Zombies Singer Colin Blunstone Explains The Miraculous Second Life Of The Classic ‘60s Group
Colin Blunstone was fresh out of school when he recorded one of the 1960s’ most enduring hits — and a disaffected Central London office worker by the time the song broke.
"Who would have ever thought? This history is not typical of bands," Blunstone says over Zoom from his hotel room in Massachusetts while on the road with the Zombies. "Two years after the band finished, no one's working the product. It's not being promoted. It's not being marketed. And 'Time Of The Season' goes No. 1 on Cashbox, and I think No. 2 or 3 on Billboard."
That "Time Of The Season" became a hit at all was something of a miracle — and more than half a century later, Blunstone feels no less blessed. The Zombies’ other hits — "She’s Not There," the band’s first single, released in 1964, and the hypnotic "Tell Her No" — remain timeless classics, while their final album, Odessey & Oracle, celebrates its 55th anniversary in 2023. For nearly two decades, the Zombies have been bringing their hits and new works on the road; the U.S. portion of their tour concludes July 30.
"It has been a strange story. The first incarnation of the band finished in 1967, and we started quite by chance in 1999," Blunstone says. That year, he called up founding keyboardist Rod Argent to fill in on six solo gigs. "But he enjoyed it so much,” he adds, “that those six dates have grown into 23 years."
After a two-year break from the road due to COVID, the Zombies are in the middle of an international tour with stops in New York, California, northern Europe and the U.K. Before hitting the road, the band — which now consists of founding members singer Blunstone and Argent, drummer Steve Rodford, guitarist Tom Toomey, and Søren Koch on bass — recently finished recording a new album and are doing interviews for a documentary.
The Zombies’ particular alchemy is a meld of catchy songwriting with surprisingly complex arrangements — a creative fusion of rock, jazz and classical influences with a baroque bent. True to their name, the group has had something of a second life in the new millennium.
At 76, Blunstone is also experiencing renewed interest in his solo work. His 1971 debut solo album, One Year, was championed for its sensitive lyricism and largely considered a follow-up to Odessey. The album — which celebrated its 50th anniversary with an acclaimed reissued — launched a prolific solo career.
In this edition of Living Legends, GRAMMY.com spoke with Blunstone about his history with the Zombies and solo efforts, and how a Zombie stays fresh for decades.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
How has this tour been and where in the world are you now?
I'm in Northampton, Massachusetts. [The tour has] been fairly extensive, but it's been fun. We started off on a cruise in the Caribbean, [and] three of the guys got COVID. And so, Rod and I had to get a two-man acoustic duo act together in his cabin an hour before we went on.
We really enjoyed it, but it was scary. Because we'd only played one concert: a live stream concert from Abbey Road in November last year. Otherwise we haven't played for two and a half years. So the first time playing was this acoustic duo on a huge cruise ship; we played to about 1,000 people and it was great. We really enjoyed it. But it certainly keeps you on your toes.
Why do you think you've been bigger in the United States than in the U.K.?
I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's the way we started. We were right out of school, and the record company presented us as school boys when bands like the Rolling Stones were starting at the same time. We were presented as teenagers — I don't think we ever quite got over that.
And the other thing is that "Time Of The Season" was never a hit in the U.K. People don't realize that even in the UK because it's been used in many commercials. … When we came to America, there was a whole new fan base for us… it was a really lovely surprise. And we've just sort of built up this fan base by playing continually. We’ve probably toured America more than anywhere else.
But the most exciting thing has been to see this incarnation of Zombies grow in stature — and not solely through chart records, though our last album did get into the top 100. It's just been through continually playing live and word of mouth.
And of course, eventually, we were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which was exciting.
What is unique about this incarnation of the Zombies?
They're incredible players. Both Rod and I would say that there's more energy on the stage with this incarnation of the band [when we’re] probably in the autumn of our careers. There's more energy on stage now than there was with the original. And I think people respect that.
