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May 18, 2025 15 mins
Original Air Date: May 18, 2025

Colin Blunstone was still in high school  when he joined the Zombies, the group that gave us “Time Of The Season” , “She’s Not There” and more. Colin didn’t like “Time Of The Season” and either did The Zombies’ record label. When it became a huge hit, they had already broken up and Colin was working in insurance! He calls failure a great learning lesson.
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio, conversations about issues that matter.
Here's your host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
I want to introduce you to someone who has one
of the most distinctive voices in all of rock and roll,
and actually one of the songs where he sings lead.
I can actually go back to the moment I first
heard it because it had that much of an impact

(00:32):
on my life. I'm talking to the lead singer of
the Zombies, Yes, the Zombies in Time of the Season,
Colin Lunstone, lead singer that song. I was in my
parents' car and I was driving past this beautiful park

(00:53):
and it was a lovely spring day, and every time
I hear the song, I think of springtime because that
was the first time I heard the song. I cannot
say this, Colin, about every song I ever heard for
the first time, but Time of the Season made that
that much of an impact on my life. How many

(01:15):
times have you heard that story?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
I have heard it quite a few times, and about
other classic Zombie songs as well. I think the Zombies
are one of those bands where people probably know the
songs better than they know the name of the band.
People will often say to me, you sang that song.
I didn't know that was the Zombies, And it does
come up quite a lot, things like time of the season,

(01:39):
she's not there, this will be our year, just thinking
of the three songs that come up most often. So
I think these songs are They're wonderful songs, they're time.
I didn't write them, so as speaking as an outsider,
they're timeless classics and they do mean a lot to people.
They conjure up a time in their lives. Say that

(02:00):
to me time and time again.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Did you know the first time you guys played it together,
did you have that feeling of this is going to
be it? This is going to be one of the
biggest songs of all time. What was going through your head?

Speaker 3 (02:17):
Absolutely? Not? Well, when She's not there? I thought that
was special and could be a hit, And you know,
I was, I was how I was. I eighteen years
old when we recorded that. But I did think it's
to the chance time of the season. Honestly, I'm being honest.
He was Initially was not one of my favorite songs

(02:40):
from the album, honestly, on Oracle. So it just proves
I should never have had a career as an an
r man in record companies, because this song went on
to sell over two million copies. It was number one
in cash Box, it was number one all around the world,
and I missed it. There were other songs on the
album that I thought were more commercial. So I'm just
being honest with you. And in fact, when we recorded it,

(03:03):
we recorded it in Studios three and Abbey Road, just
after the Beatles had finished at Sergeant Pepper. In fact,
they were in the few days before us. We're in studios,
you're in an Abbey Road. We were running out of time.
We had a very tight recording budget. We were running
out of money as well, and this was the last
song we recorded. And the tension was palpable in the

(03:26):
studio between Rod Argent, who wrote the song and wanted
me to phrase it in a certain way, and me,
who was just worried, We're going to run out of time.
We need to just get this done and get out
of the studio. And so while I'm singing It's the
time of the Season for love, then we're going back
and fort it one another. You you don't know how
this song. You're not singing it right, body you know,

(03:49):
there's a huge row going on in the studio while
we're singing those words. I hope I haven't burst the
bubble on this song, but that's how it was recorded.

Speaker 2 (03:58):
Well, you just never know the stories. And the reason
I have the luck of speaking with the lead singer
of The Zombies, Colin Blunstone, is because you have an
opportunity to watch the wonderful documentary Hung Up on a Dream,
and it just takes you back. I did not know
your whole story. I did know the story that you

(04:20):
guys broke up before Time of the Season became a hit,
that a different song was picked to be the song
released from the album and it bombed. It bombed, So
you weren't the only one, Colin, who didn't think that
this was it. So tell me what were you doing

(04:44):
when Time of the Season blew up all over the
world and you were no longer in the Zombies? What
were you doing at Well?

