Scott B. Bomar: Welcome to Strand Books and our conversation with the original Zombies this evening as we celebrate the launch of their brand-new book The "Odessey." Um, real quick before we get goin', I just wanna take a moment to, uh, introduce you to our panelists, as if they need any introduction. They actually just came out here and naturally sat in alphabetical order, which I think is [indistinct] um, but, uh, um, all the way down at the end, we have Cindy da Silva, and Cindy is the Zombies' manager and also, uh, instrumental in helping to put this book together, which she'll tell you more about in just a moment. Then next to her, we have Rod Argent, Colin Blunstone, Hugh Grundy, and Chris White. Uh, my name is Scott B. Bomar. I'm here representing BMG Books. Uh, you might know BMG as a music company, and BMG is now - as of this book - a book company. This is our very first, uh, release for BMG Books. We are officially in the music-related books space now thanks to the Zombies and this, uh, incredible book that they have put together, showcasing, um, original artwork, handwritten lyrics to twenty-two songs, a running oral history of their career as, um, it runs along with each of those songs, um, great photos, really, uh, a cool book. I'm sure you've had a chance to go ahead and, and start looking it. We're super excited to have this be the first release from BMG Books, but it's not BMG Books alone. We partnered with Reel Art Press, and they're based in the U.K. Yes, give 'em a hand. I wanna recognize Tony Norman right over here. Wave to everyone, Tony, head of Reel Art Press, uh, very important and crucial partners with us, uh, in this whole thing. Um, I also wanna recognize one more, uh, person before we get started, and that's Vivienne Boucherat who is Chris's wife. Where are you? Where are you, Viv? Back there in the back. Uh, Viv did an original piece of art - you see it right up here on the screen - each one of these pieces of art is in the book. As I mentioned, there are twenty-two songs in the book and hand-written lyrics for each of the songs. Viv did an original piece of art that was inspired by each of the songs, um, and so it really added a ton to the book. It would not be the same book that it is, uh, were it not for her visual component, so we're thrilled to also have her with us this evening, and, uh, when you see her afterwards, tell her how awesome she is 'cause it's really cool. It made the book.
Chris: She won't let me forget it.
Scott: Right. And she's, she's Chris's wife, so, you know, she- we gotta, we gotta share the love. Um, so again, a really neat book, um, I'm excited for you guys to, to take a look at it, but before you dive in and before you get the opportunity to have the band sign your book at the end of the event, we wanna some time to ask them some questions about their career, um, and then we're gonna give you guys a chance to ask some audience questions toward the end, so, um, because the book is an oral history and because the book, uh, sort of is organized according to these twenty-two original, handwritten song lyrics, we're gonna use some of those songs as spring boards to kind of frame the discussion and, and, and frame some of the questions, um, but before we do, uh, my first question I wa- actually wanna ask Cindy, uh, who I mentioned is the band's manager. Um, Cindy, where did this concept come from? Where'd this idea come from to put together a Zombies book?
Cindy: OK, so, we had done a Pledge campaign for our last record, Still Got That Hunger, that's out on The End Records and BMG, and, uh, as part of our Pledge campaign, we started doing handwritten lyrics, and, and we did really well with that. Seemed like everybody liked the handwritten lyric thing, and then towards the end of a tour, someone said to me, "Well, I want a full collection," and I got it for him, and I said to myself- I was lookin' at it, and I said, "Wow, before I turn this in, something really special has to happen with it," so I took some high resolution scans and kind of put it to the side, and then in July of last year, I was in London visiting Viv and Hu- and Chris, and she showed me this beautiful art that she had done. It was all derivative work from the original Terry Quirk, uh, record cover for Odessey and Oracle but also, um, her interpretations of each song as, you know, she'd, she'd performed with them the year before. Uh, we did an Odessey and Oracle tour, so it was kind of an inspiration to her, so I looked at this, and I said, "Well, we need to do a book. This would be really cool if we, if we put together and did a song by song play," and then in September, uh, we had our very first meeting with BMG. They had bought The End Records, and we, we were in L.A., and, uh, [I] remember the day very clearly 'cause they said to me, "So what else would you like to do?" You know, they asked me, "Wh- what, what's goin' on with the Zombies?" I told them what we had coming up, and then they said, "What else would you wanna do?" and I said, "Well, there's this book idea." You know, and it just came kind of like off the cuff, and I never expected anything. Next thing you know, they bring Scott in to the meeting, and the next day, they announced to Rod and Colin, who had never heard about the book, that they were gonna do the book, so thankfully everybody else kicked in really fast, and that's how it came about.
Scott: Yeah, and I'll mention the cover. It as well was done by Terry Quirk
Cindy: Yes.
Scott: who did the original artwork for the Odessey and Oracle album
Cindy: Yes.
Scott: so it was cool to, uh, in addition to all the great art that Viv contributed to also have Terry participate, and he did, uh, some artwork that's also scattered throughout the book as well as the cover, which is very cool
Cindy: Mm.
Scott: Um. I know most of you came here tonight to hear me and Cindy talk, um, so we will contin- no. So I wanna, I wanna get the guys talkin' about some of the- give you a little preview of some of the stuff in the book, um, but I wanna start out talking about, um, your first, uh, single, which was "She's Not There" on one side and "You Make Me Feel Good" on the other, and "She's Not There," um, of course written by Rod, and then the other side written by Chris. Now, obviously, enormously successful, but I understand from both of you through the process of doing this book [that] you were pretty much new songwriters. I mean, these are some of the earliest songs that you ever wrote, so maybe, Chris go first and then Rod and, and, and just tell us: how did you even know you could do something like that?
Chris: Ha, that is a good question. Basically, we, we were told by the producer we had at the time, Ken Jones, that we needed to write some material. Rod straightaway wrote it, and then I wrote some and other songs, and then it was a toss up which one was going to be the single first of all, but luckily, it was "She's Not There."
Rod: It could easily have been
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: "You Make Me Feel Good."
Chris: Yeah, and they were the first two songs we'd written and rehearsed. We just did it, simple as that. I don't know how.
Rod: Yeah. It was, it was- well, d'you know what? I mea- The thing is that when you're that age, you've got no idea of any of the pitfalls, of the things that can go wrong, you know? Everything has to go right when you record a hit record. You have to get the song right in its structure; you have to- it has to fit the people that are playing and singing it, and in, in "She's Not There"'s case, it had to sound great with Colin singing it. Um, it has to be recorded beautifully, um, and successfully, and it has to come out at the right time, and all those things have to be in place, but you have no knowledge of that. You just take that for granted.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: You think, you think that, that all these things are gonna happen, and, and you're, you know, you have that naïveté and arrogance that you only have once when you're, when you're starting out, and you think, "Yeah!" You know, I thought, "Yeah, I can write something," you know, "great. I'll write something that's as sort of as good as the Beatles," I mean, it's completely ridiculous really, but, um
Chris: Rod, was it that first session that the engineer fell foul of alcohol?
