bit of both.
Speaker 2: They thought Buss Ballard was fabulous, which he is, and
Speaker 2: also I think Bob Henritt recommended him as well. And
Speaker 2: what a what a great band. They were fabulous, great band.
Speaker 1: How do you end up playing with Alan Parsons?
Speaker 2: Well, Alan was really he was an assistant engineer at
Speaker 2: Abbey Road when we were recording Odyssey and Oracle, and
Speaker 2: I spoke to him a bit. I mean, I certainly
Speaker 2: remember him from then, and also he lived near me.
Speaker 2: I bought my first flat in West Hampstead and I
Speaker 2: used to see him in Hampstead Village, which is in
Speaker 2: northwest London on a Saturday morning. He used to drink
Speaker 2: in a pub called the Flask, and I used to
Speaker 2: drink in this sometimes. So we knew one another vaguely,
Speaker 2: and that's that's basically it. I think I might have
Speaker 2: asked him about producing me as well at one point,
Speaker 2: but by then he'd got the project going and so
Speaker 2: he wasn't really producing other people. And I also knew
Speaker 2: Eric Wilson vaguely as well. He'd come to some Zombie
Speaker 2: gigs and they just called me up and said, I
Speaker 2: think the first one I did with that was that
Speaker 2: Eagle will Rise Again. And to start with, they used
Speaker 2: to give me about a week's notice. They would send
Speaker 2: me an assetate in those days and they'd give me
Speaker 2: a week to learn the song, so Eagle will Rise Again.
Speaker 2: I got a week old and wise I got a week.
Speaker 2: But then the later ones they would phone me up
Speaker 2: and say, we've got this song. Come down to the studio.
Speaker 2: We'll play it through to you learn it. And I
Speaker 2: didn't say learn it in the stupid That's what it was,
Speaker 2: and we'll have a go at it. And that was
Speaker 2: a bit more challenging. You know, you'd learn it in
Speaker 2: front of Alan and Eric and you and you have
Speaker 2: to record it. But there, I mean, those project albums
Speaker 2: are wonderful, great songs because Alan's a magical producer as well.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: It was a wonderful experience.
Speaker 1: So how do you ultimately reform the Zombies again?
Speaker 2: If Rod was here, he would tell you a slightly
Speaker 2: different story, but I'll tell you the truth. I was.
Speaker 2: I had a solo band don Airy, who's the keyboard
Speaker 2: player in Deep Purple. He'd already played in a lot
Speaker 2: of big heavy metal bands, and I'd met him, I
Speaker 2: knew him vaguely, and he took it upon himself to
Speaker 2: you let me know that I should be out playing live.
Speaker 2: He started calling me. Must have called me five or
Speaker 2: six times. You should be playing, like you've got to
Speaker 2: get out playing. But at this point I hadn't played
Speaker 2: for twenty something years. I've made lots of records, some
Speaker 2: had been hits. I had a little bit of success.
Speaker 2: I probably was more scared than anything I could. You
Speaker 2: could say anxious if you like, but scared would probably
Speaker 2: fit it better. And in those days I used to
Speaker 2: like to have a couple of beers in the evening
Speaker 2: quite I liked Stellar Artois quite strong. And he just
Speaker 2: picked the right moment. The fifth or sixth phone call,
Speaker 2: I was on my second Stellar Artois and he said,
Speaker 2: you should be out playing it. Okay, I will, And
Speaker 2: he said, right, you don't have to do anything. I'll
Speaker 2: put a band together, I'll rehearse them, just come up
Speaker 2: and we'll run through and then we'll do a gig.
Speaker 2: And that's what we did, and he got a great
Speaker 2: band together, all really really good players, and it held
Speaker 2: together for quite a time, but one by one they
Speaker 2: drifted off, and eventually don Airy drifted off, and he
Speaker 2: played with lots of good people, but for the last
Speaker 2: I think twenty years, has been with Deep Purple. And
Speaker 2: I got another keyboard player. But this keyboard player good player,
Speaker 2: but he had an achilles heel in that he wrote
Speaker 2: his own songs, and if anyone asked him to play
Speaker 2: at the local coffee shop but his own songs, he
Speaker 2: would be off. And so I would turn up to
Speaker 2: a date and I didn't have a keyboard player. And
Speaker 2: the last time this happened, it happened. I mean, there's
Speaker 2: no warning. He just would go, and we managed to
Speaker 2: scramble some guy in who didn't know me and didn't
Speaker 2: know any of my songs. I don't know how he
Speaker 2: got through the evening. And this I had new guys
Speaker 2: and everything. I had my regular bass player, our mother
Speaker 2: was on his second gig, and the guitarist was on
Speaker 2: his second gig, and the keyboard player didn't know any
Speaker 2: of the songs at all. And I thought I was
Speaker 2: going to have heart failure on this show. I thought
Speaker 2: I'm going to die if I go on like this.
