Colin Blunstone

Lead singer of the Zombies.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Searts Podcast.
My guest today is Colin Blumstone, lead singer of The
Zombies and so Much Moork. Colin, you just said you
realize you have allergies. Tell me about that.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Well, just know, I've been forty eight hours in Los Angeles.
I've realized I don't know anything about allergies. Is it
hay fever or whatever. But I just realized I do
suffer from that. And I was just going to apologize
to you in case I started sneezing while we're doing this,
while we're doing this interview. That was all I was

(00:46):
going to say, was if I start sneezing, I've just
realized that I have this problem.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
You know, there are pills for that now, but it
begs the question, why would you not have a problem
in England, a different weather, different thing.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
You know, I think I have had this problem, but
I've thought, for some strange reason, I've thought I've got
a cold rather than I've got allergies. It's just the
realization that, yeah, hay fever affects me. And I'm seventy
nine years old and I've just found that out, which

(01:21):
is a bit embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Really. How's your health otherwise?

Speaker 2 (01:25):
Actually pretty good. I have to say the usual aches
and pains that people coming into the autumn of their
careers will suffer from, but generally speaking pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
Actually, yeah, okay, you know, we are a generation they
thought we were going to rule till we die, but
we are going to die. Okay. So I found I
turned sixty and it was like I've seen the trick.
But once I turned seventy, it's a whole new thing.
So what's your perspective of aging?

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Well, I think my wife always says it's just a number.
If I try to talk about it with her, It's
just a number. Just get on with it. I think.
Actually that's important things to just keep busy, you know,
find something that intrigues you, interests you, and throw yourself
into it. That's what I would say, and that's what
I try and do. I love music. I'm always trying

(02:24):
to write. I'll record at the drop of a hat,
and I'll tour at the drop of the hat too.
I love doing that and as a complete alternative, it's
just great. When I'm not working, I love to be
at home with my family.

Speaker 1 (02:39):
So Rod Hargen had a stroke. He's not hitting the
road anymore, that's right. So to what degree are you working,
whether it be live or recording.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
Well, I've always had a solo band, I'll be honest
with you. I've never said this to Rod, but I
wondered how long he would keep touring because I was
very successful songwriter. He's been a very successful producer in
his time. He really doesn't need to be getting out
on the road and not sleeping and all the things

(03:11):
that go with being out on the road. But he
loves playing. And we got together in nineteen ninety nine,
and I wondered how long he would keep touring, and
we've kept it going to twenty twenty four. It was
last year that he had his stroke. But I wondered
how long he would keep touring, and so I always

(03:33):
kept a solo bang going. I've sort of had that
tucked up my sleeve, and so now I slipped back listen.
I would have loved to kept this Zombisky for as long.
We always said that for as long as we're physically capable,
we want to keep this guying. We're having such a
great time, and also it's so unexpected. The band finished

(03:54):
in sixty seven. It's insane. What are we doing playing now?
I don't understand. It's a mystery, but I don't have
to understand it. I love it, so let's keep going.
But I always get when there's a break. I would
I would tour and record with my solo ban which
I must admit. The band has changed personnel over the years,
as these band as bands do, but it's a really

(04:16):
nice group of guys at the moment. I've just come
back from Germany and Holland. Just a few days before
I came over here and I was with my solo man.
It was great, playing a completely different program to what
I would play with the Zombies. I play. She's not
their time of the season. This will be our year.
That's about it. Otherwise it's completely different tunes and it's

(04:39):
it's nice to to break things up and do you
know a completely different repertoire?

Speaker 1 (04:46):
So you playing in Germany? Do they know your solo
material the audience.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
I wish you hadn't asked me about Germany. Actually, it
is not one of my not one of my great
success areas some doing some don't should we say that?
But if you wishes mentioned Holland, it's a different, different
kind of fish. It always intrigues me. These countries are
right next door to one another, or you can say
Holland and Belgium. They have different hits, they know different artists,

(05:14):
and you have to be aware of where you're going.
What do they know any of your songs? And if
they do, what songs are they because they'll be expecting
to hear them. And in Holland, I've had a lot
of hits and it's always a thrill to go back there.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Let's say you're playing like someplace like Germany where the
audience doesn't know all your material. How do you perform
such that you win them over and keep their attention.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Well, I think the first thing is to have a
bit of a pep talk before you go on stage
and you just say, okay, come on, guys, this we've
really got to pull it out of the bag this time.
Attle bit like with the sports team, you know, and
say it's going to be tough. We know that it's
going to be tough, but I think an audience always
appreciates a hundred effort. I mean, listen, you have to

(06:02):
have a degree of professionalist and you have to understand
your instrument or be able to sing the songs. Of
course you do, but they appreciate one hundred percent commitment
and you can usually bring people around if you go
out there and give one hundred percent. That's the best
you can do.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Okay. As you mentioned earlier, Rod wrote some of the
hits alone and in addition had a success with his
band eponymously named Origent. But you were not a member
of the Money tends to be in publishing. So are
you working because you have to or because you want

(06:43):
to or both?

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, in the Original band, I was very much working
because I had to, And you're right. I think I
think that the writers should of course be paid in full,
and you know I'm I'm not in any way after
their money. I always say, if you haven't got a
good song, you can all pack up and go home.

(07:06):
This is before you start. You're wasting your time if
you haven't got good songs. So we should treasure and
nurture the writers. And we had two great writers in
the Zombies and Rod Argent and Chris White, and we
were extremely lucky to have them. It does happen, though,
that their income stream is completely separate to the band

(07:27):
and of course they're living a different life to the
three non writers, and that was one of the reasons
why the band finished. That the three non writers had
no money, so it was tough. Over the years, I've
managed to establish a career, so I'm fortunate enough now
that no, I don't have to work, but I love it.

(07:47):
And also at the back of my mind, I'm thinking,
at this time in my life, if I was to stop,
it would be very hard to start up again. And
that's a motivation in itself. I think, you know, I'm
going to be in my eighties soon. I'm not going
to have a gap and come back at eighty five.
It's it's not going to happen, So I want to

(08:08):
keep it going. You know what does it use it
or lose it?

Speaker 1 (08:12):
Right? Okay, you have a new documentary. We'll get to
that in a second, but it talks about when the
Zombies break up. You get a job an insurance office,
and it goes through your ups and downs. You go back,
you record under Neil MacArthur. Since that time, have you
been forced to get a day job?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Oh no, no, no, no, no no, I mean from
the time a little bit after my Neil MacArthur episode.
I went back to my real name, and I had
regular hits for the next twenty something years, and then
there was a bit of a drought. The music business
is peaks and troughs. You know, you've got to learn

(08:54):
how to get through those. I think you need to
have a degree of musicality, of course, but also you
need to have tenacity. You have to learn how to survive,
I think in the music business. I hope that doesn't sound.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Too no, no, that sounds to.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
You know, well, there's going to be except for a
minute percentage at the top of the business. You know,
you know, the big names. Apart from them, you're going
to have struggles, and you've got to learn how to
get through those struggles and stay positive and stay energized
when when it seems the world's against you. You have

(09:31):
to do that. I'm sure that's happened to me over
the years.

Speaker 1 (09:35):
Okay, so okay, let's break it down. Your solo records
were not commercially successful in the US.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
They certainly weren't, so.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
You know, they were successful elsewhere, so it wasn't a
matter of not being in the grooves. Were you aware
of that time, were you frustrated. Why do you think
they weren't successful in the States.

Speaker 2 (09:59):
I didn't think they've fitted in any format that might
be something to do with it. I mean, my first
of album, A lot of that album features a string
quartet with wonderful string arrangements by Chris Gunning, just like
Bartok esque arrangements, And for some reason radio in the
UK accepted it. But I don't fully understand why they did,

(10:24):
because there's nothing else like that. But it didn't work
in America, and I never quite got a level of
acceptance with the American media, particularly radio.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
And do you think it's possibly a lack of effort
by the label or a manager, or that's just the breaks.

Speaker 2 (10:47):
Well, at the end of the day, I think it's
just the breaks, isn't it. I mean, I'm not going
to start pushing responsibility onto other people, a little bit
of everyone, maybe including me. I mean, I don't think
I really knew how to how did it go about
things properly? You know, it's very dissipated everything I did.
I don't think I still don't really understand the business

(11:09):
at all, especially considering I've been in it so long.
But I think that sometimes you know, certainly management could
have been a bit better. The Zombies have been very lucky.
They've they've fallen in with a very wonderful management company,
and I think that's when things started to turn round
for the second incarnation of the Zombies, when we signed

(11:32):
with the Rocks, a new management company.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
Okay, you talked about the ups and downs and surviving.
How do you survive emotionally and financially? I mean, you've
had most people tend to have one peak, that's it. Okay,
you had multiple peaks. You had peak with zombies, peak
working under another name, peak working under your name. Then

(11:56):
things lie out and then the zombies come back. How
do you handle would financially and emotionally.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Well, Financially it is tricky at times. You have to
just cut back on what you spend. You know, you
have to live at very what people wouldn't think that
people in contemporary music would lift that kind of lifestyle.
I mean there have been times when in the winter

(12:25):
I wouldn't be able to put the heat on, I'd
go to bed to keep warm. What age that would
have been when I was probably forty or something like that,
maybe in the mid eight I think the mid eighties
were really bad for me. But what really saved me,

(12:46):
I think, was that every so many years, quite possibly,
when I might be thinking I've got to find something else,
something would come along. And none of these records charted
in America. So it's something in some ways it makes
it more difficult to explain. But every four or five
years I would be involved in a big record and

(13:10):
that would bring the energy back, bring the self belief back,
and you'd start again. It's just sort of a cycle,
isn't it really, And you try to hang on to
this bit of success while you can, but it's like
trying to hold sand. You know you're desperately you can
see it or draining out of your hand as you
go along. And then the cycle goes on, and then

(13:33):
I would find myself. The two things I used to
do when things are really bad. And this sounds a
little bit lightweight, but this is what I used to do.
I'd get my address book and i'd start at a
and I'd just go all the way through it to
like and I always found someone who wanted to talk

(13:53):
about maybe, yeah, just could there be a project there?
Why don't we go together and have a chat? Always
the other thing I would do, which is even perhaps
a little stranger is I would get in the bath,
because have you ever noticed when you get in the
bath the phone rings.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
I noticed when I get in the shower. That's what
I have all my clear thinking.

Speaker 2 (14:18):
Well as far as but if you get into a bath,
I guarantee the phone will ring. And that was my
last My last resort would be again in the bath
at the phone would ring, and I just hope it's
the offer of some work.

Speaker 1 (14:36):
Okay, So let's say you're going through your address book
A Z, Yeah, you call me up. How hard a
pitch would it be? How would you get to the point?

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Oh no, we'd be very conversational. What have you been doing?
Tell me what you've been doing? Do you know anyone?
I know anything I can grab hold of here? You're written,
any songs? You know any projects? Anybody needs some singing.
But I wouldn't say it in those words. I would

(15:05):
just saying, how's things, what you been doing? Anything I
can get involved in?

Speaker 1 (15:12):
But you would ultimately put it.

Speaker 2 (15:15):
Out there in a very subtle way.

Speaker 1 (15:18):
But the person on the other end could miss it.

Speaker 2 (15:21):
I hope not. Otherwise I'm wasting a time calling him.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
Okay, how about going to see people in person that
were not in your address book, saying, well, maybe I
have to go to London hang out. Maybe i'll bump
into something.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
I'm not so good at that. Years ago, when I
was younger, I would even just going to London is
I used to live in the center of London, and
I think I just sort of kind of London's wonderful,
you know, But as you get older, it's it's frantic,
it's full of people, it's very noisy, and I find

(15:57):
it quite challenging just to go to London, let alone
go to meet people. No, I'm not very good socially,
and i'd tell you another reason why. It might be
if you're in a band, you're used to people coming
to you socially, and that happened to me a lot
in my formative years. So when I was a teenager,

(16:20):
we're playing, people would come up. This sounds like such
a silly thing to say. I find it hard to
go up and talk to people, and I'm embarrassed to
say it, but I do. And so I'm not very
good at, you know, circulating and meeting people in music
business circles. I'd go to something like that, and I

(16:40):
would stand in the corner all on my own and
just sulk out of the door. Eventually when no one
speaks to me.

Speaker 1 (16:46):
So okay, So let's say you're home now with your wife,
and your wife says, hey, you know someone invited us.
Let's go. Are you going to say, ok, let me
get ready? You're going to say, I don't think I
want to go?

Speaker 2 (16:59):
Well, I'm afraid yeah. It would be the second I
al would say how much do you want to go?
How much do you want to go? Trying what's a
put too much pressure on them? How much do you
want to go? And she said I really would like
to go? I said, okay, let's go.

Speaker 1 (17:20):
Okay, let's go back a step back. When the Zombies
had their original hits, recording contracts were horrific in terms
of the percentage the acts got. In addition, as we
established earlier, most of the money is in publishing. Have
you ever gotten a royalty on a record, whether it
be the Zombies or anything else?

