The Zombies were the most cursed band in British pop. Now they’re having their moment
Left to right: drummer Hugh Grundy, singer Colin Blunstone, bassist Chris White, guitarist Paul Atkinson and keyboard player Rod Argent - Stanley Bielecki/ASP/Getty Images
George Harrison, speaking on Juke Box Jury on 25 July 1964, was unequivocal in his enthusiasm for the disc he and his fellow judges – who included future On the Buses star Reg Varney – had just heard. “The voices are marvellous,” he told host David Jacobs in a timbre that was unhurried, adenoidal and very Scouse. “And the chord sequences are very nice. And I think it’ll be a hit.”
Tuning in at home, five teenage, “skinny little kids from rural England”, in the words of lead voice Colin Blunstone, could scarcely believe it. A Beatle had anointed She’s Not There. Beatlemaniacs would surely do Harrison’s bidding and make a hit of the debut single by St Albans’ finest, The Zombies.
They did, and then some – She’s Not There reached Number 12 in the UK. In America, the beat-boom bop reached Number 2 on the Billboard charts. But it went all the way on the rival Cash Box countdown, making The Zombies, according to the song’s composer, keyboard player Rod Argent, the first band since The Beatles to reach the top in America with a self-written song.
A debut album, Begin Here, knocked out across two evenings, followed a year later, then in 1968 they released one of the defining records of the Sixties, Odessey and Oracle. Made for a tight £1000, it’s a 35-minute chamber-pop masterpiece that – infamously poorly spelled title notwithstanding – is perfect from start to finish. It was sent skywards by Blunstone’s remarkable, fluting voice and included timeless standards such as Care of Cell 44, Time of the Season and This Will Be Our Year.
‘Skinny little kids from rural England’: The Zombies going through dustbins in west London, 1965 - Stanley Bielecki/ASP/Hulton Archive
But by that time The Zombies were already un-walking dead, splitting in late 1967 before the record was even released. It would only take half a century for the album, and The Zombies, to be fully appreciated, with some of music’s biggest stars echoing Harrison’s praise, from Harry Styles to Dave Grohl and Paul Weller. As recounted in a new career-spanning documentary, Hung Up on a Dream, this comeback was rather unexpected for the provincial British group from the Sixties whose story is a saga of bad luck, bad timing and bad actors, not to mention bad spelling.
I’m talking to three of The Zombies over Zoom. Drummer Hugh Grundy, 80, is beaming in from Minorca, his home for 16-odd years. Songwriter and bassist Chris White, 82, is ensconced in his music studio at his house in Salisbury. Blunstone, 80, is in a hotel room in Chicago – he’s currently on a North American tour in support of Hung Up on a Dream and performing a few songs. Not with us today is Rod Argent, 80, still recovering after suffering a stroke last year, and guitarist Paul Atkinson, who died, aged 58, in 2004 after a long battle with liver and kidney disease.
Left-right: Tom Toomey, Steve Rodford, Jim Rodford, Rod Argent, and Colin Blunstone in 2017 - Frazer Harrison/Getty
One of the first assessments of The Zombies’ career in the film comes from Blunstone. Musing about whether the band were lucky or unlucky, he comes to the assessment that “nothing went to plan”.
One such example of bad luck: their song Time of the Season, from Odessy and Oracle, became a hit in the US two years after the band’s dissolution. These Zombies could not be reanimated. By then Blunstone was manning the phones in the burglary department of a London insurance firm, while trying out a solo career, Grundy was selling cars, Atkinson was working in computers, while Argent and White were forming a band called Argent.
Into the void stepped not one but two bands of fake Zombies – one of which comprised two thirds of the future ZZ Top – both managed by Delta Promotions, who insisted they had legally acquired the songs from the real Zombies and had them both tour to unsuspecting US fans. The American music industry thought Blunstone had died in a car crash, which was the standard explanation for why the fake Zombies sounded so different.
“Yes, it was a little bit upsetting to have to die so early,” says Blunstone wryly. “You must be a real Zombie now!” chips in Grundy cheerfully.
“And perhaps some of the choices of people to represent us weren’t as sound as they could have been,” Blunstone adds, reflecting on their bad luck. “But it’s not just us. I don’t think there’s a band that was successful in the ’60s that didn’t have challenges with regard to management and finances, and we were no exception.”
That said, “we were really lucky to be in the music business in the mid-’60s, when everything seemed to be possible, particularly for British bands,” he replies. “That was completely due to the success of The Beatles.”