Rod: Oh, it certainly was.
Colin: Yes.
Rod: I mean, Colin always tells that story.
Colin: Yeah, let's see. I'll-
Scott: Yeah, let's hear that story, Colin.
Colin: Well, um, the first session, when, when we went in, we went into an evening session in Decca Studios in West Hampstead. It was very fashionable to go to record in the evenings in those days. It was sort of cool- the cool thing to do, and unfortunately, the engineer had been to a wedding all day, and he was completely, utterly, and absolutely drunk, and he started to get more and more aggressive with the- you know, he was-
Chris: It was our first session, too.
Colin: This is our first time in the studio, and when I- taking into account we've been in the business over fifty years, I can tell you that twenty minutes into our first session, I knew that the music business wasn't for me. I absolutely knew it. This guy was so- he was screaming down the headphones at us, and then we had a bit of luck: he passed out, and we had to carry him out of the session, one on each leg and one on each arm. We carried him up two flights of stairs. We put him into a London taxi, black taxi, waved him goodbye, and I never saw him again, and his assistant took over the session, and his assistant was called Gus Dudgeon, and Gus Dudgeon went on to be one of the biggest producers, most successful producers in the world.
Chris: It was his first session, too.
Colin: It was his first session.
Chris: First session as an engineer.
Colin: So on "She's Not There," it was our first session, and the tape op, who was Gus Dudgeon, took over the session, and it was his first session as well, so it was- it very nearly didn't happen, to be honest.
Scott: Right, right.
Colin: It was, uh, it was an experience.
Chris: Yeah.
Scott: Kind of piggybacking, uh, off what Rod said about the, um, the, the boldness of youth, you know, just thinking
Rod: Yeah.
Scott: well, we're just gonna plow into this, um
Rod: Yeah.
Scott: Hugh, you said something in the, in the oral history in the book. Uh, you said, you know, "In my naïveté, I, I just assumed that 'She's Not There' would be, would be a hit, you know?"
Hugh: I think you're right. Um, uh, as Rod and Colin have both said, uh, I just thought it was gonna be a hit, and I didn't expect anything else.
Scott: Hmm.
Hugh: And fortunately, it was. Otherwise, it would have been a bit of a blow to, to one's psyche.
Scott: Right. Could you have imagined- so you had the confidence that it was going to be, uh, a hit. Could you ever imagin- imagine that all these decades later that you would still be talking about this song, still be playing this song, still be....
Hugh: Not in a million years. Absolutely fantastic that we are still doing it and, um, playing these wonderful songs. We're keeping them alive and, uh, more and more new people, who come into the world, uh, experience these songs and are beginning- and enjoy them.
Rod: D'you know- do you remember we had, um, on our last tour of America, Graham Nash came along, and when he was talking to us afterwards, he said, he said, "Whoever would have thought when we were talking fifty years ago that, uh, not only would we, would we both be as excited, um, about what we're doing and creating now and still just as energized, um, uh, but at the same time, we would still be singing the songs that we'd been doing tonight?"
Scott: Yeah.
Rod: We, we would have thought that that was just complete craziness.
Scott: Yeah.
Rod: Uh, and, and the fact that it's happened, as you say, fifty years later, is, is just, you know, it was unlooked for really.
Scott: Yeah.
Rod: And one of the things that knocks me out is the fact that it's not only people that have followed us all the way through, um, but we always have a young component in the audience when we play, too, and we seem to, um, as it, as you in this beautiful book that you've put together, and I must say: it is fantastic. I mean, we saw the thing for the first time properly when we- a few days ago, and we were totally knocked out by its quality. I mean, it's been beautifully put together by Scott and the people at BMG and Cindy. It, it rea- I mean, it, it's really knocked us out. Um, and, and the fact that, uh, there are some young bands in there talking about how the music still relates to them is, is something that we wouldn't have believed fifty years ago, you know? It just seems incredible to me.
Scott: Yeah, there's, uh, a lot of testimonials in the book, people talking about the Zombies, talking about what an impact they had on them, and you have people from, from Clive Davis, Brian Wilson, Carlos Santana to Cage the Elephant, Beach House, uh
Rod: Yeah.
Scott: More, newer acts as well, and it's, it's really cool just to see that full spectrum like you say of, uh, of artists that have been impacted. Um, I wanted to ask you guys, specifically Colin, um, you- we talked about, um, songwriting with Rod and Chris, and of course, Rod and Chris wrote most of those Zombies songs, but you had several songs. One in the book, uh, is "Just out of Reach."
Colin: Yeah.
Scott: From the Bunny Lake Is Missing, um, soundtrack. Tell us a little bit about how that all came about and how you kind of made your debut as a, as a Zombies songwriter.
Colin: Well, um, Otto Preminger approached us to write some songs for his new film, uh, Bunny Lake Is Missing, starring Lawrence Olivier and Carol Lynley and the Zombies, which is- we were- we had equal billing.
Chris: We did, yeah.
Colin: And, uh, but the thing was, he said- we actually auditioned for him. We played in the, in the basement of a club called the Cromwellian in west London, and he said, "Yep, that's fine. You"-
Rod: We did "Summertime," Col, didn't we?
Colin: Did we?
Rod: And, and I think he used to know Gershwin.
Colin: Oh, oh, well, that would have-
Rod (overlapping with Colin): And, and I think that really knocked him out
Colin: Yeah.
Rod: the fact that we did "Summertime."
Colin: But he said, "We, we need three songs," basically because they wanted to get in on the publishing.
Chris: Yeah.
Colin: It had to be three new songs that would go to their publishing company, uh, written and recorded in - as I remember - about ten days, and no one- I think Chris had got two sort of half-written songs.*
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: Rod hadn't got any songs, so-
Hugh: I certainly hadn't.
Colin: Well, this is an opening for me, you see? So I thought, "Well, I'll try and write something," and, um, it was a bit thrown together to be absolutely honest.
Rod: But we still do it today.
Colin: We still play it! It's, it really sounds the epitome of a sixties song. It's a, it's a good fun song, and I think we're gonna do it on this tour, aren't we?
Rod: Yeah, absolutely.
Colin: Yeah, it's called "Just out of Reach."
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: I was desperate for a title. I, I stole the title from a, from ano- from a record, and it was nearly "Wild as the Wind." I mean, I was desperate. I was- and we were really backed up timewise, so I just wanted three words that would fit [sings the four pitches of the title phrase]. I just had those three-
Rod: That's four words.
Chris: That's four words.
Hugh: Four words.