Speaker 2 (17:43):
I have, not on many, I hasten to add, but
I have, and some very healthy ones, but only on
a few. It's mostly the Zombies. The Zombies sell a
lot of requords. There's a big mystery in the Zombies.
I don't Okay, So you're a member of a band,

(18:04):
there's five people in the band and you have a
shitty deal. Was the deal renegotiated at some point? I
think there's a lot of it. Again, I'm embarrassed to
say this. I'm not sure I fully understand everything that happened.
But what I will tell you is we didn't sign
to a record label in the sixties. We signed to
a production company and they signed to the record label.

(18:24):
So all of our masters reverted to us. Oh that
made a huge difference. Okay, you know a lot of
acts made deal sixties or seventies. It was a standard provision.
You get twenty five years, you get the record back,
the Errol Smith, a lot of other racks to get
another bite at the apple. They got rid of that

(18:45):
to a great degree. Was somebody smart making the deal
or that was just a standard deal. I just think
we were lucky. We met someone. It was a friend
of Chris White's uncle. Bizarre thing. Who was going to
look look at the contracts we've been offered. We're eighteen
years old, we know nothing, and at the end of

(19:06):
the evening. Look at these contracts we've been offered. He said,
I'll tell you what. We this production company that he
earned his name was Ken Jones. He became our producer
and he had a partner called Joe Roncroni, and he said,
we will offer you better than these deals. And we
went with them, and they did look after us, they
really did, and they protected us from the worst of

(19:29):
the of the things that had happened to you with
a record company. I think where we came unstuck really
was in live performances. We never really made any money
on the road, and we worked all the time.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Okay, let's stay with the record today. Could you live
off the royalties alone?

Speaker 2 (19:50):
Yes?

Speaker 1 (19:51):
Wow, that's pretty amazing, considering multiple members of the band, etc.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I know it's good, isn't it. Hey?

Speaker 1 (19:58):
You know it's been sixty years. Has it gone up
and down in this last twenty five years, been a
renaissance going up? Or has it always been consistent?

Speaker 2 (20:05):
No renaissance going up? And the eighties around there, it
didn't seem to be making a lot of money. And
then slowly but surely I remember sort of the first
check coming through that was really worth having. I'm on
the phone to Rod, you got the post yet? This
check just going what's happening? And I don't know what

(20:27):
is happening? And gradually the checks and we used to
get to we've just negotiated a new deal. But in
these old, these old checks, we would get two a
year and every six month. You know, my hands are
shut when the postman goes has the bubble burst? But

(20:47):
it didn't. And if I say I don't fully understand
what's happened with the Zombies, I'm embarrassed to say it,
but it's honestly the truth. The Zombies records sell in
very healthy quantities around the world and have done for
the last twenty or twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
Okay, how much? This is hard to split up, but
I'm gonna try anyway. You have the original in America,
Original two Hitch, She's not there to tell her no
Bam breaks up. You have Time Sea of the Season.
But that album grows Out've see an Oracle grows in
reputation over the years. Is it about the hit or

(21:29):
is it about the album that is driving this mania?

Speaker 2 (21:34):
I think it's the album. And it's almost as though
the album did it on its own, because no one
was promoting it, No one was marketing it. It had
gone you know, it was really never a hit. I
looked it up. It went to ninety eight in Billboard
for one week and disappeared. Rolling Stone named it as

(21:54):
one of the top hundred albums of all time. And
you see the albums around it, you know, it's the
Beatles and Simon and Garfunk, all these wonderful classic albums,
and there's little old honesty on Oracle right in the
middle that was never really a hit. And there's just
there is a mistique about that album. It's just word
of mouth. People like Tom Petty in America and Dave

(22:20):
Gohl and Susannah Hoffs and people have quoted it so
often as a favorite album, and it's really helped.

Speaker 1 (22:29):
Okay, general question. You're the singer, you're the front person.
You're not writing the lyrics. That is relatively rare. There
are bands like Rush where the drummer wrote the lyrics.
What's it like singing somebody else's lyrics, especially I won't
say they're unbelievably personal, but they're delivered in a very

(22:52):
personal way.

Speaker 2 (22:53):
Well, I think I was, you know, I was brought
up doing that all about three formative years. I never
contributed to the songs. I don't want to say that
I did in any way at all, but Rod always
worked with me with the songs. The phrasing of the
songs is always very important. There's nothing thrown together about,

(23:16):
especially our laser performances. Rod has always got a vision
on how a song should be phrased, and we spend
a lot of time on that, and so it feels
very natural to me when I'm performing it for real
as if I wrote it, because we spent a lot
of time on it, and I hope I fully understand
what he's trying to say and how he's trying to

(23:38):
say it, and most importantly, how he's trying to phrase it.
And he's very patient, and he knows what he wants
and he's determined to get it too. He's very tenacious.

Speaker 1 (23:49):
I tell you, Okay, in your solo career, you have
a noted song about an ex girlfriend, Caroline. How did
that come to be an What did she say about it?
I'm not sure if she was all that pleased. Really,
it came about you know, I was just a fledgling writer,

(24:09):
and you know you're a teenager or early twenties or something.
You write about heartbreak. That's how you most people start anyway,
And so I did. I just wrote down what was happening.
But I always planned to change the name.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
Of course. I wasn't going to use the real name.
And the recording day came out and can you think
of another name that would It's a little late now perhaps,
but I often say that to people, if you can
think of another name that fits. Maybe it's a bit late,
but maybe we could slit the other name in. And
so I took a chance and I recorded it with

(24:48):
the real name in there. And a journalist knew the
story who worked for a national newspaper in England, and
he did a full page story about that. That's it
wasn't a hit, he just did it. But I think
she was very beautiful and it was a way of
getting a picture of a girl in a bikini into

(25:08):
the newspaper because it was about her as much as
the song, and the secret was out, you know, and
it's I mean, I don't think it's anything to be
too embarrassed about. But it wasn't my intention to use
the real name.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
So did you ever hear from her about it?

Speaker 2 (25:25):
I've met her, but she's never really said much since then.
I've never really discussed it with her, but I mean,
I hope she wouldn't be offended. There's nothing to be
offended about in there. But I am a little bit
self conscious about it. Okay, us the real name.

Speaker 1 (25:43):
Okay, just to go back, you did have a relationship
with her, right, I did. Okay, It wasn't something from
Afar being no no, no, no no. So how long
did it go on? Oh?

Speaker 2 (25:53):
It was a couple of years. And she was very young,
and I think she was so was I. She was
about seventeen, I think, and I was nineteen or something
like that. And I, you know, I was always a
huge romantic. And it's funny because the guys in the
band would always say I would be the first one
to be married. At the time, I thought we would

(26:16):
be married, and I honestly it's terrible, but seventy nine,
I'm talking about a romance I have when I.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Was nineteen actual.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, Well, anyway, she got a partner film in Spain,
and this is how my mind worked at that time.
I thought, this is okay, she's going to be away
for six months. If we can get through this six
months apart, then we really should get married. How presumptuous,
you know. I didn't say that to her. It's just
what I was thinking. And of course she met someone

(26:49):
on the film and she married him. That was That
was the end of the relationship, but it was the
beginning of the song. You see, every cloud has a
silver lining. And so I lost the girl, but I
found the song.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
Now, this woman was an actress, however young. How'd you
meet her?

Speaker 2 (27:10):
There was a some kind of presentation night for the
zombies and she was involved. David Bailey, the photographer, named
her as the face of the year.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Right.

Speaker 2 (27:24):
I can't remember what year it was, but it was
a long time, right right. I named her the face
of the year, and part of her prize for being
the face of the year was to be at this
presentation thing that we went to, and I just said
to her, would you like to come to a club afterwards?
And that's how I met her.

Speaker 1 (27:42):
Okay, you've been married how many times?

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Twice though I don't always count the first time.

Speaker 1 (27:49):
So how old we were married the first time?

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Old enough to know better.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
I'm old enough to know better because.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Because I married a total stranger when I was blind drunk.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
There's more to the story than that you met the person.
How long after you met her did you marry her?

Speaker 2 (28:13):
About seven or eight days?

Speaker 1 (28:16):
Tell me the story.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well, I was hoping you'd say that I signed a
Rocket Records and I've made a record with Gus Dudgeon,
super bloke, great producer. We spent a lot of money.
I had lunch with Elton and shortly after we'd made it,

(28:40):
and you know, I said what do you think of
the album? And he may not have used these words,
but you know, he said, well, I don't really like it.
And we spent I felt terrible. We spent a fortune.
And he said to me, you know what I think
you should do. You go to California and record, as

(29:03):
you know, West Coast Rock album, which is what I did.
I came over here and I recorded with Bill Shne
and wonderful group of musicians, and I recorded in LA
and I ended up back in England. Now I've I've
recorded the record. Right for recording two albums, Now I'm
up to a huge amount of money. I dread to think.

(29:26):
And because the Zombies finished at the end of the seventies,
I haven't played live since the end of the seventies
and the sixties, sorry, the end of the sixties, this
is the mid seventies. I've spent probably one hundred and
fifty one hundred and seventy thousand pounds, which would be
more in dollars, and they wanted me to come back

(29:47):
here and promote it and play some live dates and things.
That's the weight on my shoulders for the responsibility of
spending this money, and then the anxiety of can I
still perform live? And it was getting very close to
flight time to come over here, and I met a
very beautiful, vivacious, confident young lady who helped me get

(30:15):
carried away with the whole spirit of the time. I
drank a lot of champagne to take the edge off
my anxiety. I found myself married. That was it, really.

Speaker 1 (30:29):
Okay, let's break it down. Did you end up doing
the West Coast dates? The live date?

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Actually most of them seemed to fade away. I did
lots of interviews. I don't remember actually performing live, so
that was a relief. But I did do lots of interviews,
and having just met this young lady about two days
after we got married, might have been the next day,
I can't remember. I came to California. So when I

(30:56):
was doing this, I had literally just got married to someone,
and of course then I had to go home and
we had to face up to what we've done. And
it was a tricky one. It was a tricky one.

Speaker 1 (31:08):
But how long did it last?

Speaker 2 (31:09):
Not very long, I'm afraid. I mean like two weeks,
three years, a few months, I would maybe a little
bit longer than that, maybe a little bit longer.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Okay, So how did it end? And we're both people
happy or were certain people unhappy?

Speaker 2 (31:26):
Well, she went off around the world and she just
take quite a long time in La actually, and she
lived with a very famous rock and roll manager here
longer than she lived with me. I mean, you don't
know whether to laugh or cry in these situations, do

(31:47):
you really? And then she went off to Japan and
eventually she came back and we sorted things out. I
was a huge learning experience for me.

Speaker 1 (31:57):
Well, other than the fact I don't get married after
you meet someone drunk in a bar, what were the
other lessons?

Speaker 2 (32:04):
Yeah, well, don't yeah, don't marry a total stained stranger
when you're blind drunk. That was the main one, right,
And it certainly will hit you financially, that's for sure. Right,
they were the two main lessons I think.

Speaker 1 (32:20):
Yes, Okay, so how all were you when that happened?

Speaker 2 (32:24):
Oh, thirty three?

Speaker 1 (32:27):
Okay? So when did he get married the second time?

Speaker 2 (32:31):
The second time, it's a different kettle of fish. I
met a wonderful lady who was actually an airline stewardess.
But I didn't meet her on an aeroplane. I just
met a few friends, you know, And I think I
was about forty two when I got married. We've been
married for thirty eight years and we have one daughter.

(32:52):
It's wonderful. She's a doctor, and it's been a wonderful marriage.
And you know, maybe I learned something from that. You know,
I'm embarrassed about that first marriage, for my sake and
for the person I'm marriage. You know, I would apologize
to everyone concerned. I should have known better. But I
learned a lot out of that.

Speaker 1 (33:13):
You know.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
I learned marriage is a very serious commitment and you
have to work at it, and you have to be
sure of the person you're marrying and they have to
be sure of you. And for the second marriage, it's
really worked out incredibly well. And maybe it wouldn't have
worked out if I hadn't done that insane thing. How

(33:33):
did we get onto the subject of marriages.

Speaker 1 (33:35):
Because we're asking about the song about Caroline.

Speaker 2 (33:38):
Or perhaps that's what it was. Yeah, and you said
how many times have you been married?

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Right?

Speaker 2 (33:42):
And I said, well, kind of twice, Okay.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
The nature of being someone who is successful in the
public eye first, I mean, I'm just speak in English here.
Many people are attracted to performers and songs in a
different way from movies starts, because the performers embody the song,
it is them. So yes, when you're in the public eye,

(34:15):
I would think there are people who had attracted you
because of that. And then there's also your identity, and
there's relative power struggles as opposed to just meeting people
in your hometown. Did you experience that? Oh?

Speaker 2 (34:32):
Absolutely, of course all musicians have experienced that. And I
think when I was younger, I didn't really understand the
difference between meeting people on the road, you know, backstage,
and meeting someone in your hometown. It is different. I
can always remember I was managed for some time by

(34:53):
the same person who managed Cat Stevens, and I remember
him saying to me you you you know, meet people,
go out with people that you meet on their own.
Well what everybody did, right, you know, he couldn't believe it,
And I think you have to be on your guard

(35:15):
for the people at the show's sake and for your sake.
But you know, I'm married now, there's.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
Right, right we're talking about.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
Yeah, because it's there's an imbalance. You know, if you're
a performer and someone is attracted to you as a performer,
it's not fair on them. There's saying something that's that's
not there, and so you just have to be you
have a responsibility to protect them and yourself. Really, I think,

(35:46):
I mean it's easy for me to say that now.
You know, I said earlier I'm seventy nine. Now I've
been married for thirty eight years. But I still believe
that's true.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
Okay, So you make your present wife where she for
familiar with you in your career.