Speaker 3 (04:53):
Listen, I hang my head in shame to say that
the three non writers in the band were absolutely broke.
It's one of the interesting things about most bands in
the sixties. They had it records but never seemed to
make any money. It's not just us. It was just
something that happened in the business. Then maybe still happens,
I don't know, but in the sixties a lot of

(05:13):
bands you would think we're doing quite well. But we
were absolutely broke and I had to take a job,
and I took the first job. People asked me, why
did you take this job? But it was the first
job that was offered to me, and I ended up
working in an insurance office in the burglerary department. I
don't ask me what we were ensuring. I thought we

(05:35):
were arranging burglars for the first day, and I just
had no idea what this was. And it amazes me
because I went in with no training whatsoever except as
a singer. And of course, on that first day, at
one point I had to answer the phone to someone
and they didn't know I'd only just walked in the
office and had no idea what insurance was. And I

(05:55):
just had to bluff. But I'd had a good education.
I've been in the music business, and if you can't bluff,
you aren't going to last long in the music business.
So I bluffed my way through nearly a year of
being in an insurance office before I came back into
the music that had an opportunity to come back into
the music business. I didn't choose insurance over music. I

(06:19):
chose survival going under, you know, I just had to
get a job, and that's what was offered to me.

Speaker 2 (06:26):
I'm speaking with Colin Blunstone. He is the lead singer
of the Zombies. She's not their Time of the Season.
And when Time of the Season became a number one hit,
the Zombies had broken up and poor Colin was working
in an insurance company. When did you learn that it
was a hit And what happened then?

Speaker 3 (06:46):
Well, what happened was I was getting messages from friends
in the States because Time of the Season was never
a hit in the UK. Ever, it's been released three
or four times. People know it because it's been used
in lots of commer and in filled and they presume
it was a hit, but it wasn't a hit. So
I was just getting my news from friends in America

(07:07):
and they were saying it's come into the top hundred.
I couldn't believe it. The band had finished, you know,
I thought music was over for me, and it's come
into the top hundred. It took a long time to
become a hit over a period of months and graduates
going up the charts, and then the phone starts ringing

(07:28):
for me. Up til then I have to say the
stone that the phone was completely stone cold with regards
to the music business, and I was getting no offers
at all. But then it started. I had one phone
call for ensuring a truck and one phone call for
how do you want to make records again? The sun
and then it became impossible then to keep that job.

(07:49):
I didn't particularly hon to keep it going, but I
was getting so many offers to record again, and I
eventually started recording again, and at that time my careers
lasted over sixty years. So I have a lot of
things to thank time of the season for because it
brought me back to the music business.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
You know, sometimes people say that failure is one of
the most important things to happen in life. How do
you weigh in on that.

Speaker 3 (08:17):
Well, absolutely, I think that failure can be is really
it can really hurt. But I think sometimes you learn
more from failure than you do from success, and particularly
in the music becausiness, success often comes very quickly and
almost effortlessly. If we talk in terms of hit records,
they just happen, you know, and you suddenly last week

(08:39):
you didn't have it record, and this week you do.
And you don't really understand exactly how that happened. But
with failure it can. It's the death of a thousand knives.
It's slow and it hurts, and yeah, I think you
learn a lot from it, and you've just that's the
important thing. Don't make those mistakes again. And you can
be strong of having survived a failure, and it can

(09:03):
all be better from there on in, and it can
in the end be a really good experience because you
learn from it.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
You joined the Zombies when you were still in high school.
All of you were in high school, right.

Speaker 3 (09:18):
That's right. Yeah, I was fifteen when I joined the Zombies.

Speaker 2 (09:21):
Yeah, And how did that happen?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
It was really it was a school thing. And the
leader of the Zombies was always Ron Argent, a keyboard player.
He's a principal writer, and he had the idea of
forming a band. He got three guys from his school
in a very casual way. The drummer. They had an
army corps there, and the drummer played side drums, and
he thought he was the best drumm in the court
drummer in the corps. He'd never played a kit of drums,

(09:45):
but he got him. He got a guitarist out of
the folk club, and then he recruited a friend of
mine and I went to a different school who was
making an electric basical guitar. He'd never played one, but
he was making one in woodwork that him in And
then he sat in front of me at school. He
knew I had a guitar. I'm only saying all this
because it was so casual. It was really casual, and

(10:08):
he turned around to me and he said, you've got
a guitar, haven't you? And I said, yes, I have.
Do you want to be in a band? And basically
that was my audition for the Zombies. We just met
up one Saturday morning. None of us had any equipment.
The drummer didn't have any drums. We had to really
start from the beginning, and it took us a good year.
It was a year before we played. I wouldn't say

(10:31):
a concert, you know. We played at a youth club.
It took us a year to get to that point.
And then we gradually built a local fan base and
then we won a big rock and roll competition and
then we were offered a record contract and that first
record was She's Not There, and it was a hit
all around the world. So it was gradual stages over
a three or four year period.