Colin: Oh, oh, that was where I was going wrong. So you can see I was a, a beginner songwriter. I didn't even know how many words were in the title, but in the end, we, we, we got it together, and it got into the film, so that was, it was really fantastic, and, uh, I think we all got a quick little, uh, portrait, so to speak, on the television in a pub, which Lawrence Olivier was in, and I remember my face was on the TV, and I was thinking, "I'm sharing a scene with Lawrence Olivier! Well, Larry, [as] I like to call him," and so I was on the screen for like two seconds. He walks right across the room and switches the TV off, and that was my, that was my scene with him.
Scott: That was your big scene.
Colin: Yeah.
Scott: Um, Hugh, you, you had some interesting memories. Talk about what your memory is of the day that you guys shot those, those scenes.
Hugh: I do remember vaguely.
Colin (directing him to a closer microphone): Hugh, do you wanna try this one?
Hugh: Yeah, OK, which, whichever. Um, I know we were doing this, uh, recording in, um, some studio somewhere**, and the idea was that he wanted it to look like, uh, the, the current type of TV program that was on, so towards the end of the song, he'd primed all the, uh, youngsters who were in there to rush up the stage towards us, and that's exactly what happened, and they came rushing up, and drums went flying, and we all were just, um, all over the place.
Colin: You weren't very happy were you, when you-
Hugh: No! These were my drums, excuse me! I wasn't Keith Moon at that time.
Chris: And, and didn't Otto Preminger have a Beatle wig, which he wore?
Rod: He did, yeah.
Colin: He did, yeah.
Hugh: Yeah.
Colin: He did, and very becoming it was, too.
Chris: Yeah.
Scott: Well, the book is, is divided into, um, three sections, kind of what we call the, the singles years, the pre-Odessey and Oracle time, then Odessey and Oracle, and then some of the more recent things, um, and there's some killer stories that you guys shared, uh, when we were putting the book together. I wish we had time to go over all of 'em, but they're all in the book so definitely make sure you don't just look at the pictures. There's some, some great gems in there, um, but I do wanna-
Hugh: Can I just talk about the pictures?
Scott: Absolutely.
Hugh: Can I do that?
Scott: Yes, talk about anything you want.
Hugh: You said pictures so that was a very good cue. Um, obviously, the- there's a, a huge load of pictures from the sixties and, and that era
Scott: Yeah.
Hugh: all set in stone, so you can't do much about that, but the modern pictures that- [pointing out of frame] there's one now from then, uh, but you'll be seeing some pictures on there that are in the book now that, uh, are taken recently, in fact last year, in St Albans, and they were taken by my daughter, so I'd like you to just give a hand to my daughter Hayley.
Scott: And those pictures were shot in St Albans were you guys first
[Both talking at the same time over Scott]
Hugh: They were; yes, they were.
Chris: Yeah.
Scott: where it all began.
[All talking over each other]
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: That's right.
Hugh: Indeed, indeed, yeah.
Scott: Yeah, yeah. Um, I wanna talk a little bit about the Odessey and Oracle album because, um, well, Cindy, sort of, sort of briefly talk about why, why now with, with the book in terms of the anniversary and all that.
Cindy: Well, this is the fiftieth anniversary of when the album was actually recorded, and so we were gonna celebrate with a tour. Um, I didn't- I don't know- I didn't wanna wait two years till, till its release date. I just thought, "Let's do it now. Le- we're gonna have a long three-year celebration somehow, some way, in different, in different ways," and so we decided that it needed to come out along with the tour 'cause it just made sense. It's in our VIP package. It's in, you know, our meet and greet package, uh, and it'll be available at the merch table, so really your signing today is gonna be the only one that's gonna happen outside of one in London that won't be purchased at the merch table, so enjoy them.
Scott: Yeah, so because it's that anniversary, we put all of the songs from Odessey and Oracle
Cindy: Yes.
Scott: in the book, um, because obviously-
Cindy: And it's our swan song.
Scott: Yes, yes, yeah, this is the, the final, uh, live performances, I understand
Rod: Of Odessey and Oracle.
Scott: of the entirety of the album
Rod: Yeah.
Scott: right now so, it's a, it's a very special, uh, time to celebrate Odessey and Oracle, um, and you guys are playing at Town Hall here in, in, uh, about a week and a half, uh, in New York, so definitely make sure you are there if you wanna hear Odessey and Oracle live.
Cindy: And one last thing: do come by the merch table 'cause we've created some outrageous, collectible, limited-edition stuff for this tour. It's gonna be incredible.
Scott: So, obviously, Odessey and Oracle, uh, Mojo magazine [and] Rolling Stone have both put it in their top one hundred albums of all time. It was clearly, um, a sleeper hit.
Colin: Yes.
Scott: It was not successful
Chris: No.
Scott: at the time it came out but has since become this cult classic. Um, whoever wants to jump in here, just kind of share the story of how the title wound up being spelled like it was.
Chris: Well, I-
Hugh: Chris, that's for you.
Chris: The, the artist Terry Quirk, I was at art school with him and at school with him.
Rod: And we both shared a flat with him, didn't we?
Chris: We shared a flat with him.
Rod: Yeah.
Chris: And while we were working on songs, Rod and I, and all of a sudden, he said, "That- you- I- this is an idea for the cover," and we, neither of us, caught that he had spelt it wrong, so we made up-
Rod: The thing was that, yeah, back if I can just jump in there.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Rod: Um, my memory is that he- that very swirly, psychedelic thing, you know, he just mocked up
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: you know, the idea, and then we were away on tour
Chris: That's right, yeah.
Rod: and then he finished it, um, and it was when we came back, and CBS actually said, um, "We finished the cover. Um, come along and have, have a look at it," and, you know, we went along and looked, and Chris and I went and- went along and looked at it, and we said, "It's fantastic. We love it, but," I said to Chris, "He hasn't spelled it right," and, and Chris said, "No," and I said, "I'll tell you what: why don't we say that it's a play on words, you know, between 'ode,' you know, and 'odyssey' meaning 'journey,' so it's, it's a journey told in little verses, you know? Why don't we say that?"
Chris: And we stuck to that story.
Rod: And he, and he, he, he said, "Yeah."
Hugh (to Chris's comment): And still do.
Rod: And we never told Colin anything different.
Chris: Colin, no.
Colin: This is what amazes me: they never told me, and we were doing an interview a couple of years
Rod: In the nineties
Colin: a couple
Rod: Wasn't it in the nineties? Yeah?
Colin: Well, even a couple of years ago, something like that, and Rod told this story that he's just told you, and I was sitting next to him, and I said, "Rod, I can understand you telling the public this story, but you've told me for forty-something years this story about 'it's an ode, and it's a-'" I always thought, "This is really weird," but, you know, coming from Rod, that, that's fine. I thought it's really weird, and then he kept it secret all those years, so strange.
Rod: Oh. Truth had to come out one day, didn't it?
Colin: Yes.
Scott: Well, you guys, um, talk in the book about recording the album kind of piecemeal. You didn't just go in for a week or two to the studio and, and do it all at once. Why was the album sort of done in these bursts?