Speaker 2 (36:02):
A little bit, I think, But it was more a
meeting of mutual friends, you know. I think she was aware, yeah,
but not over impressed.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Okay, So she's a flight attendant, you're a rock and roller.
How does your daughter end up a doctor?

Speaker 2 (36:21):
Well, she's very academic she enjoys taking exams. And I
tell you what happened. She used to go to a
summer school, and then as she got older, she became
a helper at the summer school. And there was a
problem with someone in a swimming pool. You know, they

(36:43):
could have died, and she, as a young teenager, helped
to revive them, and she felt something about what had
happened there. And from then on there was part of
her that definitely wanted to explore, at least the idea
of being a doctor. And she went on and she

(37:03):
did it. She's very bright and very tenacious as well.
And now she qualified years ago, but she's now a
psychiatrist actually, and she said that there are probably two
or three treatable traits in me that should be attended to.

(37:25):
I haven't actually asked what they are, but obviously she
sees traits in me that could do with a little
bit of work. Maybe I'll get one of her friends
to try and psychoanalyze me.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
Or whatever they do.

Speaker 2 (37:39):
I don't know what.

Speaker 1 (37:39):
They do, Okay, unfortunately, or fortunately I know what they do.
But being on the other side of the or being
on the couch, so to speak. But your daughter's obviously
very successful. You're a musician. Is this totally self directed?
Or when she was growing up, were you and your
wife saying, hey, pay attention to your school, do this,

(38:00):
do that?

Speaker 2 (38:01):
No, but she did. She would come home from school
to get her school book books out, and she would
do homework. But what we would do was we would
keep the house quiet, TV's off, you know, we would
try and make it easy for her. But we never
had to say work. The one thing I regret this,

(38:21):
the one thing I did do was one evening she
was singing, and the conversation went along the lines of,
you know, could me and my friends could we make
a record? And I really regret this, but it's a
tough business, you know, and especially perhaps for girl singers

(38:42):
as well. They're very vulnerable and there's so many good
girl singers out there. And I said no, no, no, don't.

Speaker 1 (38:49):
I wish.

Speaker 2 (38:50):
I really regret it, but I said don't. And she
just wanted a bit of fun.

Speaker 1 (38:53):
Really.

Speaker 2 (38:54):
I think she would have liked to have made a
record with her friends. And I don't know, I don't
do that, don't do that. And I wish I'd have
said I'll fix the studio, let's make a record with
you and your pals. I wish i'd done that, But
that was the only time that I kind of closed

(39:14):
her down on something she wanted to do, just because
I was concerned. I knew how often tough it was,
and I was trying to protect her. But the memory
of it embarrasses me.

Speaker 1 (39:24):
You know, Okay, she grows up and you hear about
the progeny of people who are not impressed with the
success of their parents. How did she feel about you
and your success?

Speaker 2 (39:40):
Well, she certainly wasn't impressed when I was young. When
she was young, I'm sorry. I think no, she wasn't
impressed at all. As she's got older. I think first
it became intrigue that people were interested in me. I
think she found that quite interesting herself. Why are they

(40:01):
talking to my dad? Why is this happening? And then
she started coming to gigs and so, you know, she
is a doctor, she's a psychiatrist. She's thirty seven or
something like that, but she comes to gigs. She comes
to festivals with her husband, and sometimes she'd bring the
little baby along as well. She likes festivals and I

(40:24):
think she really enjoys it now. But when she was
a teenager. First of all, I think she was in denial,
and secondly, I think she was a bit embarrassed. Probably
her friends were all parents were all investment bankers and
diplomats or whatever they were. They weren't near rock and
roll singers in the parents group at her school.

Speaker 1 (40:48):
It's only me, okay, from my life, You're the only
person I've ever known named Blundstone. Yes, if you're in
England or are there other Blundstones or does she say
I'm so and sold Blunstone said, oh is your father Colin?

Speaker 2 (41:04):
I think people do say that to her. But there
is only one family, I believe, but most of them
are in the north of the country. My father came
from the north of the country. But if someone's called Blunstone,
then as far as I know, we would be related. Yeah,
but people do say that to her because it's an

(41:25):
unusual name.

Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yeah, okay, So where exactly do you grow up?

Speaker 2 (41:30):
I grew up just north of London in a place
called Hatfield, and I went to school in a place
called Saint Albans, which is four or five miles away,
and that's where all the zombies all went to school.
In Saint Albans and that's the connection.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
Okay, but you know people in America are not that savvy.
From the center of London. How far was the town
that you grew up in.

Speaker 2 (41:52):
Probably about twenty five twenty eight miles quite close.

Speaker 1 (41:56):
And could you take the train in if you wanted to?

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Half an hour on the train.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
And did people in your town did some of them
take the train to go to work?

Speaker 2 (42:03):
Oh? Absolutely, yeah, it was it was commutable.

Speaker 1 (42:06):
Yeah, right, And your parents did what for a living?

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Well, my father really was. He was say, a gentleman's hairdresser.
Some people might say Barbara, that was his trade. Really.
My mom when she was younger, she was a dancer,
but then later on, you know, she worked in offices
and she was a mom. She didn't particularly have a career,

(42:31):
but she was a wonderful personality because she'd been on
the stage, you know. I mean, she would love to
sing at the drop of the hat and was very good.

Speaker 1 (42:39):
Okay, the war has just ended, we hear you know
the metaphor I always say, You know, ultimately in England
went from black and white to color. It was different
in America. So it's nineteen forty five, you're not conscious
but as you become conscious the end of the forties
and early fifties, especially with in retrospect, were there limits

(43:04):
could you feel the hangover the war? Were there things
you couldn't get? What was it like?

Speaker 2 (43:10):
Absolutely, it was very austere in the UK after the war.
I've heard people say that it was tougher after the war.
I mean I was a child, so I wasn't aware
of this, but I've heard people say it was tougher
after the war. And it was during the war and
most things were Russian. So food was ration and you

(43:30):
and you know it really if to see an orange,
you might see an orange at one orange at Christmas,
that would be it. Clothes were rationed, Petrol was rationing,
so you know, you could only use so much pet
petrol in a week. You had you had a ration
book and you could only use so much petrol. And
I think butter was Russian. It was quite tough. And

(43:51):
on top of that from people have told me, I
think it was nineteen forty eight, it was a very
very bad winter and it's very hard to get hold
of coal to heat your house, so it was tough
in the late forties and fifties. And I think that's
part of the reasons why the sixties exploded in such
a way, because we were just coming out of that

(44:13):
post war austerity in the late fifties and into the sixties,
it was still a hangover. If you drove up to
London in the fifties, there were huge areas that where
it had been bombed that were just there were no
houses there, and you knew why there were no houses
there because that lort Ha got bombed.

Speaker 1 (44:36):
Okay, you're an only child. Some only children, all the
wholes dreams of the parents are invested. They say how
great they pushed the kid. Other family if they treat
the kid more as an adult. What was your experience
growing up?

Speaker 2 (44:51):
Well, I was very supported and loved growing up. I
was so fortunate. I really loving parents who just wanted
the best for me. Really, that's all. I don't think
they were over ambitious because they were in a way.

(45:16):
Not to talk down about them, they were wonderful people,
but they were working class people and so they just
wanted me, wanted me to be happy. Really, that was it.

Speaker 1 (45:27):
Okay, you're going to school, you know, in America, public
school is one thing, and in the UK public school's
private school. But it was a regular government school, right, yes,
And what was that like?

Speaker 2 (45:42):
It was fine. I went to a nice local school
up till eleven and I could walk to school, and
they were quite interested in music. Not guitars or rock
and roll, but there was an interest in music. And
I established actually even then that I had a little
bit of a boy as a young boy. They got
me to sing some solo pieces, but that kind of

(46:06):
faded away. I forgot that that wasn't going to lead
to a career in a rock and roll band at
eleven in those days, and in some areas in the
country they still do this. They have an exam it's
called the eleven plus and if you pass that exam,
you go to a more academic school. And I went
to a more academic school. I went to Saint Albans
Grammar School in St Albans. It was an all boys

(46:28):
school and I got a shock because there were a
lot of bright people there and I, you know, I
certainly wasn't amongst them. I was very average. But it
was a good school. And also I discovered a love
for sport while I was there, and I probably did

(46:49):
too much sport. I should have been at home, helping
out at home really, but you know, every night I
would stay on and do one sport or another, and
I loved it. And then at about fifteen, the guy
in front of me, we were it's a strict school,
and we were arranged enough better ordered by our surnames.
No one ever called us by a Christian names. And

(47:11):
the guy in front of me was a guy called Arnold,
Paul Arnold and Colin blunts and sat behind him. And
he turned around to me and he said, I've got
a mate who's putting a band together. Yeah, you've got
a guitar, haven't you? And I said, yeah, I have
got a guitar actually, And he said, do you want

(47:33):
to be in the band? And that basically was that's
my audition for the Zombies.

Speaker 1 (47:37):
Okay, let's go back. You say you're a very average
student when you're less than eleven. Are you someone who's
more of a loner or are you someone who has
a lot of friends? What kind of kid are you? No?

Speaker 2 (47:51):
I think I had I had, I had friends. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (47:55):
And then in your house, your mother was a dancer.
Did they play music in the house?

Speaker 2 (48:01):
Not an awful lot, No, But any excuse she would
sing and dance. I don't remember, but she had five brothers.
I used to go a lot to my grandparents' house,
which was about ten miles away, but like two or
three nights a week. I don't quite understand how we
got over there in those days. We didn't always have

(48:22):
a car. It would have to be on the bus.
But we went there a lot. And my mother had
five brothers and they all played instruments. Most of them
played two or three instruments really well, sort of semi professional,
And so I heard a lot of music in that house.
At Christmases were wonderful. They would do a fanfare for
the Christmas pudding to come through. It'd be two trombones

(48:45):
and a trumpet. And then after the meal we'd have
a we had a dance band, so we we would
we would experience live music when these guys you know,
chose to play it was. It was wonderful. But I
don't remember an awful lot of the radio. BBC Radio

(49:07):
didn't play a lot of contemporary music. They would play
like light classics or else it was talk music. It
wasn't till the till the Pirates came about and they
were playing records and the beeB had to compete and

(49:28):
so then they started playing records too. The BBC before that,
they didn't play records for one reason or another, one
being that the musicians' union was very strong and they
didn't want records played. They wanted musicians to be employed
to play live music. And it used to be called
needle time. BBC only had so much needle time when

(49:48):
they could play records. It's very old fashioned and very
different to radio here. Now, we followed you very much
and it's it's similar over there to the radio set
up here.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Let's go back a step. You say you go to
I think it was Saint Albans, the second school, and
you become very interested in sport. So what sports did
you play and how good were you?

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Well, my favorite sport was rugby, and for the first
rehearsal when I turned up, Paul Arnold asked me to
go along to rehearsal on a Saturday morning. On the
Wednesday afternoon, I broke my nose playing rugby quite badly
and my nose was nearly in my ear and they
I had to go to hospital and they'd strapped me

(50:44):
with white tape across the face and I had two
black eyes. And I turned up for the first rehearsal
and they were scared of me. What surprised time would
have been scared to. Rhodes told me that we were
standing on this street corner. Paul Arnold is the only
guy I know from my school. Rod had got some

(51:06):
guys from another school, so the other people didn't know me.
And Rod was standing under his breath. God, don't say that,
rough guy, And it was me. Yeah, but yes, I
love to play rugby. I would have loved to have

(51:26):
been a good rugby player, but I wasn't really good enough.
I was a sprinter, so I was very fast. You know,
it seems silly to say this now, but I was
a schoolboys sprint champion at school of the County, which
would perhaps be like the state. And actually I had
a national trial at basketball, believe it or not, because

(51:49):
basketball is not a big sport in the UK, and
that's probably why I got a national trial because there
weren't many other people. There weren't many many other people
playing it, so they were the three sports that I play, Rugby,
athletics and basketball.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Okay, you talk about the BBC not playing records, but
in the fifties rock and roll starts to happen. You
have Rocket Ada, you have Rock around the Clock, you
have Elvis, you have Little Richard. Is this on your radar?

Speaker 2 (52:19):
It is, and it's always intrigued me. Where did I
hear it? I used to, at quite a young age,
hang out at this sort of cafe place that had
a jukebox. That was one place I heard it. They
occasionally played things on the BBC, but it's really not
very much, but I was aware of it. Elvis especially.

(52:43):
I don't even think we had a record player at
home when I was really younger. Later we did, but
I heard Elvis's early records. So the three for me
that got me interested were Elvis, Little Richard, and Chuck
Berry and I I just thought they were one for
all Americans. And this is the thing I always say

(53:04):
to American people is that British musicians always want to
come to America. It's the home of the blues, jazz,
rhythm and blues and rock and roll. This is where
it all happened, and British musicians always want to come here,
and nearly always they get interested in music through American musicians.