‘We were really lucky to be in the music business in the mid 1960s,’ says lead singer Blunstone
Initially, at least, The Zombies progressed relatively quickly. Formed from a bunch of schoolmates in St Albans, from 1962 onwards they played the pubs and clubs round their Hertfordshire hometown, notably the Old Verulamians rugby club. Then in 1964 they entered “Herts Beat”, a talent contest hosted by the Watford Observer. One hundred groups took part over 10 heats, with The Zombies ultimately coming out on top. “Well, it’s over and The Zombies are the best group in Hertfordshire,” announced the newspaper, “with £250 in their pockets to prove it!”
A record deal with Decca followed, She’s Not There became a hit, and by the end of that year they were onstage in New York, performing on disc jockey Murray the K’s Christmas variety show alongside Patti Labelle and the Blue Belles, Ben E King and The Shirelles.
Back in the UK, they toured the country in a package tour with The Searchers, Dionne Warwick and The Isley Brothers. Running the show, according to the small print on the poster, were “comedy compères Syd and Eddie” – the future Little and Large.
More international touring followed, notably in the Philippines. The Beatles had had a notoriously terrible time there in 1966 – after reportedly snubbing an invitation to attend an event hosted by Imelda Marcos, they were manhandled by Marcos regime loyalists as they hurriedly left the country.
“We were aware that The Beatles had had, um, challenges while they were there,” says Blunstone, ever the diplomat. “And in fact, we were the next British band to go into the Philippines after them – which goes back to [the idea of] whether The Zombies were lucky or unlucky!”
“We thought we were just going to play in a hotel foyer or something,” says White. It was a reasonable assessment given that their manager, Tito Burns, an impresario who had also looked after Cliff Richard, had told them the booking paid £100 a night – between the five members. “So when we turned up and found we had four or five records in the charts there, it was astounding. And then actually going to play in the Araneta Coliseum – that was frightening, to be quite honest, it was so big.”
The coliseum was, at the time, the second largest indoor venue in the world. So, after costs, Blunstone reckons “we were probably getting a tenner each for playing to 28,000 people – and the Saturday night was 32,000 people!”
Then, when the call came from the Presidential palace, The Zombies advisedly said yes. “I don’t think it was quite homage,” says Grundy of their visit with the Marcos’s. “It wasn’t bow and scrape. It was duty. I think we thought it would be rude not to. So we did.”
Back in the UK, The Zombies found themselves penniless. And, after the flop of their 1967 cover of Goin’ Out of My Head – a 1964 hit for Little Anthony and the Imperials – they lost their record deal. But a contract with CBS followed, which secured a tight budget for their second album. At least they were going to record it in Abbey Road, the hallowed studio still warm from the making of Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn and The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
But the first two singles from Odessey and Oracle flopped, then Atkinson announced he was getting married and had been headhunted for a job in computers. So the group of old friends decided to call it a day. In Hung Up on a Dream there’s brilliant audio of Kenny Everett, then a radio DJ, asking the band, in a rare moment of lucidity for the gonzo performer, whether it might be a better idea to wait to see how the as-yet-unreleased album fares before deciding on their future.
But their minds were made up. By the time that Time of the Season was a belated hit in the US, reaching number three in 1969, all the members were on different paths. White and Argent would embark on Argent, a rock band who had big, shouty early ’70s hits with Hold Your Head Up and God Gave Rock and Roll to You. They also produced 1971’s One Year, the debut solo album by Blunstone (once again recording under his own name). It included his ear-tingling cover of Say You Don’t Mind, a song by future Wings member Denny Laine.
Atkinson and Grundy, meanwhile, would end up working for CBS. The former became a highly regarded label executive in Los Angeles, the latter an A&R man in London. Grundy’s job was to sift through the bags of cassette tapes submitted by hopeful musicians. Most of them, he says, were useless.
“Until one day, I put one tape in, and it sat me back in my chair. I made an appointment for the band to come and sit in my office, which they did.” He went to see them perform “and they just blew me away.” Grundy took his passion for the unsigned rock band to his bosses. “But by then they had got the interest of quite a few other record companies, and their managers had started putting up the price. In the end, CBS management said: ‘Look, we don’t think we can afford this, so we’re going to pass on them.’ And I said: ‘Well, you’re wrong, because within this next year, Queen are going to be huge.’”
As for The Zombies, their moment in the sun would take a lot longer to come. But in 2019, they were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “It’s nice in your seventies to find out that you were actually successful in your twenties,” says White with a chuckle. “And the great thing is we are still friends, which is rare for people in 1960s bands.”
’We are still friends, which is rare for people in 1960s bands’: The Zombies on tour in 2023 - Lorne Thomson/Redferns
“Overall, isn’t it a story of hope, really?” offers Blunstone. “It should give hope to all artists who are struggling in their early years. Because here we are, in the autumn of our careers, shall we say! We’re being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and touring all around the world in wonderful venues at our advanced ages. So, you never give up hope.”
Hung Up on A Dream: The Zombies Documentary is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and AppleTV+
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