[simultaneously]
Colin: Well-
Rod: It was- yeah-
Chris: Basically, we had a thousand pounds, and luckily, we were one of the first groups to be us- to use Abbey Road Studios.
Colin: That weren't-
Rod: That weren't-
Colin: That weren't with EMI.
Rod: signed to EMI.
Hugh: [indistinct] signed to EMI.
Chris: That worked [indistinct]
Colin: Usually, it was exclusive that only EMI artists
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: could use Abbey Road. Somehow, we managed to get in there.
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: But we had this very limited budget, and so what we had to was rehearse incredibly extensively so that we knew exactly what we were gonna do when we went into the studio. The arrangements were set; the keys were set; all we were looking for was the performance. We recorded really, really fast because Abbey Road's one of the most expensive studios in the world, and even in 1967, if you only had a thousand pounds, you had to be in and out very, very quickly, and that's why we recorded in bits: because we had to rehearse this, this bit, get in, and record it as quickly as we could.
Rod: Also the songs, the songs took several months to be written.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: So we had a couple of songs, and we'd go in there and record them, and typically, uh, a song would be recorded in three hours. Um.
Chris: Actually, we did three in- backing tracks in three hours.
Rod: Did we really?
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: Wow.
Chris: [indistinct]
Rod: What? On, on Odessey? Did we really?
Chris: Yeah. Oh, yes.
Rod: Good G--. And we only had one song.
Scott: Um, well, the album, of course, opens with "Care of Cell 44," one of Rod's songs, um, and, Colin, in the book, you said that, at the time, that was probably your favorite track on the album.
Colin: Yes.
Scott: What, what stood out to you about that song?
Colin: Well, I think I like everything about it, but probably the first thing is I think the lyric is incredibly clever. Uh, the thought of a- I- it is so original: the thought of a love song from someone to- writing to someone who's coming out of prison. I mean, I've never seen that covered before in a lyric, and, and as, and as well as, I suppose it's quite a sad song, really, when you think about it, but it's very- it's a, uh, an opposite thing with the lyric- uh, with the melody: it's such a jaunty melody, but it's going with this rather sad lyric. I love the sort of - if I might say - Beach Boy-type harmonies. Um, I just think it's an incredibly original and commercial track, and I thought that that was the stand-out single. It was released as a single, and it didn't sell a copy, so that shows you what I- all I know about singles, but I, I just love that track, yeah.
Scott: Yeah, yeah. Um, so another one of the songs on the album, "Changes," one of Chris's songs, um, that was the, the only song I think where every single band member had a vocal part. Everybody sang, uh, sang some vocals on that. Talk, talk about that.
Chris: Well, the reason is because there were- we were recording on four-track, so we- there wasn't-
Colin: We were on seven-track, Chris.
Rod: Yeah, but, yeah, but it- we, we, we recorded on seven
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: because of the way the Beatles had-
Chris: See, you and I remember differently because
Rod: No, no, what I mean is-
Chris: we bounced down three to one, and then sometimes
Rod: Yeah
Chris: [indistinct], yeah.
Rod: Yeah, but I mean that was using different machines, wasn't it?
Chris: Yes. Yeah.
Rod: and comping [?] down to- and, and the Beatles had pioneered that because Brian Wilson had an eight-track with Pet Sounds in the U.S.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: and John Lennon said, "We've gotta have that," you know? And they said, "Well, you can't," and they said, "Well-" he said, "Well, sort something out," so they- I remember when we first walked in there, we had a conversation with Peter Vince.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: Um, 'cause I know Geoff Emerick also recorded on the album, but we did a lot of it with Peter, didn't we?
Chris: Yes, most of it.
Rod: And, and, and, and Peter was saying, um, "Oh, man," he said, "you know, those Beatle sessions," he said, "they're great, but," he said, "they were working all hours of the day and night, and they made us do these incredibly technically difficult things because they said, 'Well, just work out a way of doing it.'" Uh, and when he talked about ending up with more than four tracks to record on, which we'd never seen before, um, we suddenly said, "Yeah, we'll have some of that," and they went, "Oh, my G--," you know? "What are we gonna do?" But, um, they did, and, and, and we took-
Chris: The final tracks are all just on four tracks.
Rod: Yeah.
Chris: We bounced down.
Rod: But they used-
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: They used the, the technology.
Chris: Yeah, yeah.
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: Well, with "Changes" also, as you quite rightly said, everyone was singing a harmony, and we were all 'round the piano in Studio 3 in Abbey Road, and at that time although the Beatles could record through the night, for anyone else
Chris: Yeah
Colin: it was, it was very regimented in that you recorded from ten till one, [but then] you had to stop. Two to five, [then] you had to stop. Seven till ten.
Rod: And that was it, yeah.
Colin: And especially in Studio 3, you had to stop at, at, uh, ten o'clock 'cause it wasn't very well sound-proofed, and it sounds so strange now that the people in the flats next door used to complain about the music, so we had to stop at ten. With "Changes," all of us were singing 'round this piano. Um, the red light's on; it's just gone past one o'clock, and because they were very regimented, that's- the time's up, and these guys came in - I remember very well - in long, brown coats. They were the guys who- the, the loaders, who used to move things around, and they just walked in with- the red light's on. We're singing 'round the mic. They walk in, and they start moving this piano out of the studio, and we, you know, we didn't have any money, so we just had to keep going, and I'd like to think that on "Changes," you can hear these guys moving the piano while we're singing. I'm not sure it's true, but I'd like to think you could.
Hugh: I think- I, I'd like to think that, too.
Colin: I think we had to do another take, and so we went on even past one o'clock, but that's what Abbey Road was like. It was- for England, it was very, very modern; it was a place you wanted to be, but it was run in a very old-fashioned way, like the civil service, and at one o'clock, you stopped or else you got your piano moved. And that- and that's what happened.
Rod: But it- but having access to these extra tracks in, in whatever way we did meant that, uh, for the first time, we could do things like- if, if I laid down a piano track, I could also put a Mellotron, uh, track on as well, and John Lennon had left his Mellotron*** behind because the Beatles had just stopped, um, recording Sgt. Pepper['s Lonely Hearts Club Band], and I just jumped on the Mellotron because it was there, and, and it became one of the defining sounds of the album just because it happened to be in the studio, you know.
[overlapping with Rod's previous comment]
Chris: Yep.
Hugh: [indistinct]
Rod: And it also meant that even though we had prepared things very carefully because we had to record everything in about three hours at the most, um, we still had the chance of being spontaneous, so if there was, uh, an extra harmony one of us heard, and I remember on "Changes," that, that little counterpoint at, at, at the top.
Chris [overlapping]: Yeah, you, you put- that's right, yeah. Exactly.
Rod: You know, [sings the part]
Chris: That's what made it, yeah.