(53:24):
Maybe not always, but mostly they do. And certainly my
generation did.

Speaker 1 (53:30):
Okay, how did you end up with a guitar? Well?

Speaker 2 (53:33):
I loved the kind of people we're talking about, and
then later on very much. Ricky Nelson was huge for me,
and Buddy Holly.

Speaker 1 (53:42):
Did as an heiot show play. No, it didn't know,
so you didn't get Ricky playing at the end.

Speaker 2 (53:48):
No. I saw occasional clips on the TV. It's it's
a mystery to me how anybody ever heard these songs,
but we did because because we you know, we loved
the music and you just five ways to do it.
I begged for a guitar, and it was a big
sacrifice for my parents to get me a guitar. I

(54:10):
think it cost twelve pounds. It was a famous Atlantis
and I think it was made in East Germany. And
it was quite a nice acoustic guitar and I could
play a few chords on it, you know, I loved
I think my father was a bit worried it was

(54:31):
going to be a three day wonder, but it didn't
work out that way. I loved to play. I would
play for hours on end.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
Okay, how'd you learn?

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Mostly? I taught myself mostly? Yeah.

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Okay, So when Paul Arnold says, hey, these guys are
forming a band. You just played your acoustic guitar at home. Yes,
you didn't play out anywhere. It wasn't like you went
to friend's house and picked up the guitar and they said, oh,
you're the famous guy who plays the guitar.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
No, not very much. I don't think I might have
done it a little bit, but no, I just played
at home and I joined the Zombies as a rhythm guitarist.
Rod Argent was going to be the lead singer, and
at that first rehearsal there was a we we played.
We just played an instrumental called Malaguena. It's like a

(55:24):
classic song that people play. And because it was an
instrumental and Rob was going to be the lead singer,
of course he didn't actually do anything. But there was
a break in the middle of the first rehearsal. We
had a coffee and there was an old, broken down
piano in the corner, and he went over and he
played not Rocker by Bee Bumble and the Stingers, and

(55:50):
he was just so much better than us. We were
really ordinary and I just I've only just met him,
so I wasn't too sure of what his name was,
but I went over. I thought this was quite bold. Actually,
I went over to him and I said, you know,
whatever your name is, you should play keyboards in this band.
You're really good. And he said, no, no, we don't

(56:12):
want keyboards in this band. It's a rock and roll band.
That's three guitars. And he was adamant. And then at
the end of the rehearsal, just as I was putting
my guitar away, I just started singing a little bit
to myself and it was I know, its a Ricky
Narsen song and I think it was it's late, but
I'm not absolutely sure. And he just turned around and

(56:33):
said he heard me singing, and he said, if you'll
be the lead singer, I'll play keyboards. And essentially that
was the Zombies. It was all so so much chance,
you know. I mean, you have conversations like that, you
be the lead singer, and I'll bet you're not thinking
that sixty years later we'll be touring the world and

(56:55):
having had hit records and being inducted in the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame. I said, well, okay, I'll
give it a go, and that was it.

Speaker 1 (57:05):
Really okay, So you had a whole scene in the
UK that didn't happen in America. The skiffle bands. Okay,
when you formed the band, I believe in nineteen sixty one,
was that a thing? I mean, like, after the Beatles
hit in America, everybody here formed the band. Okay, So

(57:25):
in sixty one were a lot of people starting bands
or were you more of the outliers.

Speaker 2 (57:32):
No, there were a lot of people in bands, yeah,
but not skiffle right had come and gone. So it
was it was rock and roll. It would have been
you know, the American greats, and then in the UK
it would have been people like Cliff Richard perhaps and
Joe Brown and Marty Wilde and people like that. But

(57:52):
I think we were more looking towards America. In fact,
as time went by, we renamed the Zombies. Were called
as Zombies R and B for quite a long while
because we were trying to explore the R and B artists.
But then, of course we realized I'm skipping ahead a
bit here, but we realized we had two guys in
the band who could write, and that changed everything.

Speaker 1 (58:15):
Okay, before you get there, yeah, you're playing an acoustic guitar.

Speaker 2 (58:20):
I had a little pickup on him, which my dad
I think someone gave it to me. My dad managed
to stick it onto the guitar. I mean it it
looked very cumbersome, but what do you do for an
e app Well, that first rehearsal, Rod's cousin Jim Rodford,

(58:40):
who was twenty years in the Kinks and then twenty
years in the Zombies as well. Sadly he's passed away
quite recently. But Rod's cousin, Jim Rodford, was in the
big band in Saint Albans who were called the Blue Tones,
and they were really good, and they had all the
Fox equipment and a full drum kit and everything, and

(59:00):
Jim managed to persuade them to let us borrow their
gear on that first rehearsal. So we thought we sounded
pretty wonderful through these ants and drums. Jim much later,
you know, fifty years later, admitted that when he heard
us play and I'm thinking we sound wonderful, Jim was

(59:23):
listening and watching and he thought no chance, no chance.
He'd waited fifty years and he'd only said it in
a very light way. We just died laughing because we
thought we were great. But he thought we were terrible.
Then the next rehearsal we had of course, we didn't
have all their equipment. We had one handmade, broken down

(59:47):
old amplifier that everyone had to plug into, and a
handmade speaker, and our drummer, Hugh Grundy, had two drumsticks
and he played on that. They were his drums, and
I we had a microphone that was like a shot put.
It was really very heavy to hold, and that was

(01:00:07):
a real wake up call. That was our second rehearse
and you think, God, we're hopeless. We haven't got any gear,
and we just It took us a year, you know,
to save and buy bits and pieces before we played
our first little gig at a youth club and again

(01:00:28):
I thought it was fantastic to actually play. And in
the last song, they used to always try and put
the lights down in the last song so they could
do a close dance. And we were doing an instrumental
called Nivram, which is a song from The Shadows, and
there's a bass solo in the middle of the song

(01:00:49):
and when they put the lights down, Paul Arnold at
that time was playing bass and he got onto the
wrong threat because the lights had come down and you
play this whole based solo, a semitone sharp to what
we were playing, and I think it sounded it sounded
very modern, something Miles Davis might have tried.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
You know, it was okay in that year. How many
times are you getting together and at what point do
you guys say we're committed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:26):
I don't remember a discussion about being committed or not,
but most sundays we got together to rehearse. And it
got a bit much for Paul Arnold. He wanted to
be a doctor. He's very aware of having to keep
up on his studies, and so he was the only
guy who left. He's the only guy who escaped. And

(01:01:49):
Chris White turned up.

Speaker 1 (01:01:50):
What happened to Paul Arnold in life?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Became a doctor and he's in Edmonton and we've played
up there quite a few times and he always comes
and we always introduced him to the audience. I think
he really enjoys it. Actually gets the spotlight on him
and he really likes it. And Chris White came and
took over. But it was very interesting. I'm not I
don't really know where Chris White came from exactly. I

(01:02:15):
don't know who approached him. He just arrived, and what
intrigued me was usually bass playing. The Drama are very
tight because they played together well. Chris had been coming
in and playing bass for about five or six weeks,
and Hugh Grundy, our drummer, came up to me and
very quietly whispered in my ear. He said, who's this

(01:02:36):
book who keeps coming in and playing base? I realized
that he'd been coming in for five or six weeks
to play bass, and Hew had never spoken to him,
and he didn't know who he was. And I think
there's something of the Zombies in that that things just
used to happen and no one really knew. No one
really knew why or how. I don't know where Chris

(01:02:59):
came from.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Okay, so playing in B and B. Believe me, I
was never any good. There's always one person who says,
we got to get a gig. They're like the business person.
She happened. Usually this is a drummer. What happened in
the Zombies.

Speaker 2 (01:03:12):
Well, I'm not so sure about We've got to get
a gig? But musically it was always Rod. It was
Rod's but Rod formed the band. It's Rod's band. He's
the leader of the band. He was head and shoulders
better than us musically, and he was the first one
to start writing as well. So the whole musical direction

(01:03:32):
came from Rod. But I think we all knew if
we're going to do this, we have at some point
we've got to we've got to try and perform. And
I think we all tried to get gigs. Really, it
wasn't all down to the drummer as he has been
in your experience. I think we all tried to get gigs.

(01:03:53):
And I remember I got them into some youth clubs
around hat and then I got them into my rugby club.
And this is when you're taking your life into your
because these guys they're quite physical and they drink lots
of beer and a bit crazy, you know, And I
was very relieved. Apart from anything else, they really took

(01:04:17):
to us. And the rugby club dancers used to be
very poorly attended, but it really built up into something.
That's when we started to build a local following at
the rugby club I played for, and then we played
at other rugby clubs as well, and it was really
shortly after that we won a big rock and roll competition.

Speaker 1 (01:04:37):
Before you get there when you're rehearsing, what material are
you playing?

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Well, until we got into the beat until the Beatles happened,
we were trying to get into as much rhythm and
blues and blues as we could, although we did play
pop tunes as well. When we first started, we played
a lot of instrumental but gradually they started to drop out,
and I used to play guitar, you know, But they

(01:05:06):
gradually dropped out, and then we mostly just played songs.
I think they got I think they got a little
bit frustrated because when they played instrumentals and I was
gradually stopping playing guitar. It's really uncool this, but they
would do instrumentals and I get off the stage and

(01:05:27):
dance with a pretty girl. And I don't blame them.
It's very unprofessional, you know. And then at the end
of the song, I'd have to rush back up and
start singing again. So more and more we were just
playing songs.

Speaker 1 (01:05:52):
What happened first, the Battle of the Bands or the Beatles?

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
The Beatles happened first.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
Okay, so tell us about the Beatles. Fabulous, I mean,
how did you hear them?

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
But I think by then the BBC were playing a
few or maybe we were listening to the pirates stations.
You know, they were on ships out in the sea,
and so they weren't regulated by the government. So I
think by then we could we could listen to the music,
and they just took our breath away. They were just sensational,
and they wrote their own songs. They changed everything, and

(01:06:32):
so this is one of the problems we had. Later on,
we'd started playing lots of Beatles songs. Well, if you
have a hit record, you can't your live show can't
be based on another band. So it created a bit
of a problem for us. But I know it was
the Beatles first because in the rock competition that we won,

(01:06:54):
one of the songs we played was you Can't Do That,
which was a B side for the Beatles, a really
good song actually, and that was one of the songs
that we played.

Speaker 1 (01:07:04):
Okay, what is the general tone. Everything happened in America
a year and a half later. Really, the Beatles in
UK is sixty two sixty three. Doesn't happen in America
until sixty four. And then it's a tsunamiavacts Herman Hermon's Billy,
you know Kramer in the Dakotas. You know, you're still

(01:07:28):
trying to make it. Do all these bands start to
have success and are you aware of them?

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
Absolutely? Yeah, But I thought they were in a separate
world to us, and thought never crossed my mind that,
you know, we would be playing some of the same
dates as them, perhaps not the Beatles, but the other ones.
I thought, you know, we'd just keep playing locally. Really,

(01:07:57):
Then we were entered into this rock competition and there
were one hundred bands, but there were ten bands a
night for ten weeks, so I know there are one
hundred bands, and we won our our heat. You know,
it's really surprised, and this is not false modesty. I
thought that was fantastic, you know. And then we got

(01:08:20):
into the final. I believe it. We won it out
of all those bands. And one way or another, and
all the guys in the band remember this differently, but
one way or another, it led to a contract with
Decca Records. From memory, I think it was only for
a single. It wasn't for an album, but we got
the chance to record in Decca studios.

Speaker 1 (01:08:42):
Okay, at what point in this story do you stop
going to school.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
I had just stopped. So Chris White was the oldest
he'd gone to art school and he just finished three
years at art school. And Hugh Grandy were roughly the
same as Rod and I are only ten days apart,
and we had all worked for a few months. I

(01:09:08):
think he was in a bank, Rod was working in
a the offices of a factory, and I was working
in an office as well. None of us had embarked
on huge career projects, you know, So when things started
to happen with the band, it wasn't a hard decision,

(01:09:29):
you know, that we were going to stop doing those jobs.

Speaker 1 (01:09:32):
But everybody finished school.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
Everybody had finished school. Oh no, I'm sorry, Paul Arnold.
Paul Atkinson was a year younger than us, so he
went straight from school into the band, playing professionally.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
Okay, from the time you first started playing out, which
was a year after you first started playing, how long
from then until the one hundred BM competition?

Speaker 2 (01:09:58):
From when we first started playing, well, we first started
playing in sixty one and the band competition was in
sixty four. It was in the spring of sixty four.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Okay, so the first year you just would shedding in
those two intervening years, what are you doing?

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
We're playing anywhere? That would have us anywhere. I remember
playing at what they would call working men's clubs, but
you know, probably older men would go there and drink
beer and talk about the war, probably, and they and
we would play, and they wouldn't want us to play, really,
but we would play anyway. We'd play at schools, we

(01:10:42):
would just play anywhere, at the youth clubs, anywhere that
they would have us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:46):
And were you making any money?

