Zombie Heaven
The Zombies
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HUNG UP ON A DREAM
What The Zombies Bestowed To Pop
The Beatles rated them highly: John Lennon wanted to produce them. Pete Townshend was an admirer, Jimi Hendrix a besotted fan. Dusty Springfield liked them so much she asked them to write a song for her (which they did). Since then, countless musicians as diverse as Pat Metheny and Tom Petty have revealed their deep admiration for the band. 'She's Not There' has been covered countless times, by everyone from Santana to the UK Subs. "Well. no-one told me about her" is still one of the most recognised opening lines in pop music.
The Zombies were one of the few English bands of the 1960s that enjoyed true global popularity, with two American number ones, chart records throughout the rest of the world and a deep and lasting affection for their music. In early 1967, at a time when their career had almost ground to a halt in the UK. the group played to crowds of over 30,000 in the Philippines. Even more ironic is the fact that, after the band had split, their last single 'Time Of The Season' became their biggest hit, selling over a million copies by May of 1969. Airplay for the song on American radio recently passed the two million mark.
Most surveys of the group's career trumpet these statistics, but there is a whole other level at which the Zombies are significant. In so many ways, they were the blueprint for the exemplary pop group, with the distinctive sound of the records, the impeccable taste in material, and a dependable, professional approach to the role of entertainers. No smashing of guitars, lobbing of TVs into swimming pools or relieving themselves in garage forecourts; with a minimum of controversy the Zombies just got on with the job of creating perfect pop. In the UK, where it's fair to say they are barely regarded as anything more than an above-average beat group, the Zombies are usually indicated as the progenitors of the English schoolboy rock, the genre typified by the likes of Gcnesis. Ycs, and Pink Floyd. But they are not really responsible for those groups any more than the Beatles were responsible for the excesses of their imitators. It's all part of the media's shortsighted perception of the band, regurgitated in the tired old publicity of "Britain's brainiest group" and the relatively minor fact the group happened to share fifty O-Levels between them.
In fact, their influence was far more extensive elsewhere, particularly in the United States. At the time it went from affecting recognised heavyweights such as the Left Banke and the Doors, to the lowliest high school garage band. What the Zombies gave to grass roots rock 'n' roll was an articulation of teenage sentimentality bereft of the corny slush that had previously constituted the pop ballad. Even more than the Beatles, the Zombies' minor key vulnerability became a cool, hip archetype with which teen combos throughout the world in the mid-1960s could reveal their collective "hearts of jelly", to paraphrase the notorious critic Richard Meltzer.
With hindsight, perhaps the most significant accolade the Zombies have ever received was the respect accorded to them when they shared bills with the black acts they admired so much, such as the Isley Brothers, Chuck Jackson, Dionne Warwick, Little Anthony & The Imperials and others. These artists accurately recognised the Zombies for what they were, interpreters and innovators, rather than imitators like so many others during the British Invasion. What the band lacked in strict jazz or R&B credentials on those early recordings, necessitated by their rapid American success, they more than made up for with sheer enthusiasm. Indeed, even their weakest R&B cover is stronger than the entire catalogue of many other groups from the period. Though the Zombies' stage act was based largely on R&B, led by Rod Argent, the group would extemporise upon the standards that formed the set in odd jazz-tinged keys and tempos. After Ray Charles, the Zombies were probably the first artists to bring the electric piano to the fore in pop. Certainly some of their contemporaries, like Manfred Mann, were using the instrument but without the dramatic, quasi-classical chording of Rod. As a whole, the Zombies incorporated any jazz affectations in a most natural and wholly organic way.
But above all, with the Zombies it is the song that we are concerned with. Chris White's comment that "we tried to do the unusual within the framework of the two and half minute, three minute song" is standard throughout their repertoire. Their producer Ken Jones, sympathetic to a fault, nevertheless attempted to adhere to a formula with the Zombies' earlier records, but this did not affect the group's remarkable compositional ability. Rather, in an era when the permutations of note and chord had yet to be exhausted, the band seized upon the possibilities of juxtaposition, counterpoint, and tonic within their songs, yet so unselfconsciously that one barely notices it. A track like Chris' 'I Must Move' can appear deceptively simple at first listen, but in fact constitutes a complex blend of notes and chords that can trigger a deep emotional response in the listener.
As heavily influenced by the Beatles as they admit, Rod and Chris' songs preferred to rise
to the gauntlet the Beatles' records threw down. Having cut the forward-looking 'She's Not There', a further stylistic turning point can be ascertained with their June 1965 recording of 'Whenever You're Ready', whereby the Zombies established a sophisticated pop-rock template that even the Beatles did not properly achieve until Rubber Soul. This chunky, undeniably commercial record also features the odd tension than runs through so much Zombies' music: a bright confident performance underpinning a lyric that, on the surface, conveys supreme confidence, but goes on to almost contradict itself. The protagonist stridently sings "you better listen to what I tell you" after protesting in less defiant terms that he's "been hurt but I still love you", and then informs the person in question somewhat flimsily to come back "whenever you're ready".
The duality is inherent in the incredibly expressive voice of Colin Blunstone, who can change the implication of a song's words with the merest inflection of his voice. One of many other similar examples in the Zombies' canon is 'Remember You', where Colin, Chris and Rod's harmony expertly stretch the meaning of the lyrics in the chorus: (defiantly) "and if 1 should change my mind" (contrite) "and I do sometimes, you know I do". The results can be pretty breathtaking. Elsewhere in the band's repertoire, there are moments of similar charm, whether within the plummy tones of "baby, come on home" in 'She's Coming Home', Rod's harmony with Colin on such lines as "if I lose my mind" in 'Gotta Get Hold Of Myself', the dramatic "emerald stones and platinum glass" in 'Changes', even the wretched shriek of "I've been abused" in 'Sticks And Stones'.