They also respect the fact that we're still writing and recording new material; there aren't many bands from the ‘60s that are doing that. So, it puts us in a small group of bands that are still writing and recording new material. And of course we can always play a collection of songs from Odessey and Oracle, which Rolling Stone named as one of the Top 500 Albums of All Time.
It really helps us to get across to established fans, but also to new fans. And people are always amazed when they come to our concerts and they see a cross section of ages there.
I did notice that at the New York show. Speaking of, the band sounded so great — and your voice in particular is incredibly strong. At 76, you’re doing three-part harmonies and touring the coast. Some might say that’s a young man's game.
With regard to the voice, I think that I started for a short time, as did Rod, with a singing coach called Ian Adam. You have to find the right coaches — not just go to a coach for the sake of it. Ian Adam didn't try to change his students’ voices; he tried to make their voices stronger.
And he also gave me some singing exercises, which, when I'm on the road, I do twice a day. It’s 30 minutes before soundcheck and then 35 minutes before the show. So I will have sung for probably an hour and a half or more before the show starts — so my voice is really warmed up.
I was probably in my late 40s or 50s when I started, before that it was just what I was born with. So, that has really helped me to keep my voice strong and very accurate.
For guys of our age, one of the really big things is to hydrate. And then, at the end of the show, when we were kids, we'd be hoping there'd be a party, but now there's a huge rush to get back to the hotel to get to sleep. Things have turned around. There is really an avalanche of people to try and get [through before we go] back to the hotel.
It's just common sense, really. Moderation in all things.
I'd love to learn a little bit more about the new album you're working on. I believe you had just finished recording before heading on tour.
I would take a guess and say it'll be [released] immediately after the summer. It's 10 new songs; Rod wrote nine of them and I wrote one of them — that's often the way we do things. There's a lot of rhythmic songs on there. We’re playing four songs on tour now from the new album, so there's no way people can hear these songs anywhere else in the world other than coming to our show.
And it’s not all ballads. There’s some good grooves in there – "Merry Go Round" and "Different Game," that’s probably my favorite track on the album. And it’s a rhythmic song; I don’t know whether it’s a rocker or not.
You’ve been working with Rod Argent since you were a teenager. How do you keep that music-making process fresh after so long?
I think it's an advantage because, first of all, I feel more confident when I'm working with Rod because I've worked with him for so long. He writes with my voice in mind. Rod is very careful about keys, because we both like my voice when it's singing quite high. We always work on the songs together, just him and me before we present to the band.
One of the ways that we can keep that fresh is Rod likes to challenge himself; he's always trying new things. And he pulls me along with him. He is a genius as a musician… and if you hear him playing the most complicated classical pieces, you know this is a special player. And he's [not] content with just playing the same old stuff. I mean, of course, we always play our hits and I think we're quite lucky in that our hits do have a timeless feel about them.
But we always play new stuff as well. We're always looking for deep cuts — some of the tunes that everyone's forgotten, probably including us!
Then, we'll play new songs that have just been written and you have to work on these songs…especially Rod’s songs because he's got a talent for writing songs that sound simple…[but they] are sophisticated chords. They're not C, F and G. It’s challenging material and that helps to keep it fresh, because it's not easy to perform the songs and you're always challenging yourself.
And I imagine that keeps you from just being a greatest hits band or an oldies group.
We couldn't do that. I don’t think Rod or I would be interested in doing that. We physically couldn't fulfill these kinds of tours if we were just rolling out the same old tunes. The interest, the energy and the excitement comes from the new material.
You mentioned your classical influence, which I think is an element that's across all of the Zombies' work. But did you try on any new inspiration on this upcoming record?
This was done in the pandemic, so we did have to modify things. Luckily, Rod had just built a brand-new studio in his house, and first of all, we had to make the studio work and we didn't know if it would work. He built it in an outhouse in his house; his house is a converted barn, and the studio is a converted dairy. It was starting from scratch.
Once the studio was established, Rod got into a really hot writing stream. I live about an hour away from Rod, I get the phone call: "I've got a new song. You free to come down?" He has the kettle boiling as I walk through the door, so we have a cup of tea and sit down, and we start with a piano.
