"Time of the Season" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"Time of the Season"

Rod:  'Time of the Season' was, uh, we, we were doing O-, you know, by this time, these are the Odessey and Oracle songs, so by this time, we were in Abbey Road.

Colin:  Studio 3.

Rod:  Producing ourselves, being knocked out with the fact that the songs were sounding like we wanted them to sound completely.  We had great engineers.  We, we moved into, um, Abbey Road just as the Beatles had moved out, having recorded Sgt. Pepper['s Lonely Hearts Club Band], and they'd left a lot of their stuff around the studio, including John [Lennon]'s Mellotron*, which I used without asking 'cause they were ju- it was just there.  With 'Time of the Season', we needed one more song.  We, we were running out of money.  They- CBS hadn't given us a lot of money to make this album.  We were running out.  Last track.**  And I remember, I shared a flat with Chris White.  We had a room each, and we would always play our songs to each other as we were writing.  I s-, I said to Chris, 'I think I've got the last song'.  I said, 'Come in and have a listen', and I said, 'I think this could be a hit, Chris', and, and he thought so, and, and we recorded it.  We were a bit pushed for time, and Colin was singing, and as is my wont, you know, as I was in the control room, Colin was putting the lead vocal on, and I was saying, 'Yeah, it sounds great, Col, but, um, could you just push that phrase a bit and, you know, just anticipate that note and anything', and he got so pissed off at this that in the end, he was saying, 'Oh, for God's sake'.  He said, 'If you're so f'ing good, you come in here and do it', and I said, 'Oh, come on, Colin.  This is the last track.  It sounds great.'  You know?  'It's, it's gonna be great'.  [Imitates Colin's grumbling noises]  Um, you know, 'cause I was saying, 'Look, you gotta do it.  Come on.  This is, you know, it sounds great, Colin.  You're the singer.  For goodness sake, just, just do it', and so [imitates grumbles again], and then he was singing, 'It's the time of the season for loving', you know?

Colin:  And while I'm singing that, we're having this re- real shout-out.

Rod:  [indistinct]

Colin:  Yeah.

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  Oh, it's always made me laugh, that, but we were really up against it, and as the mic was set up, there was a great big clock right in front of me.  I could see we were running out of time by the minute.  There was a big red light just to emphasise the mic's live, and, um, the song had only just been written, so to be honest, I didn't know it that well, and Rod was very kindly coaching me through it phrase by phrase, and, uh, I think I got a bit panicky, and we, we- it only lasted for an hour or so.  I mean, it was not like it was a life-changing argument, but we certainly did go at it while, uh, while we were recording this song, and then- I'm really glad I did stay there- 'cause I said to him, '[If] you know it so well, you come in, and you sing it', and, uh, he said, 'You're the lead singer; you stand there till you get it right', and I was really glad later on because it sold about about two million copies.

Rod:  'Cause you never heard that as a hit, did you?

Colin:  No, that one.  I mean, I hear some of the songs as hits, but that one I-

Rod:  You mean the ones that never get anywhere?

Colin:  Yes.  Most of the ones I hear as hits don't stand a chance, uh, but I didn't hear this one.  Rod, Rod did, but I didn't.

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*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 chronology in the Zombie Heaven liner notes, the last track recorded for Odessey and Oracle was "Changes" (on 7 November).  There's no specific date given for "Time of the Season," just "August," although this photo set from the session gives the date as "September."

"This Will Be Our Year" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"This Will Be Our Year"

Colin:  'This Will Be Year's written by Chris White.  I think- it's got a sort of a, a bit of an anthem feel about it now because I know that a lot of people like this song to be played when they get married, and, and I, I can see why.  It's- I think it's one of Chris's better songs.

Rod:  I think Chris was coming into, really, into a wonderful period.

Colin:  Yeah.  He, for about-

Rod:  This was Odessey and Oracle.

Colin:  Yeah, for about five or six years, Chris wrote so many great songs, and I think this is one of the, the best songs, and we play this, um-

Rod:  Yeah, we still do it every gig.

Colin:  We play this every night.  Great song.

"The Way I Feel Inside" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"The Way I Feel Inside"

Rod:  OK, 'The Way I Feel Inside'.  This is one of the quickest songs I ever wrote.  We were on tour with the Isley Brothers, Dionne Warwick, and what used to happen:  the tour bus used to stop at a service station for a coffee break, and I suddenly had a gli- glimmering of an idea for a song, and so I went into the, the loo, into the toilet, and I had a piece of manuscript paper with me.  I sat on the loo, and I wrote this song.  Most of the lyrics - not all of the lyrics - [and] the whole melody of it just came to me, and I wrote it down on a piece of manuscript paper, nowhere near a keyboard or anything, and strangely enough, it was called 'The Way I Feel Inside', but that wasn't a commentary on, on the situation.  It really wasn't.  It was a very romantic song, but I- sorry to spoil people's illusions, you know, if they think of that as a lovely roman- romantic song.