Rod: Um, well, no, it didn't make it, but it's-
Chris: I'm not paying you any royalties!
Rod: No, no, but, but it, it meant we could do that, too.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: And so it expanded our palette, um, in a quite surprising way, so it was that marvelous combination of having boundaries, which can be very good, actually, when you're recording, um, uh, and having to do things quickly, but, and so we prepared very well, but also the chance of putting something very spontaneous in the mix as well, so it was, it was a pretty good balance, wasn't it?
Hugh: I was very lucky because you asked me and Paul to sing on the, the only track on, uh, Odessey and Oracle
Rod: Yeah, never asked you [indistinct]
Hugh: [indistinct] never after that! Funny that. Funny that. But he gave- you gave us the j- Paul and I, the job of singing the bass harmony together [on "Changes"] to fatten out the bottom part, the harmony
Rod: We were desperate for a cup of tea, though.
Hugh: so I was very chuffed about that.
Scott: Um, well, one more question about Odessey and Oracle: there are obviously a lot of influences on the album, what, what you would say are kind of early psychedelic influences, um, "Hung up on a Dream," "Time of the Season," you sort of hear this very psychedelic sound, kind of the, uh, very much of that, of that era, but you guys, um, according to the book, and I'll take you at, at your word that, uh, psychedelic drugs were not really a factor in the creation process for that.
Rod: You have to remember that in- that we'd finished that album by the end of the summer in '67.**** Now, my memory, and correct me if I'm wrong, which I co- I could easily be, but, um, was that- I don't think the Beatles discovered psychedelic drugs because their dentist gave it to them when he was 'round for dinner one evening.
Chris: [indistinct]
Rod: Um, and I think that was in the summer of '67.
Chris: Yeah.
Rod: So, really, I mean there was a little bit of, you know, marijuana around at- but not even a lot of that that
Chris: No.
Rod: at that time, and it seemed to me that the explosion of everything happened- the explosion of, you know, drugs and debauchery, really, happened after '67 and through the early '70s. I mean that was the really- you know, and, and Argent were on, on tour by the early '70s
Scott: Yeah.
Rod: and, and we saw that going on all around us, but we [the Zombies] sort of missed that, that period where it first exploded, I think.
Scott: Yeah, yeah.
Hugh: I think I was the only one in the band that smoked.
Chris: You were.
Hugh: Cigarettes, yeah.
Chris: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah, you were.
Scott: Bunch of well-behaved young men.
Rod: Yeah, but Chris, you started smoking, though, didn't you, Chris?
Chris: Yeah, I started smoking when I was forty.
Hugh: [indistinct]
Scott: Um, well, you guys are, are obviously about to hit the road. You've got this tour coming up, but, um, you also very much view the Zombies as a continuum. The Zombies is not, um, a band that just goes out and plays songs that were written in the sixties. You're still making great music. You're still very much, um, actively doing what you've always done. Kind of talk about, um, for, for Rod and Colin, how you think of- and, and four of the more recent Zombies songs are included in this book. Talk about how you kind of think of, of the Zombies in terms of the whole picture versus maybe just what was then.
Rod: Well, I, I think the thing is that we approach things in exactly the same way. We d- we only know one way of writing and of rehearsing and going out there and having a ball on stage, and we still get completely as energized by the creation of new material as we did when we were young, um, and I don't think Colin and I would be doing it otherwise. I, I real- Is that true for you, Colin?
Colin: Absolutely, I think it's really important for us that we, we write and record new material, and, you know, we got together in, um, back in 1999. It's really quite by chance. We were gonna do six concerts, and we were gonna play- I don't think we were gonna play any Zombie material
Rod: No.
Colin: very little Zombie material. Rod and I both have solo careers, and we were gonna play tracks from our solo careers, and over a period of time- we enjoyed those six concerts so much that we, we kept it going, and, um, over a period of time, we discovered that there was a huge interest and appetite in the Zombies repetoire, and it took us- it was a wonderful surprise, but it really took us by surprise, and so we started including more and more Zombie tunes until we got to the point when we thought, "Well, we're playing a Zombies set here, really."
Rod: Yeah, but we got excited also about discovering some of the old Zombies stuff that we never played live.
Colin: Yeah.
Rod: We suddenly realized that, didn't we?
Colin: It was really funny.
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: We had to, we had to learn these songs because a lot of them we'd only played in the studio and never played live.
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: Including most of Odessey and Oracle if not all of Odessey and Oracle, and we had to learn our own songs again, which is a kind of a strange thing to do, and we eventually got to a point where we thought, "Well-" and we'd been playing for seven or eight years at this time, and we thought, "Maybe it would be better if we just called this the Zombies again."
Rod: And I have to say that then, um, about five of the songs on the album, five or six of the songs actually work brilliantly with just five- a five-man band, um, but the rest of the songs need every note that was on the original album to be reproduced to really flower because of the extra keyboards, the extra harmonies, et cetera, um, so it's because of that that it's so lovely - and sentimentally lovely actually - to be, um, touring with Chris and Hugh again. I mean it really feels like, you know, we were on the road back in the sixties, doesn't it?
Chris: Like teenagers again, yeah.
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Hugh: What was absolutely amazing was the very first time that we were 'round your piano in your house
Rod: Yeah.
Hugh: having been given the idea that
Rod: Yeah.
Hugh: "Should we do this again?"
Rod: Yeah.
Hugh: "We'll just try it." Went 'round your piano and then like we'd never been apart for all those years-
Rod: Although I have- I have to add to that, uh, a little story against Colin and myself because, um, because, you know, we were very well aware that Chris deliberately stopped playing live, um, in, after 1967, and I said to Colin, "Well, you know, this feels like a lovely idea, but what's gonna happen? You know, Chris hasn't played a bass in [?] forty years. You know? And, and, you know, I, we've gotta get 'round the piano, and we've gotta try this out because I'm not sure that it's gonna work," and Colin said, "Yeah, you're absolutely right," so we trundled along to my place, and, and we, we were 'round the piano, and, um, Hugh and Chris- Hu- Hugh had a little, very, very basic little drum thing, and Chris brought an amp and his bass guitar, and Colin and I stood there and waited to hear what we were gonna hear. Um, they were note-perfect. We were all over the place with Odessey and Oracle.
Colin: It was so funny.
Rod: And it was, uh-
Colin: We thought we were the professional ones.
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: We were all over the place.
Rod: Yeah, yeah.
Colin: They were absolutely note perfect.
Rod: And they did it brilliantly. So this it. So for that reason, this year being the fiftieth, um, anniversary, we're gonna celebrate Odessey and Oracle, and we're gonna do it- a long American tour, going to Canada. We're gonna be, um, playing, uh, a tour in the U.K. We're gonna be going to European festivals, etc., but after this year, um, much as we're very proud of Odessey and Oracle, we - and we really are - we don't wanna just be doing it for the rest of our lives, and being- because it was fifty years ago, even though it's- we're very affectionate towards it, so this will be the last time that anyone will hear, um, Odessey and Oracle in its complete form with every note being reproduced. Um, that, that'll be it. We're gonna draw a line under it, and then just move on after that.