Some of them are easier than others but a lot of them are quite sophisticated. And we just have to keep hammering through it. And the intriguing thing is that often I get the more complicated songs faster than I get simple ones. There's one really simple song on the album and I really struggled — he thought I would get it in five minutes.
Do you have any plans for an original lineup tour? Next year will be the 55th anniversary of Odessey and Oracle….
I didn’t realize that, but I don’t think so. I think [bassist/singer] Chris White and [drummer] Hugh Grundy have been magnificent because neither of them have lived the life of professional musicians. Chris had not picked up a bass since 1967. When we did the first celebration, I think it was the 40th anniversary of O&O, Hugh played in amateur bands, but Chris hadn't played at all.
Rod and I were saying "Before we commit to this 40th anniversary where Hugh and Chris play, we ought to all get together and just see if they can play the play." Rod and I were actually on tour and we met up with Hugh and Chris and played through the album.
Hugh and Chris were note perfect. Obviously they'd rehearsed and rehearsed and they've got it. Rod and I, the professionals who have been on tour, hadn't rehearsed at all, and we were awful, really hopeless. It was embarrassing! So that told us it would be OK for the 40th anniversary.
Originally in 2008, we were only going to play one show. And that led to three sell-out shows in London. And then people asked us to come back the next year and play across England. We weren't expecting this honestly, we were just going to do the one show, and then we came to America, and then we went around to Europe.
So, it grew into something that we really weren't expecting.
I just don't want us to overdo it [with Odessey and Oracle]. Paul Weller said to Rod in a very friendly way: be careful not to make it lose its specialness too much.
We've played Odessey and Oracle a lot of times — the last time was when we toured with Brian Wilson. I wanted him to do Pet Sounds very bad; he said he'd done it too many times. And we played Odessey and Oracle. So that was the last time we did it's a bit hard to sort of beat that.
This really did get me close to tears: I was invited to sing "God Only Knows" with Brian Wilson. He was playing piano right next to me at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles and in Seattle. That was a highlight I will never, ever forget that was incredible. But daunting. One of the greatest songs ever written — what a thrill.
So to go back a few decades: The Zombies broke up in ’67 and "Time Of The Season" became a hit in 1969. Why didn't the band get back together?
We were all committed to other projects; it was kind of too late for us to get back together again.
Rod and Chris in particular were in such a rich writing vein at that particular time. [Odessey and Oracle is] 12 tracks and every song is an absolute classic — I would have been interested to know what we might have done next, but I know that the other guys didn't have any interest.
The general feeling was that the band had run its course and that we'd gone as far as we could. And it was time to move on. There was no acrimony. There was never even a discussion of whether we should reform. It was just a wonderful miracle [that] "Time of the Season" was a hit.
Two years after we broke up — who would have ever thought? There’s a kind of a mystique about the band; here we are 60 years later, still touring three or four major tours a year. I'm not quite sure how that happened. But I'm eternally grateful that it did.
It's a strange alchemy you have and maybe it's the name itself: You have multiple lives. But moving on to your career as a solo artist — where you were in your life when you wrote and recorded One Year?
[Zombies guitarist] Paul Atkinson, Hugh Grundy and myself were with a management company who were either inept, or something much darker. Having had many hit records around the world and toured as headliners around the world, we managed to be completely broke. When the band finished, all three of us had to get jobs immediately. There was no sitting at home dwelling, and in a way I think that helped me.
I went to work in a really busy office in the middle of London, and I didn't have time to dwell on the sadness of the band breaking up. After about a year, "Time Of The Season" started going up the charts in America, and that meant I started getting offers to record. A producer called Mike Hurst had just recorded the Cat Stevens' record Matthew and Son and he convinced me to go off to work at Olympic Studio in Barnes — the Stones used to record there — and I recorded a few tracks under a pseudonym, Neil McArthur. This record was released and it was a small hit.