Speaker 2: And I phoned Rod. I didn't think he would be interested.
Speaker 2: I really didn't because he was a very successful producer
Speaker 2: and he hadn't played live that much. And I said, Rod,
Speaker 2: I've got six dates left on this tour. It's driving
Speaker 2: me nuts. You know, this guy just keeps not showing up.
Speaker 2: Would you help me out and play these six dates?
Speaker 2: And I was really surprised, but blessed him. He said, Look,
Speaker 2: of course I'll help you out in the six dates,
Speaker 2: but I don't want to go back on the road
Speaker 2: full time, but I will play the six dates. And
Speaker 2: he did, and it was magical and he loved it,
Speaker 2: and those six dates developed into twenty five years.
Speaker 1: Okay, how hard was it for you to call him?
Speaker 2: Very hard? Very hard? Well, I think I've always been
Speaker 2: a bit in aura of Rod. He's a world class musician.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I did find it difficult. It was because
Speaker 2: I didn't have a choice, and also I didn't think
Speaker 2: he'd want to do it either, honestly, didn't think he wanted.
Speaker 1: How often did you have contact with him in the
Speaker 1: ensuing years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, quite a lot, and I would talk to him
Speaker 2: four or five times a year something like that, but
Speaker 2: not very regularly, so it was it was difficult, and
Speaker 2: partly because I didn't think he'd want to do it,
Speaker 2: but he did, and it was It was great for
Speaker 2: both of us. None of us were expecting what happened,
Speaker 2: the second incarnation of the Zombies. Who would have thought that.
Speaker 2: We thought the Zombies finished in nineteen sixty seven, and
Speaker 2: then when we started playing, people get asking for zombie tinges.
Speaker 2: When after those six dates we continued, but we played
Speaker 2: hardly any zombie songs. I'd had a few hits, He'd
Speaker 2: had a few hits. We played solo stuff, and people
Speaker 2: kept asking for zombie tunes. But Rob was adamant we
Speaker 2: wouldn't call the band the Zombies for like six or
Speaker 2: seven years. We're not the zombies. We can't call ourselves
Speaker 2: the zombies. I said, okay, But in the end we
Speaker 2: were playing twenty zombie tunes to an audience that had
Speaker 2: come to hear the Zombies. And then in one day
Speaker 2: he was talking about the artwork on the next album
Speaker 2: and he said, I hope we won't mind me having
Speaker 2: a bit of a chuckle. But it was quite funny
Speaker 2: because he sort of said I had a dream and
Speaker 2: I was thinking about that famous speech, and I had
Speaker 2: a dream and it was the artwork for the album
Speaker 2: and it was a white dove doing something and the zombies,
Speaker 2: and I thought, did he just say the zombies? I
Speaker 2: thought we weren't using them the zombies, and I didn't
Speaker 2: say anything, And from then on we were the zombies.
Speaker 2: We had to have a sit down with Rod Argent,
Speaker 2: with Chris White and Hugh Grundy and have a chat
Speaker 2: with them about it, and they were okay. I mean
Speaker 2: I don't think they were that keen to start with,
Speaker 2: but that they were okay in the end. And then
Speaker 2: we were the zombies again, the second incarnation of the Zombies.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, it's been an amazing success live shows,
Speaker 1: getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Speaker 1: But you're in Los Angeles right now promoting the new
Speaker 1: Zombies documentary Hung Up on a Dream. How did that
Speaker 1: come to be?
Speaker 2: Well, I think a lot of it was down to
Speaker 2: our management company, of the Rocks. They felt that we
Speaker 2: had a story to tell and it would be great
Speaker 2: to do a documentary, and through mutual friends, they were
Speaker 2: introduced to Robert who had already made movies in Hollywood scripted,
Speaker 2: fully funded movies. But he's also a musician, and I
Speaker 2: think that really helped. We were introduced to him on
Speaker 2: a zoom call. He'd made movies, he was a musician
Speaker 2: in his own right, and he came over as a
Speaker 2: genuine fan of the Zombies, and he won us over
Speaker 2: very quickly. So it came about, yes, just through people talking,
Speaker 2: you know, I management company talking to a middleman who
Speaker 2: who knew Robert, and then he made it very easy
Speaker 2: for us. We would just turn up and talk.