Scott: Well, I wanna make sure we have some time for audience questions. Um, is there anyone who wants to, uh, jump in? Uh, yes, ma'am, right here.
Carol: Hi, uh, my name is Carol, and I'm a big Zombies fan, and I have a question. Uh, Rod, you mentioned that you needed Paul McCartney's permission to use, um, the end of, uh, "Maybe Tomorrow."
Rod: Yep.
Carol: "I believe in..."
Rod: "yesterday."
Carol: So you needed permission. Why?
Rod: Because-
Carol: It's four words.
Rod: It's four words, yeah, but we weren't gonna, um- you know, it was an affectionate nod. It was a song about a quarrel, and, and getting very frustrated, you know, with your, with your partner. You, you start off the day, and everything's fine, and you're smiling and everything. Suddenly, you fall out about something, and you can't even remember what it is, and then, by the end of the day, you're thinking, "Oh, G--, I wish it was yesterday," and I thought, "Well, instead of saying that, why, why don't I just have a little affectionate nod in the direction of the Beatles, and, and, and, and have Colin sing, 'I believe in yesterday' at the end?" Um, and, and it was-
Colin: There's a copyright on that. It's as simple as that.
Cindy: Sony.
Colin: You know? It's, it- [to Cindy] go on.
Cindy: That's what it is. It's Sony. It's all owned by Sony.
Rod: I think you had a phone call, didn't you, from Sony?
Cindy: Chris did.
Rod: Oh, Chris did.
Cindy: Chris spoke to Sony, and-
Rod: Three days before the album was due to be released, and, and we said, "Oh, my-" and they said, "No, sorry, you're gonna have to pull this track from the album," and we thought, "Well, that's it. We've missed the tour. We've missed any chance of, of, of, of the album being released," and then, um, Chris and Cindy phoned up, um, McCartney's personal manager, whom they didn't know, and said, "Look, I don't know if there's any chance that this, you know, it, and we've only got a three-day, three- or four-day window, but you know, if there's anything you can do, it would just be fantastic." Within a couple of days, they got back to us, and, um, they got- they said, "We've, we've got a, the track to McCartney. He's played it. He loves it, and he said, 'You just go ahead,'" so that was so cool.
Colin: Yeah.
Cindy: I can't, I can't take credit for that. That was all Chris.
Chris: Not me.
Colin: And that-
Scott: Alright, so we have, uh, another question?
Colin: That- can I just say
Scott: Oh, sorry.
Colin: That song was called "Maybe Tomorrow," and it was on our latest album, which is called Still Got That Hunger, just to sort of put it all in context.
Scott: Alright. I'm gonna bring the mic around so we can hear the questions. Tony?
Tony: Where did you get your name from? The Zombies? How did that come about?
Colin: I, I always say it's out of desperation, really, um, because one of the first things that a young band wants to do is, is to get an original name, and we tried a couple of names. Remember: we were fifteen years old. We'd only just met, and, uh, we tried The Mustangs [makes a displeased face and gives a thumbs-down].
Rod: The Sundowners.
Colin: The Sundowners, ah.
Hugh: Sundowners.
Colin: And then the original bass player, who was only with us for a short time, uh, who's called Paul Arnold, and he didn't stay in the band because he wanted to study to become a doctor, and he did become a doctor, and he's in Edmonton in Canada now, and, um, he will tell you, if you go out to Edmonton, that it was him that thought of the name The Zombies, and to be honest, I didn't really know what a zombie was.
Hugh: I-
Colin: But it was-
Hugh: Oh, sorry.
Colin: Oh, go on.
Hugh: Go on, no.
Colin: I was just gonna say it's a very catchy name, and, and it's that-
Hugh: I think that was thought of in a pub.
Colin: Was it thought of in a pub?
Hugh: Yes, it was, and, uh-
Colin: I didn't think we were old enough to drink.
Hugh: Yeah, no, no, no, it was a bit later than that. Well...
Colin: Oh, was it? OK.
Hugh: We weren't, but we were in the pub nevertheless, enjoying beer, and I think that's what colored the, uh, decision in the end.
Colin: Oh, right, OK.
Rod: I, I just- something just occurred to me that, um, I remember the first time we did Ready Steady Go.***** Um, Manfred Mann were on with us, and, uh, I was- apart from loving rock and roll, I loved, um, the Miles Davis group of around, um, 1958, with Coltrane and Add- and Cannonball Adderly in it, and, um, I was wondering around the corridors, and I suddenly heard Miles playing from a, uh, a dressing room, and I, and I had to see who was playing it, so I opened the door and said, "'Scuse me, is that Miles playing?" and he said, "Yeah, yeah. Yeah," and then he looked and me. He said, "You're Rod Argent, aren't you?" and I said, "Yeah." I said, "Oh, you're Manfred!" He said, "Yeah, yeah, very pleased to meet you." He said, "Oh, man," he said, "I loved your single ["She's Not There"]." He said, "But you've gotta change that name," and we never did.
Scott: I think I saw... was it...
Audience member: Hi, I have two very quick questions. Um, what's the first one? Oh, the first one: Rod, when you went into EMI, and you got a hold of that Mellotron, was that the first time you were on Mellotron?
Rod: I'd, I'd never seen one before.
Audience member: And you just knew what to do with it?
Rod: Uh, well, no. I just thought that it was a way- I mean there's no way we could afford strings, so I thought that was a way of getting 'round that, and, and you know, if someone had offered us a string orchestra, I would have jumped at that. I would have said, "Yeah, let's, let's, let's do that," but in fact, I mean it just worked so beautifully because it had such a characteristic sound, and it became a bit of the, a defining sound on Odessey and Oracle, so we were one of the first bands really to exploit its use because did- wasn't Mike Pinder a lot to do with, um, the development of that?
Colin: I think he might be.
Rod: From the Moodies?
Colin: Yeah, I think he might, yeah.
Rod: Yeah. Yeah, I think he was, yeah. And, and it's this, this ridiculous thing. You know, it's almost like the first synthesizer because it was a, um, a collection of cassette loops, and the thing is - I have to tell you - it's not like a synth now where you can play a chord and whatever you're sustaining lasts for as long as you've got your finger on it. The, the, the tapes run out after about four or five seconds, so you always had to think about what voicings you were doing, you know, so it had a bit of a technique with it, but that became a characteristic of how the thing sounded, and I mean, now on tour, we use, um, a, a sampled version of the Mellotron, which sounds very accurate, but it- I- one of the real problems of using the original, um, thing was that it, it would go out of tune all the time. It would
Hugh: Break tapes.