And then I didn't have any choice: I was back in the music business. After that, I was coming home from a party with Chris White, the original bass player, [who] said "Rod and I have a production company. We've got to deal with CBS Records. Why don't you come and record?" Ros, Chris and I got back into Abbey Road’s studio three, where we'd recorded Odessey and Oracle, with Peter Vince engineering, who'd engineered most of Odessey and Oracle. It was like getting the whole team back together again.
And that's how I recorded my first album, which is called One Year. I was used to recording very fast, but for one reason or another — mostly because Rod had commitments with his band Argent — the album actually took us a year to record it. I couldn't believe that we took that long to record an album, hence the title.
You mentioned earlier that it typically is Rod writing most of the songs and you'll come in with a couple. But you wrote a majority of the tracks on One Year — were you always writing? How were you able to create something so prolific and meaningful?
Well, you know, everyone has to start somewhere! [Laughs] I was intrigued and thrilled when I realized that Rod and Chris could write. We'd been an amateur band for, I think four years before either of them acknowledged that they could write songs. Two or three days later, Rod had written "She’s Not There" and Chris wrote "You Make Me Feel Good," which became the b-side.
Watching them develop as songwriters was really inspirational. And I thought well, at least I could try!
The first song I wrote "How We Were Before;" we recorded it and it did go on an album or a b-side. Then we did a film called Bonney Lake is missing. We had to magic up some tunes and … I wrote another song quite quickly and it was called "Just Out Of Reach." So that was kind of the beginning of my writing career.
I kept on playing and kept on writing, so that I had quite a selection of songs. One Year has just been re-released to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and recently, they discovered 14 demos that I've completely forgotten about. I was a little apprehensive how people would react to these 14 demos… but the reaction has been great.
I've been encouraged, and I think I'm gonna take one or two of those ideas and expand them into proper songs and put them on a new album.
What are some of your other favorite projects you've worked on as a solo artist?
When I was working in the office when the Zombies finished, I used to have to commute. And I didn't like to talk in the morning. I'm hanging on these little strap handles and a guy I knew came up to me — I didn't even know he was a musician — He said, "Colin, I've just written a rock opera." I’m like, It’s 8 o’clock in the morning. Rock operas have tried and failed many times. "And we based it on the life of Jesus Christ."
We got together with him and his partner afterwards, and it was Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber. So I was going to be Jesus Christ on the original album, but I just signed a deal with Rod and Chris with Epic Records. And they wrote to me and said, hey, you've just signed a deal with us. So we want your first release to be on CBS and Jesus Christ Superstar is going to be on MCA. So we won't give permission for you to do it. So Ian Gillan did it and he did a great job, he probably did a much better job than I would have done!
I sang on many of the Alan Parsons Projects, and Alan [Parsons] was an assistant engineer in Abbey Road when we did Odessey and Oracle so I got to know him. In New York the other night I think we would have played "Old And Wise," which is from the album Eye In The Sky, that is my favorite one that I sang [with Parsons].
There was a period in my life where I was doing quite a few jingles and commercials. I always say to people, if they're coming into the business, don't shy away from that. You learn — I wrote quite a few jingles, and you have to get a message over in 30 seconds. It's a craft, and I enjoyed it.
And you gotta eat as a working musician.
Neither Rod nor I are particularly motivated by money and we both turned down things that would have been worth a lot of money. But the other side of it is, yeah, we do need to eat. We’re really fortunate that we can tour as much as we want to, and we never have to think about how we're going to pay the rent.
But believe me for most of my life, I know what that’s like! [Laughs]
When you’re not recording with your friends and bandmates, or talking to journalists, what do you like to do with your free time?
Well, I love being at home. We've got a beautiful garden that I like to get a little bit involved in. And we've got a canal that was built in 1700 at the end of our garden, so I can go to the end of the garden and watch these canal boats going by, which is really lovely. I like to walk; I do draw and paint a little bit. I like to keep fit, although in the last few years that's gone out of a window.
When I get back… I just want to enjoy being at home. Just absorb the wonderful atmosphere, and then maybe get out in the garden.