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
It wasn't a money making thing. I think from memory,
I think we would charge six pounds a night. It's
a precise figure. I know that's what we charged, So
that would be seven or eight dollars. But the six
pounds we would use one pound for expenses for everyone
getting there, and the five pounds we would reinvest in equipment,

(01:11:11):
because you know, we still had pretty awful equipment.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):
So by time you go to the one hundred band competition,
what equipment do you have and how good is it?

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
That's an interesting point. We had the equipment that we
recorded She's not there on and some of it was homemade.
But a big thing for us was Rod discovered a
keyboard player called a honer pianette, and up until then
he just had to use whatever piano was there, and

(01:11:43):
we put a microphone in the piano and we'd have
to tune to the piano because often they're tuned down
and you could never really hear him properly. And I
used to gauge how well the band had gone by
how much blood was coming out of his thumb, because
he used to do these Jerry Lee Lewis blisses and
if it was going well, he'd really dig in and
his thumb, you just blood would be dripping out of it.

(01:12:06):
And I think that gig went really well tonight. Look
at Rod's thumb, And that's how we had to do
it until he got this Honer pianette, and that's a
whole different ball game. We could hear him properly. The
unfortunate thing was it had a strange system where it
had arms that used to go down with little stickers

(01:12:27):
on the end of it, and they'd pull off and
that would pull the note. But we would play, especially
at these rugby clubs, it would get very hot and sweaty,
and these stickers wouldn't work properly, and thinking back, I
don't know how people would put up with this, but
so that wouldn't work, so Rob would just say, oh,
we just have to stop for a bit now, and

(01:12:47):
he would get his hair dryer out and take up
the top of the p and dry the stickers. In
the honer, we'd just I don't know what they did.
If it's a rugby club, they'd probably be drinking and
then okay, it's drying out, we start up again. So

(01:13:08):
it had its disadvantages to Honah, because if it was
really hot, it would stop playing.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):
But okay, prior to the one hundred billion gig, how
often are you playing?

Speaker 2 (01:13:23):
I think we play most weeks, and sometimes it would
be Friday and Saturday, but sometimes it might only be once.

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
And did you rehearse it all or just live?

Speaker 2 (01:13:35):
We would rehearse on a Sunday and play on either
a Friday or a Saturday.

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):
Okay, you win the competition. What happens next?

Speaker 2 (01:13:47):
We all remember it differently, but eventually we were introduced
to this guy Ken Jones.

Speaker 1 (01:13:54):
How long after the competition.

Speaker 2 (01:13:55):
It must have just been weeks because she's not there.
Came out July the twenty fourth, nineteen sixty four. My
birthday is June the twenty fourth. Please send big presents
because it's coming up, and I know the record came
up month after my birthday, so it must have all
happened really quickly, and it was a hit quite quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:14:21):
Wait, a little bit slower. So you win the competition.
In the part of the competition is you get a
single deal with Decca, which Ken Jones is now voisted
on you. Do you meet Ken Jones because of that
contrag deal?

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
No, he was a friend of Chris White's uncle. This
is a bit bizarre connection. You know. I didn't know
Chris White's uncle. I didn't know Ryan Jones. But he
sat down and read through all these contracts and he said,
but we can do better than this for you, and
we went with him. He got us to deal with
Decca and it was decided we recorded Decca Studios. And

(01:14:58):
this is how crazy things are. It would seem to
be the cool thing to record. Often they would record
through the night, but we'd started at seven o'clock, so
we're going to record at least through the evening, if
not the night. And we were given a very successful
recording engineer. He had a great track record, but because

(01:15:19):
we started at seven at night, he'd been I know
this sounds bizarre, but he'd been at a wedding all day. Unfortunately,
he was blind drunk when we turned up, but more
than that, he was really aggressive as well. And we
go into the studio at seven o'clock. This guy can
hardly stand and he's shouting and screaming and coming through

(01:15:43):
the headphones really really loud, the language terrible, and I'm thinking,
after about twenty minutes of this, taking into account I've
been in the music business for sixty years. After twenty minutes,
I thought, this isn't for me. This is not for me.
But then we had a luck. He passed out. We
had to carry him out of the studio two flights

(01:16:06):
of stairs up into a black London taxi and actually
I never saw him again, and his assistant took over,
and his assistant was Gus Dudgeon. Really, isn't that bizarre. Yes,
that's Gus Dudgeon's first session ever. He never forgot that,
and it was our first session ever. I never forgot
it either. And in that first session we recorded four

(01:16:29):
or five tracks, four maybe, and one of them is
She's not there.

Speaker 1 (01:16:34):
Okay, let's go a little bit slower. I want to understand.
You won the competition, and with that came the ability
to record. What was the prize exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:16:45):
Well, this is we all disagree on this. If you
if Rod was here, he would tell you pass. The
prize was a deal with Decca, and I'd probably say okay,
because I don't want to argue it's not true. It's
not true. We won two hundred and fifty pounds. But
the interest in having won the competition led us to

(01:17:07):
talking to people. It was sponsored by a big newspaper
and it created an interest. We were introduced to three managers.
I remember apart from Ken Jones. This is the first
time manager. One was definitely a crook and he wanted
to give us drinks and we were so scared of him.

(01:17:27):
We wouldn't have a drink. We would hardly sit down,
and that wasn't going to happen very flash. The second
guy greeted us at his flat door in a silk
dressing gown, and I thought, I don't think this is
really for us. And he floated around and mentioned a
few things, but then he came to the door to

(01:17:48):
see us off, and he locked himself out of his
flat in his silk dressing gown. I thought, if he
can't get that together, he's not going to manage this band.
We had to go around to the back of this
lack of block of flats and they had a system
on hoists for getting dustbins up to the flats and
down like that. I mean, he has it's quite an

(01:18:08):
older gentleman. And to get this older gentleman into this
kind of open box. It had sides on it, but
it didn't have a back in the front, and he
had to crouch down in this thing where the dustbin
would go, and we had to hoist him up to
his flat, which is on the first and the second one.
Bloody dangerous, I think first or second one. I thought, firstly,

(01:18:29):
please don't let me look up and see what's happening
under the silk dressing gown. So I'm definitely looking at
the floor while I'm pulling on this rope. And secondly,
please don't let him manage the band because he can't
even sort out his door key, let alone manager band.
So that that went, and then yeah, we got a manager.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Okay. In the movie it says that Ken Jones says, well,
you know, if you want to write some original material,
and it says Rod goes off and write, She's not there.
What really happened.

Speaker 2 (01:19:05):
It's true. He was giving us a pep talk two
weeks before the session, and this is just a part
of the pep talk. I can't remember what you should rehearse, guys,
this is really important, you know, and you get one
by the Apple. I can't remember what he said, but
in the middle of it he said, you know, you
could always write something for the session, and then went

(01:19:27):
on and spoke about other things. It. You know, I
couldn't think in terms of a band writing their own songs.
I should have, really, because the Beatles had already started
doing that. But Rod and Chris went off and wrote
two songs in the next two or three days. Rod
wrote She's Not There and Chris wrote the B side,
which is a good song too, you Make Me Feel Good.

(01:19:50):
And that was it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Okay, before you went into the studio to cut them,
did you rehearse them?

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
We did. We rehearsed them a lot, and I think
we all thought that they were special songs. Sometimes I
say to myself, but I knew She's Not There was
really special. But I'm going to be really honest with you.
We were in two minds whether She's Not There or
the B side You Make Me Feel Good was the
better song when we were recording it, so it was

(01:20:19):
only afterwards that She's not there was chosen. It's funny,
isn't I mean? Now, of course it's a fantastic song,
you know.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Okay, you record four songs the first night.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Then what happened, Well, the A side was chosen and
it came out very quickly. Things always moved very quickly
back in the sun. How quickly, well, I think it was,
you know, four or five weeks through or four weeks
something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:44):
Okay, the record is done. Let's you know, it's totally different.
I don't know. You're recording the one track back, then
recording mono.

Speaker 2 (01:20:53):
We're recording fast four track.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
Okay, so it's four track, you know, normally forget you're
all playing at the same time.

Speaker 2 (01:21:02):
No, the band played, and then we did the vocals
they did back in vocal Rodin christed, but we're on
one track. Roden Christ did back in vocals, run one
mic and I'm here in the same room at the
same time singing the lead vocal. And of course it's
all one.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
Take, okay, and the instrumental part. Those were on how
many tracks and how many times did it take to
get that?

Speaker 2 (01:21:30):
Oh, it's really quick. I mean, yeah, they might have
done four or five takes, but that would that would
have been it. I think based in drums is on
one guitar and keyboards was on another track, and then
lead vocal and backing vocals were on separate tracks. It

(01:21:50):
was something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
Okay. So I mean, now there's so much equipment, but
you record, then you have to mix. In the modern world,
there's been this way for decades to this point. You
might add compression, you might add weaverb you might take
a whole day to do one song. Okay, so everybody
touched the stuff. Do you remember what it took and

(01:22:13):
when it was that it was mixed down to the single.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
Well, this is a bone of contention with us. Ken
Jones was very strict with us and he would never
let us go to the mixes and so that was
all done. You know, we weren't there, We weren't involved
in the mixes at all. I know, for instance, that

(01:22:36):
he put a lot of compression on She's not there
because people are always talking about the breaths, you know, right,
I can't remember where it comes down. And told me
about her the way she liked that's the thing. And
I mean some of that's real, but some of it
is helped by the compression that's on the track. But

(01:22:57):
I think overall, and she's not there, sounds great. I think.

Speaker 1 (01:23:02):
That's the whole thing. Yeah, it sounds not rough at all.
It sounds very modern to this day.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
I agree with you. I agree with you. But after
that session, I think we always struggled as a band
accepting the mixes, and there were some quite fierce arguments
about why we weren't allowed to go into the mixes.
But that first session and summertime also, I think is
a lovely track, and you made Me feel good. And

(01:23:31):
there was another real punky song that Rod wrote, It's
Alright with Me. We played that really recently. It's mad song,
but it's like a punk song, and all of those
I think, so that was it. I think it was
four tracks and I thought they all sounded great. But
after that we were never really happy with the mixes.

(01:23:52):
And I know, I keep moving forward. But the last
one we did was a cover of Little antonin the
Imperials going Out of My Head, and they mixed it
while we were out of the country. Well, we wouldn't
have been in the mix mixing studio anyway. But anyway,
we came back and we were so disappointed. It had
been no resemblance to how we left it in our minds,

(01:24:16):
and that was the end of our And it was
a fairly friendly breakup with Ken Jones. And that's when
especially Rod and Chris decided they wanted to make an
album with them in the production chair. And that's when
we recorded Odyssey on Oracle. There was no independent producer
in the studio. It was Rod and Chris produced that

(01:24:40):
with the help of the wonderful Abbey Road engineers Jeff
Emerick and Peter Vince, absolutely wonderful engineers.

Speaker 1 (01:24:58):
Okay, let's go back the first night you're recording the
four songs recorded on four tracks. Do they do a
rough mix, you know, instantaneously so you could hear it,
or did you never even hear everybody together?

Speaker 2 (01:25:12):
I think I probably heard a rough idea of it. Yeah,
it is sixty something years.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):
I guess what I'm saying is I'm wondering what the
experience is when you actually hear it, go, Holy fuck,
this is this is unbelievable. Was that after the mix
or never until it became a hit.

Speaker 2 (01:25:33):
I didn't think I ever really felt like that. I'm
trying to remember. I think I thought it was pretty good.

Speaker 1 (01:25:42):
Okay, it comes ounds very it comes out in like
three weeks. Yeah, I mean we're in America, it's different.
It's already hit in England by the time it gets here. Yeah,
how did the ascension on the track? How did it break?

Speaker 2 (01:25:55):
Well, I'll tell you one thing that happened. There was
a TV show in the UK called Jukebox Jury, so
they'd have five stars would vote on whether the particular
record would They would pay play thirty seconds of a
record and then they'd vote whether this is going to
be a hit or a miss. And on the week

(01:26:15):
when She's Not There came out, George Harrison was on
the panel of Jukebox Jury and they played She's Not
There and he loved it. And I remember, and I
won't try and do a Liverpool accent, but I remember
he said, well done, Zombies. Obviously he didn't know us,
he didn't know us from Adam, but he said, well done, zombies.

(01:26:38):
That was a thrill when.

Speaker 1 (01:26:41):
Oh, sure it was.

Speaker 2 (01:26:43):
When George Harrison said She's Not There was a good
record well, blimey, yeah, that really took my breath away.

Speaker 1 (01:26:54):
Okay, it was on TV. That's a huge step. But
when did it start to become successful really quickly?

Speaker 2 (01:27:01):
It's funny because I don't think Deca were particularly keen
on it. I don't know. I'm sure they weren't, but
it was a hit very quickly. Funnily enough, it came
out in America about three months later on Parrot on
Parrot and London Records who owned the Parrot, they weren't

(01:27:22):
keen on it either, But although it came out later,
it was a hit quite quickly in America as well.
It's funny, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
The record is a hit. This was a lark. Yes, yeah.
What's going through your mind? And what happens?