Rod: need repairing.
Chris: Yeah.
Hugh: Break tapes, too, wouldn't it?
Rod: Every night, the tapes would break, you know? It was a nightmare, but, um, and I think Mike Pinder who used it with the Moodies- because he developed it, he was, he was the top technician, so he could do that, you know, but we couldn't and, and- did we ever use it ourselves on stage? I don't think- no
Chris: No.
Rod: because we broke up before
Chris: That's right.
Rod: before it came out, but with Argent, we used the Mellotron [the M-400 model], and it had to be, had to be repaired every night, along with my Hammond organ, so, yeah.
Audience member: And another really quick question: I never heard of this answer, but you were talking the other day about, um, your session with "Time of the Season" and what a hard time you were having. I was just wondering, you know, the little organic clap and sigh, was that a frustration, like [sighs], and, and it sounded so good?
Rod: No, no, no, no, no. No, actually that was an example- there was frustration goin' on, but that, that was an example of that thing that I said where we did have a couple of extra tracks at our disposal, so we could put a quick idea on, and, and I remember we'd rehearsed it, and Hugh played the broken drum rhythm, as we'd heard- rehearsed it, sounded great, and just before the end of the session, I said, "I can hear a clap and a [exhales] before and after the drum beat." You know, [claps and exhales], and, and Chris said, "Well, go in there and do it," so one take, and that was it, and it- and in, in a way, it became one of the real characteristics of the, of the song, didn't it?
Hugh (overlapping with Rod's last comment): Character of the song. Defining point of the song.
Colin: I think that the frustration on the session was that it was the last song that was written for the album, and we were running out of money, and we were running out of time, and I always remember as I was singing it, there was a big clock right in front of me, and I was very aware that we were running of time. The song had only been finished in the morning, and this was-
Rod: Yeah, but early in the morning.
Colin: Yes, and this is the af- this is the afternoon when we're doing this session, and I didn't- I wasn't really sure of the phrasing of the song, and the tension was starting to mount, and Rod was in the control room, and I was in the studio singing this, and he was tryin' to coax me through the phrasing. He was being, you know, very gentle and, and so forth.
Rod: Absolutely.
Colin: But I was getting more and more tense, and it ended up with something- I can't do the language. I can't-
Rod: Yeah, you can.
Colin: Should I?
Hugh: Please don't.
Colin: No, I- no, no, the language was pretty extreme, and I was saying, "Listen! If you're so clever, you come in here, and you do it!" and he said to me, "You're the bloody lead singer! You stand there till you get it right!" and I've always thought this is very amusing because at the same time, I'm singing, "It's the time of the season for loving." We were-
Chris: No, you shouldn't sing it like that, Colin.
Colin: No, no, no. But we were at one another's throats the whole time I'm singin' that vocal, so I want you to remember that whenever you hear that song. There was a- there was a bit of a fight going on while we were doing it.
Rod: But our relationship went downhill after, didn't it?
Colin: Yes, it did. No, I mean an hour later we were in the pub, and we're just laughing about it, but at the, at the actual time, it did get a bit tense.
Scott: Alright, question over here.
Audience member: Thank you. Um, so I've heard the story of how you all started and Colin showed up with a broken nose and all of that, and, and, you know, I, I can't imagine how you were sixteen at the time and you came in there and, and Rod, I-
Rod: Might have even been fifteen.
Colin: I think we were fifteen.
Rod: Yeah.
Audience member: Yeah, and, and, and, you know, you came in there, and, and Rod had this idea for a regular old rock and roll band of guitars, no piano, right? And, and you were gonna be the lead singer and so forth, and, and I, I still cannot get my head around that fifteen-year-olds are this mature to then say, "My G--, you pay- play piano so well." "Oh, my G--, you sing so well. We have to swap places. We have to, you know, invent a new type of rock band."
Chris: Did you say, "Mature"?
Audience member: Well, I mean, I, I, I, I'm, I'm in a couple of rock bands.
Chris: Yes, we know.
Audience member: There are a number of people in, in the band that are not that mature, and they're, like, in their fifties and sixties, so I'm-
Colin: Yes.
[Beginning at the same time]
Audience member: So, so I'm just-
Colin: Well, it did happen. It did happen. Uh, we didn't really know one another, um, and we met outside a pub in St Alban's called the Blacksmith's Arms, wasn't it?
Rod: Yeah.
Colin: Yeah, we, we were too young to go in the pub,
Hugh [pointing, apparently, to a screen out of frame]: [indistinct] pictures.
Colin: and, um, we met outside, and we just walked down to this club called the Pioneer Club, and Rod was gonna be the singer, but we started off doing an instrumental. We played "Malagueña." It's the first thing we ever played. I was the rhythm guitarist, and, um, we had a break, and Rod went over to, into the corner and a played a broken down, old upright piano. It was falling apart, and he played, um, "Nut Rocker."
Hugh: "Nut Rocker."
Colin: By B Bumble and the Stingers, which is a, is a rock and roll version of a classical piece. I'd never met him before, and he pla- I was absolutely flabbergasted, and I, I went over to him in the corner and sort of said, you know, "Whatever your name is" 'cause I didn't, I didn't know him, and I said, "That's fantastic. It's absolutely fantastic. You really should play keyboards in the band," but Rod saw it as a rock and roll band, and he saw rock and roll as three guitars, and he said, "No, no, no, no, it's a rock and roll band. We don't want any keyboards," and then later in the, in the, that same morning, I was literally just in the corner singing to myself. I wasn't singing to anyone else.
Rod: Doing a Ricky Nelson song, yeah.
Colin: It was a Ricky Nelson song, but I'm not quite sure what it was, and, uh, Rod came over and said, "That's really good. I'll tell you what: if you'll be the lead singer, I'll play keyboards," and that is how it happened. We just all moved 'round one place, you know.
Audience member: I mean, and that is very mature.
[Overlapping]
Cindy: Or it's [indistinct]
Rod: Certainly the rest of our life hasn't gone quite the same.
Colin: Yes, it's gone, gone downhill. It's gone downhill since then.
Scott: So I think we have time for one or two more quick questions. Oh, lots of hands.
Mark: Hi, I'm Mark Spiser. I'm a professor of music
Rod: Oh.
Mark: at Hunter College here in New York
Colin: Oh, right.
Mark: and I brought a few of my students here to, here to meet you.
Colin: I know about Hunter College from Caro, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, so I teach a course on the Beatles, but we do study your music. Um, Odessey and Oracle'll be coming up when we get to 1967.
Rod: Wow.
Mark: Um, but I wanted to ask Rod a question. By the way, Rod, you've been a, an inspiration to me as a keyboard player for
Rod: Oh, bless you. Thank you.
Mark: a long, long time, and I've actually worked out a lot of your licks.
Rod: Could you show me afterwards?
