![]() Indeed, it was forgotten by all but collectors for the next 15 years or so. "The album didn't even make the upper reaches of the chart," notes Argent, who also went on to produce Tanita Tikaram and Jules Shear. But by this time it was 1969 and the group was gone. "Time of the Season," the album's concluding track, became a huge hit, the biggest the Zombies ever had. Musical gadfly Al Kooper brought a copy back from Britain and encouraged CBS to release it, which the company did on a small subsidiary, Date. Soon, the pair formed a production company (one of their projects: a Blunstone solo album) and guitarist Paul Atkinson became a record industry talent executive, signing Bruce Hornsby and Michael Penn, among others.īut a strange thing happened to "Odessey and Oracle" along the way. Pepper" - and engineered by Beatles engineer Geoff Emerick - cost about $3,500 to record Argent and White paid for a stereo mix out of their own pockets. The album, produced by the group at Abbey Road Studios right after the recording of "Sgt. There wasn't any bad feeling," Argent recalls. "Basically, Chris and I had a good writing income, and we hadn't been gigging much recently. They knew "Odessey" was to be their swan song, and so they did it the way they wanted, with personal and literary reflections in the music and complete control of the production. In their heyday, the Zombies reached the American top 10 three times, but the group broke up rather anonymously in 1967, shortly after completing "Odessey." "For the first time in years, it felt honest to use the name Zombies," Argent says, and so "Zombies" - a very marketable name as well - it was. The kind of sound, that is, found on the Zombies singles "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" and the landmark 1967 album, "Odessey and Oracle." The first sessions produced the 2001 album "Out of the Shadows."įor the next record, Argent found himself writing songs reminiscent of the Zombies - the kind with haunting melodies, unusually placed minor chords and room for rich harmonies, all behind Blunstone's delicate vocals and Argent's jazz-classical keyboards. The two of them decided to play more gigs, put a band together and headed for the studio. (Actually, it had been something like 35 years.) "As soon as we were on stage, it felt like we'd played our last concert two weeks before," says Blunstone in a separate phone interview from the UK. "I invited Colin up on the spur of the moment," says Argent in a phone interview from London, England. (CNN) - So, both Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone agree, the Zombies reunion started like this:Īrgent had re-formed his '70s band, also named Argent ("Hold Your Head Up," "God Gave Rock and Roll to You") and was playing a charity show.
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