Speaker 2 (01:27:41):
I think when you're young, you see, I don't know
the answer to that question, but I think when you're
young you take an awful lot for granted. It's you know,
you just get on with it, don't you. Really. So
one day you're an amateur band playing at the local
rugby club and the next day, inexplicably, you're on huge tours.

(01:28:05):
They used to these package tours in the UK, and
our management company was very involved in that. So shortly
after we played the old Varion Alium's rugby club, and
where Rod's drying his keyboard with the hair with the
hair dryer, We're touring with the Searchers, Deal Morriic and

(01:28:26):
the Isisley Brothers and some other artists as well around
some of the major venues in the UK. Wasn't a
big gap and we just had to get on with it.

Speaker 1 (01:28:39):
How was the reception in those multi gig tours insane?

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
I often said that, certainly for the first couple of years,
I needn't a bothered singing at all. Really, I don't
think anybody heard anything very very noisy on those tours.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
How many songs would you play?

Speaker 2 (01:29:01):
Not many? Two or three? Four? Maybe?

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
Okay, So now the records are hit, how often are
you working?

Speaker 2 (01:29:12):
We were working at a lot, working all the time,
and at the same time the pressure's on from Decca Records.
We need another single in six weeks and that was
all the time we were with Decca. Another single in
six weeks. But the problem we had was the challenge
that we had was that Rod Argent and Chris White

(01:29:33):
had only just discovered that they could write songs, so
they didn't have a back catalog of songs, and they're
trying to write as we're going along, but we're touring
all the time, so there wasn't much time. The pressure
really went on for a follow up, and Rod had nothing,
and Chris White had one song and it was a

(01:29:55):
song called leave Me Be, and none of us thought
instead of hope and hell, of being a single. But
we we didn't understand enough about the record industry to
dig our heels in and say, well, you'll just you'll
have to wait, And so leave Me Be was released.
Unfortunately it wasn't a hit, and it's it just seems

(01:30:15):
so such a short sighted way of doing things that
Decker would put the pressure on like that. It's almost
you know that in a very short period of time
your career is going to be over because they want
singles all the time, and no one can keep producing
singles self for what's the word, I can't think there's an.

Speaker 1 (01:30:36):
Extreme fulfilling prophecy.

Speaker 2 (01:30:38):
Self fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, you can't keep putting out singles
every six Well, I mean, I suppose the Beatles did,
but they were the exception. We certainly couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:30:49):
So how does tell her no come to be recorded.

Speaker 2 (01:30:55):
I you know, we were kept on by Decker even
though we'd had this flop record, And again we were
recording through the night, and I can't remember how many
other songs we recorded, but I remember how one of
the trigger for writing that song for Rod because we

(01:31:17):
toured with Dean Morrick and she was singing a lot
of Bert Baccarak songs and Rob was really impressed with
those songs and the kind of chords that they've made
up those songs. He's not copying anything in the songs,
but he's just I can hear it now, Yeah, tell

(01:31:37):
her those sounds like a really simple song, and melodically
it is, but if you get someone to try and
play it, it's not simple. It's not simple at all.
And he'd used the idea of some of those chords
from Burt Bacharak, So that's how that came about. Again,
we were recording late, and as it happens, they did

(01:31:59):
all the tracks first, and I fell asleep and they
woke me up to same tell him, and I went
up there and I sang it, but the second chorus
I was still half asleep, and the second chorus I
just mumbled my way through it, but I kept going.
And then I went into the control room aarters and
I said to Kenja's I'm really sorry. You know, I

(01:32:22):
just mumbled through that second chorus. I mean, can you
drop me in and I'll just do that. Don't worry
about that. That's fine, that's fine. And obviously he understood
the record industry better than me, because there's a mumbled
second chorus. The record went to number six in America
and pretty much sold a million copies, so he understood

(01:32:42):
it better than I did.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
Okay, so now you have the success, when's the first
time you get a check?

Speaker 2 (01:32:53):
Well, I know we were getting checks. It's funnily enough,
I don't. I think we did quite well out of
the records, not thousands and thousands, but enough to live.
But I remember getting checks more for time of the
season than I do for.

Speaker 1 (01:33:11):
I'm actually asking question less about the checks. You're just
dirt bags hanging out in your hometown. Now you have
a hit record. When you go back home, there are
people who love you, and there are people will hate you.
I mean, you come back the conquering heroes.

Speaker 2 (01:33:29):
Exactly what you said. I think there were people that
admired us, but you know, a lot of young guys
could be problems. And I can remember, this is my
sort of attitude to it. Always it's not going to
change me. This is not But it's really naive to
think like that because it changes other people. Doesn't matter
whether you change or not, they change. And I used

(01:33:52):
to love to go to the rugby clubs. I'd love
to go to the pub and have a few pints
and some guy becoming up, who do you think you are?
Before you know where you are? You know, they're rolling
their sleeves up and they want to fight, you know.
So yeah, there were a few challenges locally. I was

(01:34:13):
never a very good fighter, but I did get involved
in a few fights. And I can't fight my way
out of a paper bag. I think famously at Rod's
twenty first, he sort of turned away for a minute
and I got in a fight. He said, I turned around,
You've got one sleeve pulled off your pullover and blood
streaming down your nose. I need to turn around for
a second. And this guy, you know, just to get

(01:34:35):
him frisky, and you're off. So there was a little
bit of that.

Speaker 1 (01:34:39):
What'd your parents say?

Speaker 2 (01:34:42):
I think my parents they weren't too keen on the fighting.
But I think my parents are immensely proud actually, and
I'm very encouraging. You know. They were wonderful people.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Okay, so what point did you start discussing going to America.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
It was quite soon, I guess when it was a
hit record. I know when we arrived here. We arrived
here just before Christmas nineteen sixty four, and we played
Murray the Kay's Christmas Show and we opened on Christmas
Day and we would play six, seven, eight shows a day,

(01:35:21):
but you only played two tunes, and there was fourteen
or sixteen acts Shangri Las, Dean Warwick again, Benny King,
the Charell's, Chuck Jackson, lots of wonderful life, and we
had to follow Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells. How would

(01:35:41):
you remember, We've only just come into the business and
we're standing in the wings watching herb bring the house down.
They were wonderful and we had to follow them. But
it was okay, it was all right. And that was
a little bit of a nerve wracking moment. I've got
to be honest, But okay, all those acts are there

(01:36:05):
at the Brooklyn Fox. Are you all hanging together being friends. Yes,
to a large extent we were. There was great camaraderie
backstage because although we are abroad, you know, we're British
and there American. We opened on Christmas Day. They're away
from their families on Christmas Day the same as we are.
So yeah, they were very supportive and there was really

(01:36:26):
great camaraderie backstage for the most part.

Speaker 1 (01:36:29):
How what was it being in America.

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):
It's very different. I was thinking about it on this
trip over here. Now America and the UK are much
more similar now, but then it was very very different.
Got off the plane and we're walking into you know
where you show your passports and everything. This guy's got
a bloody gun. He's got a gun. I've never seen

(01:36:53):
a gun before. It was really scary. Anyway, this is
what happened to me. My mom never quite got into
the swing of me being in a band and everything
like that. So we went to the airport. There were
lots of people seeing us off at the airport. She
fought her way through and gave me a pack lunch

(01:37:14):
with an apple to take on the plane. And so
I think I had eaten the sandwiches, but I hadn't
eaten the apple. So the man with the gun opens
my bag. He took my mom's apple out of my
bag and he ate it in front of me. I thought,

(01:37:35):
this is really not very cool. Anyway, I kept quiet.
He got a gun, and then the next guy I
spoke to took me off out of the line and
he had a gun too. Took me off out of
the line. I'm in trouble. He walked me across the
hall and into a phone booze and made a phone call,

(01:37:57):
and he said, this is my daughter. Would you just
say hello to I thought I was going to be arrested.
So that was that was our entry into America. And
then we were met by two big Cadillac or Lincoln
limousines and run to the airport. And the next day

(01:38:18):
the record company sent us the bill for the You know,
I would have taken the subway if I'd known we're
going to be built for them. So that then that
was our entry into America.

Speaker 1 (01:38:33):
Okay, you go back. I assume you tour until you
come back to go on the Dick Clark tour.

Speaker 2 (01:38:41):
M I don't remember too much about what happened when
we went back to the UK, but yes, we came
back and toured on the Dick Clark Tour, which but
because with Mary the Kay we'd just been in New
York and I think we played on the first Hullablue
TV show. Jack Jones was the compare. The New Christian

(01:39:05):
Minstrels were on there, and you know, and we were
on there, and then we went home and we came
back for the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars and we
were on a bus for for six weeks with Del
Shannon and the ad Libs, the Valvelettes, lots of wonderful acts.

(01:39:31):
Well I've forgotten who some of them were. Now, isn't
it awful?

Speaker 1 (01:39:38):
Okay? But you're on the you know, it's different now
many acts prefer a bus to going commercial plane anyway,
but they have these births. You're going on a regular
bus and you got to sit there and you got
to sleep on the bus. What's that like?

Speaker 2 (01:39:54):
It was tough, I tell you, because some of the acts,
I mean, we weren't being paid very much. But some
of them we've been paying so little that they couldn't
afford a hotel every night. So on alternate nights we
would leave the gig as slowly as possible, and they
would drive through the night very slowly, so we'd we'd
sleep on the bus but in regular seats, you know,

(01:40:18):
and and we'd arrive and hope that we could get
into the hotel the next night. So it was it
was challenging. But we were young, but it was it
was quite tough.

Speaker 1 (01:40:30):
Okay. So the American perspective is, we're just living our lives.
The Beatles hit, there's a British invasion, you're part of that.
We see you as equal to all the other racks. Okay,
did it feel like that to you?

Speaker 2 (01:40:49):
We weren't. I think that. I think there were there
were the top, the top ones, you know. I mean
obviously the Beatles were that they were on their own,
the Stones probably, and then there are other ones that,
funnily enough, were really successful here that weren't so successful
in the UK. So Herman's Hermits were huge here. We

(01:41:11):
played with them and I saw the audience reaction they got,
but they weren't so big in the UK. The Dave
Clark five weren't so big in the UK as they
were here, and we weren't on a par with them,
So it was kind of like a league, you know,
they were the top ones, and I think we were Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:41:31):
Well, yeah, you were seen as top tier from the
American perspective. So you go on the second American tour
that's sixty five. In the movie the documentary, you talk
about going to the Philippines. When does that happen?

Speaker 2 (01:41:46):
That was towards the end of the band. That was
in sixty seven, and it.

Speaker 1 (01:41:51):
Was wait, wait, wait, so let's not go there. Okay,
walk me through what happens between the Dick Clark tour
leading up to the end of the band.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Well, I think that in many ways things were slipping.
The records weren't charting, well, they were charting, but very
low down, you know. And also I think that we
concentrated or put our attention too much towards the UK

(01:42:22):
and America. These are the charts that we followed. Because
when the band finished, we realized that the Zombies always
had a hit somewhere in the world the whole time
we're together, which seems insane, but there was no Internet
in those days, and often you might you might never
find out that you'd had a hit, but you also

(01:42:43):
might find out months later that you'd had a hit,
And of course you would have liked to have been
there to promote it and maybe hopefully play some dates,
you know, but we never knew. The Zombies always had
a hit somewhere, but they didn't know it, and so
so it seemed as though that most awful of things

(01:43:03):
in Koreas, if you like, we started at the top
and then gradually slipped down the pole, you know, even
though I think we were getting better as a band,
there was that last record going out of my head.
Because we were in America a lot we knew songs
that were hits here that people in the UK didn't know,

(01:43:26):
and that was one it hadn't been a hit, and
I thought we did a really good version of it,
and the mix was horrendous, and it was at that
point we just couldn't work with Ken Jones anymore. And
again I was kind of on the periphery of this
because to some extent, the writers Rod Argent and Chris
White were senior members of the band, if you like,

(01:43:50):
and a lot of the negotiations were done with them.
I don't even know if they realized that, but it
was the case. We ended up getting a one record
deal with CBO.

Speaker 1 (01:44:00):
Yes, just to be clear, this is before or after
the Philippines. This is just after the phillip So tell
us what happens in the Philippines. Well, it's an extraordinary experience.
We were asked if we wanted to go to the Philippines.
I'd be honest with you. I didn't really know where
the Philippines was, and I thought we would go there

(01:44:24):
and be playing. It was it was called the Aaronetta
Coliseum where we were going, and I thought, maybe that's
a hotel and we'd play in the foyer in the
evenings and we'd sit on the beach and the day.
I thought we were going for ten days, and I
thought it would be fun. You know, this is my feeling.
I think at the time the contracts were actually being
sent to me. No one else wanted to do that.

(01:44:46):
It just had to sign it.