Mark: But, um, you were saying when you, when you wrote "She's Got- "She's Not There," and how you were trying to write a song as good as the Beatles, and this was in 1964, and I think "She's Not There" is as good as anything the Beatles put out in that year. Um, it was a very innovative song. I mean, the structure of the song was quite different than what the Beatles were doing. It has that, um, real kind of explosive chorus and that ramp up to the chorus, which we might call a pre-chorus, and then a chorus. Um, did you have any, um, idea [that] what you were doing was so original wi- in that particular song. I mean I ju- and, and in tryin' to sort of trump the Beatles or something like that with that song?
Rod: Well, there was no idea of trying to trump them, but it was just the idea of, um- the Beatles had not been out that long, but they'd absolutely taken the country by storm as they did here, you know, a couple of years after they did with us, um, and, you know, when, when you're that age, you just sort of- your imagination makes you dream, and it, and it makes you imagine that you're whoever your heroes are, and, and you're out there doing it. Lennon had the same thing; he said he thought he was being Bob Dylan when he did "I- I'm a Loser," you know, and it didn't sound anything like Dylan, and the thing was, um, because I listened to so much other music, and, as I said earlier today, I was absolutely knocked out with that particular Miles Davis band, around- of around 1958, and, and then just after that, he did Kind of Blue, which was based on very modal, uh, improvisation around modes rather than playing chords, um, and I sort of drank that in without realizing it, and there was never any thought of trying to include anything particularly jazzy, um, or anything other than pure rock and roll in what we were doing, but I think because all these things were flying around, some of those influences- I, I'm, I remember many years later meeting Pat Metheny, and Pat Metheny, um, we were introduced by a jazz bass player who didn't who I was, no, no reason why he should do, and Pat Metheny said, "I know who you are." He said, "You wrote 'She's Not There,'" and I said, "Yeah, yeah," and I was, um, you know, I was really gratified that he, that he, he said that, and he said, "That was the record that made me, um, think that there was a way ahead for me to do what I wanted to do," and I think- I said, "Really?" and he said, "Yeah, all that modal stuff." Well, there's nothing modal on "She's Not There," and then- what I was thinking of just as a, an A minor to D [major] chord, um, on the verse, I realize when I went back and played it that I was playing a little modal passage over it to, to, to link it together, and I thought, "Well, well, it was there, but it was totally intuitive," but I just had the idea- I, I started weaving the song after hearing a John Lee Hooker song called "No One Told Me," which doesn't bear any resemblance in terms of melody or lyrics, uh, to "She's Not There," but I just liked the way the phrase tripped off the tongue, and I thought, "I'll start weaving this story 'round this." I just had in my head [that] I wanted a bluesy- it was a John Lee Hooker song [so] I wanted a bluesy, uh, melodic, um, component to it, to the verses. I wanted- I had it in my head that I wanted a, a middle section, um, that didn't necessarily have- I wanted it to be harmonically interesting, so I had in my head, um, a D to, uh, D major to D minor to A minor but with- at least in, uh, in one of the, the bottom harmonies, um, not the, um, uh, chromatic bass notes going from the third, you know, down, and, and doing things that way, and, and I wanted it to build up to a third section, which through altering the rhythm of the scansion of what was going on to just to make it build to a climax and then go into a major key at the end and then fall down to the sort of bluesy minor thing. That- they were the just the three thoughts in, in my head. The other thing was I was so knocked out with Colin's voice from those early things, hearing it, and I knew he had a really, really good range, and his intonation was great, so I wanted to make him hit, um, just one note at the top of his range, which, uh, at the time was A, but on the last album, I made him sing a B [on "Edge of the Rainbow"], so, you know, so his voice has got[ten] better as he's got[ten] older, but-
Chris: Hey, now.
Rod: Um, but, but at the same time, um, uh, what- with the chords and everything changing under, un- under this just repeated one note, and, and those little things were flying around my head but really quite quickly, and, and it didn't take that long to put the thing together, um, and then of course, you know, Colin sang it beautifully, and, um, and we were on our way.
Scott: Very cool. Um, I think we can squeeze one more question in. I haven't gone to the back of the room yet, which isn't fair, so- go right here.
Audience member: I was wondering if you guys could speak about Al Kooper's role in getting Odessey and Oracle released here. From what I understand, the U.S. record company wasn't putting it out till Al Kooper stepped in.
Colin: That's absolutely tr- correct, yeah. Um, Al Kooper actually went to London, and he bought about two hundred albums******, and when he came back to the States, he thought one album really stood out, and remember this album had not been a hit anywhere, and it didn't have a hit single on it, and it was Odessey and Oracle, and he just started literally I think a- that week or a week before as an, an A&R person at CBS records, and he was so enthusiastic about Odessey and Oracle. He managed to get in to see Clive Davis, the, the big head of CBS, and he said, "Whatever it costs, whatever you gotta do, you've gotta get hold of this album Odessey and Oracle," and Clive Davis said, "We already own this album." CBS owned it.
Chris: But they passed on it.
Colin: They- he said, "We weren't even gonna release it." They weren't even gonna release it, and Al Kooper just nagged away at him, so without- and, and eventually CBS did release it. Without Al Kooper, this record would never have been released in America, so we owe him everything.
Rod: We do.
Colin: And, and Al's comes [sic] to see us play quite regularly. In fact, sometimes we, we share a bill with him as well, and we always tell him whenever we see him, you know, "We bow down in front of you, Al," uh, because without him-
Rod: We wouldn't, we wouldn't be here now.
Hugh: Wouldn't be sitting here.
Colin: No, we wouldn't be sitting here.
Hugh: Absolutely.
Rod: No.
Scott: Very cool.
Colin: So it was so important.
Scott: Well, Cindy and I are going to, uh, fade into the background so we can have the, the guys sign the books, and I'm gonna turn it over to the Strand staff here, so they can give you some quick directions on how this is gonna go.
Strand staff member: Yeah, you can stay where you are. [indistinct as the video fades]
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*Chris's songs "Remember You" and "Nothing's Changed" were featured in Bunny Lake Is Missing.
**According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes (p. 25), the Zombies' appearance in Bunny Lake Is Missing was filmed at Associated-Rediffusion TV Studios in Wembley on 10 April 1965.
***Some sources claim that the Mellotron that the Beatles were using in Abbey Road at this time wasn't actually Lennon's, although he did own one. solobeatlesstudios.com explains that this Mellotron was rented by Abbey Road directly from the company.
****According to the liner notes of Zombie Heaven, Odessey and Oracle was finished closer to the end of 1967. "Changes" was the last song recorded, on 7 November.
*****Zombie Heaven explains that this appearance (on 31 July 1964) was the Zombies' first time on television.
******In the liner notes of the U.S. release and on the Odessey and Oracle {Revisited} DVD, Kooper says that it was forty albums.