Speaker 2 (10:53):
He explain, explain Colin, how you got ripped off, like
so many other bands were here. You had a it
all over the world and in one country. I forget
what country in particular, you were like the Beatles of
this country. What country was that?

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Well, I think it probably referring to the Philippines. Actually,
when we went there, we had no idea we had
any hit records at all in the Philippines. We knew nothing.
And we opened to twenty eight thousand people on our
opening night, and we played in the Aronetta Coliseum for
ten nights, and we were playing to those kind of audiences. Well,
we were getting eighty pounds a night between us. I

(11:29):
know money's changed over the years, because I'm talking about
nineteen sixty seven here, but eighty pounds a night between
us we have to pay management and agency. We were
ending up sort of five pounds each and playing to
twenty eight thousand people. So that's how we got ripped off. Obviously,
someone was making a lot of money in the negotiations.

(11:50):
The middleman somewhere in there was making a lot of money.
Sometimes you don't know how you're being ripped off, but
you certainly know you are being ripped off. If you
can imagine planning in front of twenty eight thousand people
every night for ten nights and knowing you're making absolutely
no money, and worse still, knowing that a lot of
other people are making a lot of them. And we've

(12:13):
never been particularly motivated by money, the people in the Zombes,
it's not that important to us. But you know, you
can take it to an extreme where it does start
to get a bit aggravating, and that's that's how we
found about it. It was extremely aggravating.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
And you and Rod Argent are touring again, right are
you still touring?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
We are touring until we are actually, to be correct,
as you say, we were touring until last summer, and
unfortunately Rob was very ill last summer and although he's
made a full recovery, he's decided he's not been a
tour anymore now, so the zomb won't tour anymore. And
that's why this documentary perhaps is even more important because

(12:55):
you've got a visual history of the band from our
very early days until we inducted into the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. It's a wonderful documentary and people
can see that journey in a very polished, sophisticated production,
in a hum up on a dream, because you'll never

(13:16):
see the Zombies play alive again since Rod has been ill,
we won't tour anymore. And that's really why this documentary
is so important.

Speaker 2 (13:25):
I'm so sorry to hear that the documentary is hung
up on a dream. It's the entire story of the Zombies.
It has incredible footage. I love looking at the old
footage back in the day. Basically, yeah, So what is
your best memory of all out of all these years,

(13:47):
do you know?

Speaker 3 (13:47):
I think one of the things is that Rod Argent
and myself we got back together again. We'd worked together
over the years, remembering the original Zombies finished in nineteen
sixty seven. We'd work together. He produced albums for me,
I've worked with them on live things. But in nineteen
ninety nine we got back together again to tour as
an entity, not thinking that there would be that much

(14:08):
interest in the Zombies. We didn't call ourselves the Zombies
for six or seven years. But we toured from nineteen
ninety nine till last year, and eventually we did name
the band the Zombies, and what we did exactly the
same thing second time around, the second incarnation of the
band as we did the first time. We gradually built

(14:29):
up of following until we could play at really, really
nice venues all around the world playing these Zombie classic tunes.
So I was back to touring the world with my
pals playing the music I loved, only this time we
made more than eighty pounds a night, which was even better.
I just think the memory for me, it is a

(14:50):
great memory for me that we were able to, if
you like, relaunch the Zombies without any big record company
behind us. We just played it wherever they would have us,
more or less, and we built the Zombies back up
until we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame in twenty nineteen, and that probably was the
highlight of this whole adventure.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
Well, I just want to thank you Colin Blunstone for
making my life better. You know, your music just made
my life better, That's all I can say. I hear
your songs and it makes me feel good, and yes,
so I just want to say thank you, thank you,
thank you.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio, a production
of New York's classic rock Q one O four point
three
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