Speaker 2 (01:44:47):
That wasn't doing anything other than signing contracts. And so
we arrived there at three I think someone bought the
cheapest ticket flight you could ever do. So we're flying
to the Philippines and stopped in Paris, then Rome, then
in the Middle East, then on both sides of India,

(01:45:08):
and then in Hong Kong, where we had a seven
hour layover and then we flew to Manila. You can imagine.
I can't it was like thirty hours, or maybe that's
an exaggeration. It was a long time, but you know,
it probably was thirty It was a long time. Probably
could have got there on a bike faster. Anyway, we
arrive at three o'clock in the morning. There are thousands

(01:45:29):
of people at the airport, so I'm thinking there must
be someone famous on this plane. I'm getting off the plane,
I'm looking over them. I'm looking backwards over my shoulder
to see who was on the plane. And then they
start putting up flowers and things around our neck, and
I can see there's like a movie newsreel camera thing filming.

(01:45:53):
It was totally unprepared for this filming us. And we
go to the aeron Aaronessa Coliseum and at the time,
I believe it was the second biggest call it arena.
There was one in Texas that was bigger. There was
like a hotel at the back and a restaurant where
we stayed. It was huge, and we opened to twenty

(01:46:16):
eight thousand people. Now those figures might not be absolutely accurate,
but that's what I was told. I can tell you
it was a shedload of people. It was big. We
stayed for ten days. That was a Friday night. The
Saturday we played a matin eight of fifteen thousand, and
Saturday night we played to thirty two thousand, and it

(01:46:37):
went on roughly like that for the whole ten nights. Sadly,
we were being paid eighty pounds a night, out of
which we had to play a manager and an agent,
so we were probably playing for about five pounds each
a night to twenty eight thousand people or thirty two
thousand people on the Saturday night. And you know, we

(01:47:01):
have never been people who are particularly motivated by money.
But it just starts to get a bit ridiculous. You know,
we've got the non writers, have got no money anyway,
We're playing this huge venue in getting nothing, and it
it just it turned very strange. We asked the promoter
there who his name was, Aaronetta. It was his coliseum.

(01:47:22):
He had a private army, you know, and he wanted
to keep us in there. It's unbelievable, you know, very
much in their power. He got our passports, he had
armed guards who were used to circular and he wanted
us to stay inside there. But we met people because
there was a hotel and restaurant backstage. Lots of people

(01:47:43):
would come backstairs and they would ask us to pass this,
and we would go out in the boot of the
trunk of their cars. These people had submachine guns on
the doors of the stadium, so we would go out
to passes and things like that. But at the end
of the ten days we said, well, we'd like to stay,
and we'd like to I didn't actually speak to him,
but I know they asked for a couple of guys.

(01:48:06):
Tour manager and someone else in the band asked for
one thousand dollars a night and fifty percents at all,
and you kicked him out and said, look, I paid
for your flights here, I'm paying for your flights back,
off you go. You know. So it got very difficult.
We managed to get our passports back, but he made
it very uncomfortable for us being in the Philippines. We

(01:48:28):
went to Hong Kong whilst another promoter and tried to
get us some dates, and eventually he managed to get
us some dates. We went back to the Philippines and
the first gig we got we were playing two on
the first night. It was at the club called the
Nile Club, and it was sort of the place to be.
We'd sound checked, we'd had a meal, We're going to
go on stage, and they said, sorry, you can't play,

(01:48:50):
and it was very obvious they'd been threatened. So we
didn't play. The second We went on to the second
place and we did play, and in the morning we
got on a plane to fly to another island. We
got a newspaper and that second club burnt down in
the night. Now I'm not like, maybe it was a coincidence,

(01:49:13):
but that's that's what happened in the Philippines. The audiences
were wonderful the Philippine and people were wonderful. But we
just got involved in a very strange setup, and it
was it was very difficult, Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:49:29):
In the movie, which I keep referencing, you talk about
playing a gig for almost no money and then talking
to the promoter, promoter says, you know, it's too expensive
to have you back. Who was getting the money?

Speaker 2 (01:49:44):
Well, I mean, in some ways I wonder whether I
didn't say too much. And and but remember when you
see the movie, I might have been talking for an
hour and a half when I get to that bit,
because no one's alive now that we're talking about so
they can't speak, They can't give their side of the argument,

(01:50:09):
you know, but it is true. I was talking when
I spoke to a promoter and I'm just the place
was heaving. This is back in the UK. The place
was heaving, and I said, I see you next time.
It won't be a next time. What is it? Why's
that you're too expensive? I knew what we remember, I said,
I was signing the contracts. No one else wanted to

(01:50:31):
do it. I knew what we were getting and I said, well,
what did you pay for us? And he told me
and it was three and a half times what we
were getting. But listen, I don't want to get into
too much details.

Speaker 1 (01:50:43):
Well who do you think was getting the money?

Speaker 2 (01:50:47):
Well, I can certainly tell you it wasn't us. Who
do you think was getting the money?

Speaker 1 (01:50:55):
Do I think it's usually the manager who takes the money?

Speaker 2 (01:50:58):
Well you said that, not me?

Speaker 1 (01:51:00):
Okay, Just moving on. You're recording Odyssey and Oracle for CBS.
Forget with hindsight when you're making it. Is it a
good experience? Do you think it's good? Or the band
is running on fumes? Let's just finish the record. What
was going on?

Speaker 2 (01:51:19):
Well, again, I think we remember this differently. I'm a
herd Rod say that we knew the band was going
to finish, and we felt that we would like to
make an album before the band finished. I didn't feel
like that. I thought the band was still going. But
that's not an argument with him. We just remember it differently,
you know, I really enjoyed it. We had a really

(01:51:42):
small budget. We had one thousand pounds from CBS, and
somehow we managed to get into Abbey Road Studios, which
was called EMI Studios at the time. It's in a
road called Abbey Road, but it was called EMI Studios,
but we weren't on EMI, and as far as as
I know, very few or no non EMI artists had

(01:52:06):
ever recorded in Abbey Road. So I don't know how
we got in there, because it was at the time
was definitely the best studio in the country. Because we've
got a really small budget, we rehearsed really extensively before
we went in. We knew what songs we were going
to record, and what key and what the arrangement was.
We're just looking for a performance and we went in

(01:52:28):
and named check these engineers before I think it was
mostly Pietervince, but Emeric certainly helped was recording as well,
and he actually engineered Time of the Season. Jeff Emeric,
and of course he worked with the Beatles and later
on with Paul McCartney, and I remember it as a
really good experience. We recorded quite quickly and I thought

(01:52:52):
it sounded pretty good. The only time there was a
little bit of tension was actually on Time of the Season.
It was the last song that was written for the album,
and it was the last song that was recorded, and
we hadn't really fully rehearsed that particular song. It was
finished in the morning before we recorded it, and Rod
was trying to guide me through the phrasing of the song.

(01:53:14):
And he's in the control room, and of course all
the engineers and the band and everyone is in there,
and I forgot that I've got the headphones on. He's
trying it. No, Colin, can you be more on the
beat with that phrase? Can you push this? Can you
do it? And in front of me, I've got a
big clock. I know we're running out of time and
we're running out of money, and there was a red light,
big red light underneath the studios live it's running out

(01:53:38):
of time, and I'm getting more and more fraught, and
the language between us is getting worse, and I forget,
there's all other people, it's not just me and all
the other people in there, and I can't really say
the language. But it came to the point was listen,
if you're so good, you come in here and you

(01:53:59):
sing it. And he said to me, you're the bloody
lead singer, your bloody stand there till you get it bloody, right,
But it wasn't bloody that he was saying. And it's
always made me smile because at the same time as
we're having this kind of back and forth, I'm singing
is the time of the season for love thing? And

(01:54:24):
in between doing this, it's you bloody get that freak,
come on, get it on the beat? Why can't you?
And yeah, that was the background for that track. That
was the only bit of tension, though otherwise I remember
it as great fun.

Speaker 1 (01:54:48):
So how does the BM break up?

Speaker 2 (01:54:52):
Well, we were by now a single was released and
they are in the UK. It was still a singles market.
It was moving towards albums, but at this point it
was still singles were all important, and CBS released care
of Sale forty four, which I thought was probably one

(01:55:14):
of all the most commercial track on the record, but
it was nothing happened. A couple of nice reviews, one DJ,
quite a famous DJ, really loved the album, a guy
called Kenny Everett, who was very successful in the UK.
But the media no interest in the album, all, the
single at all, and it just seemed as though, you remember,

(01:55:38):
we just had this experience in the Philippines which was
really scary. The three non writers were broke by now.
We didn't have a manager, we didn't have an agent.
I remember we went and talked to an agent and
I could tell he wasn't really interested in us at all,
and everything seemed to be pointing towards it's time to

(01:55:58):
move on guys. You know, Rod called a meeting at
his flat. He shared a flat with Chris White, and
the first thing that happened was Paul Atkinson said, guys,
I've just got married. I have to get a job.
I haven't got any money. And then from memory, Rod said, look,
if Paul's leaving, I think we should finish the band.

(01:56:21):
And I've always been embarrassed I didn't say anything. I
wish i'd have said something, but I didn't say anything,
and that was it.

Speaker 1 (01:56:29):
It was hard to feel.

Speaker 2 (01:56:31):
I felt deflated, sad, devastated, depressed. I didn't have a plan.
B I didn't know what the hell I was going
to do. I remember driving home feeling very lonely. Yeah,
it was it was over.

Speaker 1 (01:56:50):
How long until you end up working in the insurance place?

Speaker 2 (01:56:54):
Fairly soon. It was two or three months. I actually
heard my parents discussing my future from another room, and
you know, they would have I need never have worked.
They would have supported me if they possibly could have. Well,
I mean they I don't know if they could have really,
but I did. My dad say, well, you know, just

(01:57:15):
because he's been in a band, he can't just sit
around doing nothing for the rest of his life. He's
got to do something. So I started getting on the
phone and I literally took the first job I was offered.
People always laugh at I ended up in it. I
don't know anything about insurance. I ended up in an
insurance company. But the first I went to three interviews,

(01:57:39):
and the first one it was for a sales director.
I thought this sounds pretty good sales. I could see
myself in a slick suit, you know, maybe with a
company car, and so a friend of mine drove me up.
It's quite a long way to go there. I thought
we'd make a day of it, and so I was relaxed.
We went to the pub first and had a few beers.

(01:58:00):
So I see, I was very inexperience, in naive. I
would have smelled of beer when I went in for
this interview. And also I was very keen on making
eye contact. And this guy said, you do realize if
you get this job, we would have to work together.
Obviously he thought I had some kind of you know,
mental violent problem or something. And then just as I

(01:58:25):
was getting up to leave, he said, and how would
you feel about selling ladies lingerie at retail? I thought
I was going to be a director of sales of something,
but it was selling ladies underwear into shops. I'm really
quite relieved I didn't get that job. So people laugh

(01:58:46):
at I'd got a job in insurance. I could have
been selling ladies underwear. You know, I didn't get that.
I went for a second interview and the guy, I mean,
I was just very naive if some kind of electric
putting alarms into factories, And he said, tell me in
your own words, why do you want this job? And

(01:59:08):
I said to him, well, I don't really want it.
He said, let me stop me there, you won't get
this job. But no one's ever said that before. Would
you just stay and talk to me for a while.
I'm quite interested. So we had a nice chat. I
was just being open and honest to him. I didn't
want the job. I needed a job. If he said

(01:59:29):
why do you need this job? I would have answered
it differently anyway. And then there was a job advertising insurance,
and I don't think anybody else wanted to work in insurance.
You know they were desperate.

Speaker 1 (01:59:40):
Okay, so what is it like? You know this is
reference in the documentary You're there, everybody else ses. He
is the lead singer of the Zombies.

Speaker 2 (01:59:49):
It was a tricky moment the first time I walked
into the insurance company, because they did all sort of
stare a bit. But there's not only lasted for a
day or two. But the real tricky moment for me
was the first time I had to answer the phone.
I know nothing about insurance, absolutely nothing, and some of

(02:00:10):
the accounts were worth millions. Very quickly I was given
the British Army has social clubs and I don't know
what it stands for, but everyone knows them as NAFFI.
I don't know what that stands for, but it's the
social clubs for the British Army. And they had the

(02:00:31):
insurance for it, so I would imagine that's worth millions
and millions of pounds. They gave that to me and
the women. The woman who phoned me about it, you know,
she was saying, using insurance terms, I couldn't tell you
what it was all about, and she sucked me out. Really,
I tried. I'm quite a good bluffer. I tried to

(02:00:55):
give the impression I knew what I was talking about,
but I only lasted about five minutes. She would talk
to me after that. But I did handle some big
accounts and I did manage to bluff it.

Speaker 1 (02:01:06):
How long did you last there?

Speaker 2 (02:01:09):
Well, the time of the season started going up the
charts after about six months, and so every second call
I got was from record companies and producers saying, you
want to make records again because no one was interested
when the Zombies finished. And I must admit, you know,
I wasn't a person who got on the phone and pushed,
but then the phone started ringing and a guy called

(02:01:30):
Mike Hurst, who was a very successful producer at the time.
He produced the early Cat Stevens records. I'm not sure
if there hits in America, but Matthew and Son we.

Speaker 1 (02:01:42):
All knew them. They weren't not regular radio hits, but he.