Lyrically the Zombies' songs are also striking within themselves, but not so much in a meaningful or portentous fashion. Like the skewed world view of a Ray Davies, they catch a certain oblique mood, often saying as much in sound and metre as content. As Rod explains: "I actually think lyrics are very important, but their importance in a pop song can be in their own internal rhythm, in the way they relate to each other and the atmosphere they create, rather than necessarily telling a direct story. In 'Care Of Cell 44' the idea of the story was important, because it's trying to explain a storyboard, like a little miniature movie. And I used to like that little phrase "with pleasured hands", in Time Of The Season' which is quite unusual and I quite like the way that it sat in that song. Words have to sit, they have to sort of combine seamlessly with the way the melody is being sung. I know I was very concerned with the lyrics on 'She's Not There' but in the sense that they had to really complement the melody. They had to stand on their own, and had to have their own rhythm and, in that last section I was using the words with different stresses at different times to propel it along towards the final chord. So lyrics have always been very important to me in that way, but not necessarily in a sense of having to explain something concrete. They're an important part of the jigsaw, because I think bad lyrics can screw up a song."
Some have noted the lack of confidence and somewhat depressed world view conveyed in Zombie songs, particularly those of Chris. You can catch it just from the titles: 'Don't Go Away', 'What More Can I Do', 'I Don't Want To Know', 'Leave Me Be', 'I Can't Make Up My Mind' etc. Often allied to a distinctive minor-key melody, such introspection reveals an acutely vulnerable side to the Zombies' collective persona, one that is perhaps theirs alone in pop.
Chris pleads not guilty:
"'Melancholic' was the word that was used, and I suppose it was, with all those minor chords. They appealed because they sounded great, like in 'She's Not There' where it goes from a major to minor. I think a lot of it is this collective gestalt thing, because it is the fact that Colin's voice had such a melancholic tinge to it so we wrote for his voice. But it wasn't actually conscious doing that, we just wrote the songs, and because of the collective influences, and working within the limitations, sometimes they took you somewhere you wouldn't normally go."
The recurring fondness for the minor key, and the attendant sonic tension caused by shifting to major and minor; the recurring pattern of basing chord shapes in sevenths and ninths, around a root chord, quite often in a modal sense, thereby following on from 'She's Not There', these are all stylistic traits that further reinforce the Zombies' musical dejection. In later songs like 'This Will Be Our Year' there is a renewed optimism, but as Chris notes, the timbre of Colin's voice is inherently sad, and a major part of the band's artistic success was Rod and Chris' ability to tailor material for him.
Chris: "It was a very lucky connection. Rod had a lot of influence on me, and I think I had influence on Rod as well. When we showed each other the stuff we were working on, there was a good chemistry, and we would push each other to do different things. Rod wrote on the piano, whereas I would write most songs on guitar. Our disappointment was that the recordings didn't come out the way they sounded on stage."
Rod: "The song would be purely and completely written by the author, and we'd only collaborate on arrangements. In the early days we would usually rehearse around my mother's house around the piano, acoustically, and a lot of the arrangement would come between Chris, Colin and myself because of the vocal interweaving. Chris would bring a song along, with a definite melody and lyrics, and he then might say 'I thought we could go into harmony at this point'. More often than not it would be me saying to Colin, "you sing these notes, and Chris you sing those notes, then that will work", and I suppose in that sense I quite often used to work out the harmonies, although if Chris or Colin had specific ideas they'd state them from the beginning. "
Chris: "But because we weren't great musicians, we worked within the framework of what we knew other people were capable of, and thus we developed something different. When you have limitations and you work within those, you come up with solutions that a highly-skilled musician wouldn't think of. Therefore, we had a collective mind, rather than a dominating main character who told people to sing this, play this and do that. I can remember Rod asking Paul to play a note, and him saying "but the note's not in that chord". Rod replied "it doesn't matter, you think it's not, but it works with it". Because the way Paul thought was very 'counter' minded, Rod pushed him, the way he pushed all of us."
Compositional traits aside, what really makes the music in this collection so special is the performance: from the dynamic physical touches like the builds and flourishes of the drums and the frenzied guitar and organ solos, through to the subdued chromatic touches on the keyboards, the thoughtful bass lines and the wistful vocals, it is the chemistry of the five musicians that brings the music to life. There is a sheer joy to the Zombies' records that stands head and shoulders above so much of pop music: you can hear it throughout the recordings here, from the most basic bedroom demo to the fresh-as-the-day-it-was-minted resonance of 'She's Not There' The Zombies' gift to pop is the timeless beauty of a near-perfect catalogue.
ALEC PALAO
Berkeley, California
Summer 1997
Rod: "When I hear 'She's Not There' I love it because it sounds of its time but it doesn't sound dated. The song has got a sort of patina, it's got its own entity; it just stands there, and I love that. 'She's Not There' sounds like it was the product of five guys who were fantastically enthusiastic and just setting out, and they all respected each other and were out to take on the world. I wouldn't change anything about those early things. Of their time, they still stand up. Ever since the Zombies split, people have been trying to get us to get back together again, and I don't agree with that. But they talk about the sum greater than the parts, and with the Zombies that's the case. Us all coming together and a sound happens. And it was all very easy. We just thought we were copying the Beatles, or Elvis, or Buddy Holly, or the Everlys, things that we liked. But because our own voice came through, and things were lucky enough to gel, it became distinctive in its own right: it's a magical process." 