The Zombies’ Colin Blunstone – a psychedelic showpiece then ‘washed up’ aged 21

The Zombies formed before the Stones and had huge hits with She’s Not There and Time Of The Season. Their baroque masterpiece Odessey and Oracle now gets ranked beside Revolver and Pet Sounds. Colin Blunstone has a solo tour in 2026 and looks back here in his wood-panelled den at the first shows he played, the people he met and being No 1 in America aged 19. This too …

 

… when your career starts at 16 “and you think it’s over at 21”

 

… seeing the Beatles at Luton Odeon and the Stones at Studio 51 Leicester Square “sitting on stools playing acoustic R&B”

 

… winning the talent contest that got them a record deal and a worldwide hit with “the third song Rod ever wrote”

 

… playing Murray the K’s Christmas Show when No 1 in America with “all our heroes” - the Shirelles, Patti LaBelle and Ben E King

 

… his father’s warning when he wanted to go to Art School

 

… the misspelling of Odessey And Oracle and its rushed recording at Abbey Road – “in mono when everyone wanted stereo!”

 

… “only Kenny Everett and Penny Valentine liked it”: the album’s afterlife, “now ranked alongside Revolver and Pet Sounds”

 

… how he still hits “my suicidal top notes” and the old trick of pointing the mic at the audience if you don’t want to sing them

 

… life in an insurance office when the Zombies split and “the three writers had made all the money”

 

… and Al Kooper, Denny Laine, Russ Ballard, Rod Argent and the time Mike Hurst inexplicably relaunched him as ‘Neil MacArthur’.

 

Order tickets for the Believe In Miracles Tour here: https://www.colinblunstone.net/

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