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):
Was big well, they were huge hits in the UK.
And then he wanted to produce me, and I wasn't
I was still devastated about the Zombers. I wasn't sure
if I wanted to try again. But he said, look,
I tell you what. I'll get Olympics, which is where
the Stones used to record in Barns. I'll get that.
I'll put some tracks together and you come along after

(02:02:08):
the office and put some vocals on the tracks and
let's see what happens. And he got the idea of
re recording She's not there. That's bit of a strange idea,
but I didn't know if it was going to lead anywhere,
so I just said, well, okay, we'll do it. And
then somehow I ended up with this name, Neil MacArthur,

(02:02:29):
and I've seen him quite recently and I always thought
it was his idea that I was Neil MacArthur. He
thought it was my idea. So where that came from
I don't know. But I ended up recording under the
name of Neil MacArthur, a re recording if She's not there,
and it was a hit in the UK and I
was back in the music business. No one was more

(02:02:50):
surprised than me or Neil. Neil was surprised too that
it had happened.

Speaker 1 (02:02:56):
Okay, just go back a step. How do you find
out the time of the season is catching on?

Speaker 2 (02:03:03):
People started calling me. I didn't believe them to start with.
I thought the Zombies was over. I think maybe Paul
Atkinson was calling me some people in America, because you know,
it went through the charts very slowly, and so it
was sort of you know what, Timember the Seasons come

(02:03:24):
into the top one hundred in the state, No, can't
have it came in and then over a period of weeks,
you know, it's eighty sixty five and you're sort of
dreading the next phone call it's going to have gone down.
But in cash Box it actually went to number one.

Speaker 1 (02:03:42):
It was gigantic. There was no thought of reforming the band.

Speaker 2 (02:03:46):
Not one iota, never a conversation. Nothing. Mostly I think
because Rod and Chris were really very involved in Argent
at that point.

Speaker 1 (02:04:02):
So how did you feel that they restarted without you?

Speaker 2 (02:04:06):
Well, I mean, what can you say? I mean, it
was a strange feeling. It was a strange feeling. I
was just a fan of Argent, you know. I thought
Argent were incredible. I used to pay for tickets to
go and see them. I just thought they were fantastic
and I knew them. I went to some of their

(02:04:27):
very early rehearsals, so I knew they were going to
be good. I really did.

Speaker 1 (02:04:32):
How did they find Russ Ballen?

Speaker 2 (02:04:35):
Well, they let me get this right. They went to
see Unit four plus two because they were after Bob Henryt,
who was the drummer in Unit four plus two. And
it's really funny because they went to see them play
thinking they could creep in at the back and no
one would see them. When there was no one there

(02:04:57):
when they got, you know, this very small so they
walked in and it was really obvious that they were
there and they'd gone to see Bob Henritt. And I
think that they Russ Ballard was in the band as
well at that point, and I think they were very
impressed with Russ and I think maybe, I mean, this
is a little bit outside of my knowledge. Really it's

(02:05:20):
been explained to me, but I maybe don't remember correctly.
But either I think it was a bit of both.
They thought Buss Ballard was fabulous, which he is, and
also I think Bob Henritt recommended him as well. And
what a what a great band. They were fabulous, great band.

Speaker 1 (02:05:40):
How do you end up playing with Alan Parsons?

Speaker 2 (02:05:44):
Well, Alan was really he was an assistant engineer at
Abbey Road when we were recording Odyssey and Oracle, and
I spoke to him a bit. I mean, I certainly
remember him from then, and also he lived near me.
I bought my first flat in West Hampstead and I
used to see him in Hampstead Village, which is in

(02:06:06):
northwest London on a Saturday morning. He used to drink
in a pub called the Flask, and I used to
drink in this sometimes. So we knew one another vaguely,
and that's that's basically it. I think I might have
asked him about producing me as well at one point,
but by then he'd got the project going and so

(02:06:28):
he wasn't really producing other people. And I also knew
Eric Wilson vaguely as well. He'd come to some Zombie
gigs and they just called me up and said, I
think the first one I did with that was that
Eagle will Rise Again. And to start with, they used
to give me about a week's notice. They would send
me an assetate in those days and they'd give me

(02:06:52):
a week to learn the song, so Eagle will Rise Again.
I got a week old and wise I got a week.
But then the later ones they would phone me up
and say, we've got this song. Come down to the studio.
We'll play it through to you learn it. And I
didn't say learn it in the stupid That's what it was,
and we'll have a go at it. And that was

(02:07:14):
a bit more challenging. You know, you'd learn it in
front of Alan and Eric and you and you have
to record it. But there, I mean, those project albums
are wonderful, great songs because Alan's a magical producer as well.

Speaker 1 (02:07:29):
It was.

Speaker 2 (02:07:29):
It was a wonderful experience.

Speaker 1 (02:07:31):
So how do you ultimately reform the Zombies again?

Speaker 2 (02:07:36):
If Rod was here, he would tell you a slightly
different story, but I'll tell you the truth. I was.
I had a solo band don Airy, who's the keyboard
player in Deep Purple. He'd already played in a lot
of big heavy metal bands, and I'd met him, I
knew him vaguely, and he took it upon himself to

(02:08:00):
you let me know that I should be out playing live.
He started calling me. Must have called me five or
six times. You should be playing, like you've got to
get out playing. But at this point I hadn't played
for twenty something years. I've made lots of records, some
had been hits. I had a little bit of success.

(02:08:20):
I probably was more scared than anything I could. You
could say anxious if you like, but scared would probably
fit it better. And in those days I used to
like to have a couple of beers in the evening
quite I liked Stellar Artois quite strong. And he just
picked the right moment. The fifth or sixth phone call,
I was on my second Stellar Artois and he said,

(02:08:43):
you should be out playing it. Okay, I will, And
he said, right, you don't have to do anything. I'll
put a band together, I'll rehearse them, just come up
and we'll run through and then we'll do a gig.
And that's what we did, and he got a great
band together, all really really good players, and it held

(02:09:03):
together for quite a time, but one by one they
drifted off, and eventually don Airy drifted off, and he
played with lots of good people, but for the last
I think twenty years, has been with Deep Purple. And
I got another keyboard player. But this keyboard player good player,
but he had an achilles heel in that he wrote
his own songs, and if anyone asked him to play

(02:09:26):
at the local coffee shop but his own songs, he
would be off. And so I would turn up to
a date and I didn't have a keyboard player. And
the last time this happened, it happened. I mean, there's
no warning. He just would go, and we managed to
scramble some guy in who didn't know me and didn't

(02:09:47):
know any of my songs. I don't know how he
got through the evening. And this I had new guys
and everything. I had my regular bass player, our mother
was on his second gig, and the guitarist was on
his second gig, and the keyboard player didn't know any
of the songs at all. And I thought I was

(02:10:09):
going to have heart failure on this show. I thought
I'm going to die if I go on like this.
And I phoned Rod. I didn't think he would be interested.
I really didn't because he was a very successful producer
and he hadn't played live that much. And I said, Rod,
I've got six dates left on this tour. It's driving

(02:10:30):
me nuts. You know, this guy just keeps not showing up.
Would you help me out and play these six dates?
And I was really surprised, but blessed him. He said, Look,
of course I'll help you out in the six dates,
but I don't want to go back on the road
full time, but I will play the six dates. And
he did, and it was magical and he loved it,

(02:10:52):
and those six dates developed into twenty five years.

Speaker 1 (02:10:55):
Okay, how hard was it for you to call him?

Speaker 2 (02:11:00):
Very hard? Very hard? Well, I think I've always been
a bit in aura of Rod. He's a world class musician.
And yeah, I did find it difficult. It was because
I didn't have a choice, and also I didn't think
he'd want to do it either, honestly, didn't think he wanted.

Speaker 1 (02:11:22):
How often did you have contact with him in the
ensuing years.

Speaker 2 (02:11:26):
Yeah, quite a lot, and I would talk to him
four or five times a year something like that, but
not very regularly, so it was it was difficult, and
partly because I didn't think he'd want to do it,
but he did, and it was It was great for
both of us. None of us were expecting what happened,

(02:11:48):
the second incarnation of the Zombies. Who would have thought that.
We thought the Zombies finished in nineteen sixty seven, and
then when we started playing, people get asking for zombie tinges.
When after those six dates we continued, but we played
hardly any zombie songs. I'd had a few hits, He'd
had a few hits. We played solo stuff, and people

(02:12:11):
kept asking for zombie tunes. But Rob was adamant we
wouldn't call the band the Zombies for like six or
seven years. We're not the zombies. We can't call ourselves
the zombies. I said, okay, But in the end we
were playing twenty zombie tunes to an audience that had
come to hear the Zombies. And then in one day

(02:12:33):
he was talking about the artwork on the next album
and he said, I hope we won't mind me having
a bit of a chuckle. But it was quite funny
because he sort of said I had a dream and
I was thinking about that famous speech, and I had
a dream and it was the artwork for the album
and it was a white dove doing something and the zombies,

(02:12:55):
and I thought, did he just say the zombies? I
thought we weren't using them the zombies, and I didn't
say anything, And from then on we were the zombies.
We had to have a sit down with Rod Argent,
with Chris White and Hugh Grundy and have a chat
with them about it, and they were okay. I mean
I don't think they were that keen to start with,

(02:13:16):
but that they were okay in the end. And then
we were the zombies again, the second incarnation of the Zombies.

Speaker 1 (02:13:24):
Well, of course, it's been an amazing success live shows,
getting inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
But you're in Los Angeles right now promoting the new
Zombies documentary Hung Up on a Dream. How did that
come to be?

Speaker 2 (02:13:42):
Well, I think a lot of it was down to
our management company, of the Rocks. They felt that we
had a story to tell and it would be great
to do a documentary, and through mutual friends, they were
introduced to Robert who had already made movies in Hollywood scripted,

(02:14:03):
fully funded movies. But he's also a musician, and I
think that really helped. We were introduced to him on
a zoom call. He'd made movies, he was a musician
in his own right, and he came over as a
genuine fan of the Zombies, and he won us over

(02:14:24):
very quickly. So it came about, yes, just through people talking,
you know, I management company talking to a middleman who
who knew Robert, and then he made it very easy
for us. We would just turn up and talk.

Speaker 1 (02:14:42):
How long has this been in production?

Speaker 2 (02:14:46):
Well, it probably started a couple of years ago, I think,
but it's been it kept being re edited, but I
mean a nearly final version has probably been around for
nine months or so. I would have thought, and are
you happy with it? I think it's great. I think

(02:15:07):
it's really really good. I haven't seen the final cut
that there are some I think, some subtle changes, but
I'm going to see it tonight because I'm going to
be part of a Q and A afterwards, and I thought,
you know, I really ought to see it again because
one or two questions have come up, real subtle things.
I haven't seen it in suntme, but my experience in

(02:15:32):
the insurance office has really helped me, you know, like
when I learned to bluff, and so I've managed to
bluff my way through it because one or two things
have come up and I've thought I need to see
it again. So I'm going tonight. I'm really excited about it.
I'm going to see it tonight.

Speaker 1 (02:15:53):
Well, I think you know the story well enough you
won't have to bluff, and you've certainly been very open
and honest. You know, Listen, you're very convivial. You tell
a great story. I could talk to you forever, but
I think we've come to the end of the feeling
we've known. Colin. I want to thank you so much
for taking this time with my audience.

Speaker 2 (02:16:14):
Well, thanks so much for having me on the show.
I mean, I've for a long time I'd loved to
have been on this show. I say, you know, I'm
just really happy to have been. I've really enjoyed having
a chat.

Speaker 1 (02:16:28):
Well, you know, as I said earlier, and I've experienced.
You have no idea how big the zombies were. You're saying, Oh,
I did it for a couple of years and then
the band fell apart. The zombies were as big as
any of the other acts, and it sounded unique. It
had this darkness where some of the other like animals

(02:16:49):
records like don't Bring Me Down, We're dark, but they
had a very period sound. They were rough, where the
zombies songs were not rough. They were as they sueing generous.
There was nothing else like them. You know, she's not there,
tell her not that. Of course, at the time of
the season, and there was no more zombies. I mean
the average person, it was like, yeah they were. They

(02:17:12):
were just like you know, nobody is the Beatles and
also the Stones. But in the next year down zombies
were as big as anybody.

Speaker 2 (02:17:21):
I know, it's extraordinary, but if you had any one
of the zombies in here, I don't think we've ever
been able to understand that. And it's a bit late
in the day now for it to get through. But
it's very kind if you just say that, and I'm
thrilled that you see it that way. But we we
I don't know, we just think we're just young kids

(02:17:42):
from San Jobn's.

Speaker 1 (02:17:43):
Really there is a magic in these records, and just
like anything magical, you know, especially Yeah, they're cut really quickly,
and you know, I went to see Journey the pr person.
We were having dinners, so I gotta go to the
Hollywood Bowl and they have this leads sing from the
Philippines ironically, and I'm there and the whole audience is

(02:18:05):
singing so well, you know, it's not Steve Perry, but
the songs are so iconic the audience owns them. Same
thing with the zombies. The audience now owns those records.
Those records are forever, okay, irrelevant whether they know a
single person in the band or the story. They remember
where they were and you know, time of the season

(02:18:26):
to use a you know there's an evergreen never dies,
you know, it just keeps up. Okay, I'm getting the
signal you have to move on to your next gig. Yes,
So until next time. This is Bob left Sex