Speaker 1: How long has this been in production?
Speaker 2: Well, it probably started a couple of years ago, I think,
Speaker 2: but it's been it kept being re edited, but I
Speaker 2: mean a nearly final version has probably been around for
Speaker 2: nine months or so. I would have thought, and are
Speaker 2: you happy with it? I think it's great. I think
Speaker 2: it's really really good. I haven't seen the final cut
Speaker 2: that there are some I think, some subtle changes, but
Speaker 2: I'm going to see it tonight because I'm going to
Speaker 2: be part of a Q and A afterwards, and I thought,
Speaker 2: you know, I really ought to see it again because
Speaker 2: one or two questions have come up, real subtle things.
Speaker 2: I haven't seen it in suntme, but my experience in
Speaker 2: the insurance office has really helped me, you know, like
Speaker 2: when I learned to bluff, and so I've managed to
Speaker 2: bluff my way through it because one or two things
Speaker 2: have come up and I've thought I need to see
Speaker 2: it again. So I'm going tonight. I'm really excited about it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to see it tonight.
Speaker 1: Well, I think you know the story well enough you
Speaker 1: won't have to bluff, and you've certainly been very open
Speaker 1: and honest. You know, Listen, you're very convivial. You tell
Speaker 1: a great story. I could talk to you forever, but
Speaker 1: I think we've come to the end of the feeling
Speaker 1: we've known. Colin. I want to thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking this time with my audience.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks so much for having me on the show.
Speaker 2: I mean, I've for a long time I'd loved to
Speaker 2: have been on this show. I say, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: just really happy to have been. I've really enjoyed having
Speaker 2: a chat.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, as I said earlier, and I've experienced.
Speaker 1: You have no idea how big the zombies were. You're saying, Oh,
Speaker 1: I did it for a couple of years and then
Speaker 1: the band fell apart. The zombies were as big as
Speaker 1: any of the other acts, and it sounded unique. It
Speaker 1: had this darkness where some of the other like animals
Speaker 1: records like don't Bring Me Down, We're dark, but they
Speaker 1: had a very period sound. They were rough, where the
Speaker 1: zombies songs were not rough. They were as they sueing generous.
Speaker 1: There was nothing else like them. You know, she's not there,
Speaker 1: tell her not that. Of course, at the time of
Speaker 1: the season, and there was no more zombies. I mean
Speaker 1: the average person, it was like, yeah they were. They
Speaker 1: were just like you know, nobody is the Beatles and
Speaker 1: also the Stones. But in the next year down zombies
Speaker 1: were as big as anybody.
Speaker 2: I know, it's extraordinary, but if you had any one
Speaker 2: of the zombies in here, I don't think we've ever
Speaker 2: been able to understand that. And it's a bit late
Speaker 2: in the day now for it to get through. But
Speaker 2: it's very kind if you just say that, and I'm
Speaker 2: thrilled that you see it that way. But we we
Speaker 2: I don't know, we just think we're just young kids
Speaker 2: from San Jobn's.
Speaker 1: Really there is a magic in these records, and just
Speaker 1: like anything magical, you know, especially Yeah, they're cut really quickly,
Speaker 1: and you know, I went to see Journey the pr person.
Speaker 1: We were having dinners, so I gotta go to the
Speaker 1: Hollywood Bowl and they have this leads sing from the
Speaker 1: Philippines ironically, and I'm there and the whole audience is
Speaker 1: singing so well, you know, it's not Steve Perry, but
Speaker 1: the songs are so iconic the audience owns them. Same
Speaker 1: thing with the zombies. The audience now owns those records.
Speaker 1: Those records are forever, okay, irrelevant whether they know a
Speaker 1: single person in the band or the story. They remember
Speaker 1: where they were and you know, time of the season
Speaker 1: to use a you know there's an evergreen never dies,
Speaker 1: you know, it just keeps up. Okay, I'm getting the
Speaker 1: signal you have to move on to your next gig. Yes,
Speaker 1: So until next time. This is Bob left Sex