Colin:  I'll, I'll, I'll always remember this.  The bus was ready to leave,

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  and we couldn't find Rod, and everyone went to look for him, and I found him in the loo with this manu- writing with this manuscript.  I thought, 'What on earth are you doing?' and he was writing this song.  It's a, it's a beautiful song, and we, we play this, don't we?

Rod:  We do play this, yeah.

Colin:  Yeah.

Rod:  We often do it as a, an unexpected encore.  We, we might end up the, the set with the, uh, the Argent hit 'God Gave Rock and Roll to You' and then completely bring it down and just do an- just a very quiet piano and Colin singing 'The Way I Feel Inside'.

"Indication" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"Indication"

Colin:  This was still produced by Ken Jones, but I think that there was a period here where 'Indication' was, uh, recorded that you can hear Rod and Chris's songs evolving in a way that was gonna climax with Odessey and Oracle.  You know, I've gone back and li- listened to the tracks of that era, and it just sounds as though something's coming, you know?  And I- especially with Chris.  This song was from that era.  We didn't record this at Decca Studios.  We recorded-

Rod:  Lansdowne.

Colin:  Lansdowne, didn't we?

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  Yeah, and of course, there's there big, uh, improvised thing at the end.

Rod:  But which Ken was very worried about so he submerged it into the mix and, and, and concentrated on the guitar.  This actually came out of the fact that we always used to do a blues song, a Jimmy Reed song called 'Got Me Running, Got Me Hiding, Baby, What You Want Me to Do', um, and strangely at the end, I went into this bizarre thing where I was playing 'God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen', and just all sorts of things were happening, and it used to go down a storm on stage, and we wanted to put a little bit of that into the track, and it is there if you, if you listen for it, but it was submerged a little becau- because they- Ken got a bit worried that this might be too avant garde, but like everybody else, like the Beatles particularly, we were tryna push the boundaries.  We were trying to be cutting edge in what we were doing, and this was one of the ways i- in which our feelings were portrayed at that time.  We actually were being a little bit experimental, but people got a bit worried about it and sort of held it down a bit, but it is there, and it's become a real favorite with people.  I know, uh, Little Steven plays it all the time; he loves this track.  Um, and, yeah, I'm, I'm fond of this, and I, I- and the, the B-side of the record as well.  'She Does Everything to Me' [sic]* I was really fond of as well.

Colin:  Oh, yes, yes.  We've played that a bit live as well.

Rod:  It's- yeah, occasionally, yeah.

Colin:  But I mean, you know, the thing is this battle with Ken Jones, our producer.  He was tryna do the best for us

Rod:  Oh, yeah!

Colin:  in his opinion, but he was tryna make everything in our- to our mind more ordinary, and he was thinking more commercial, whereas we were trying to make things different, so it's just a- it's two different ways of looking at recording, really, but it was a continual battle for the first two and a half years of our career.

Rod:  But it is still nice to go back and, after not hearing these tracks for a long time,

Colin:  Mm.

Rod:  hear them again, you know, and, and they have more going for them than, than we ever thought at the time, when you go back and say, 'Yeah, I really like that', you know?  And I do like 'Indication'.

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*According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, "She Does Everything for Me" was actually the B-side to "Goin' out of My Head," the Zombies' last single for Decca.  The B-side to "Indication" was Colin's "How We Were Before."

Johann Sebastian Bach

St Matthew Passion was written & first performed here by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727. Over 2 centuries later a 12 year old Rod Argent’s life was changed forever when he sang this oratorio in the boys choir at the St Albans Abbey! Thanks to the Bach Museum for the tour! pic.twitter.com/SJwBmuWRQ5

— The Zombies (@TheZombiesMusic) November 15, 2018

"Is This the Dream" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"Is This the Dream"

Rod:  'Is This the Dream' was perhaps of all those tracks that we did was the one that at the time disappointed us the most because before it was mixed, we heard the monitor playback and we thought, 'This sounds great!  Really steaming, really stonking' and we were made to go away to the pub while it was mixed, and it was all mixed very quickly in those days, wasn't it?

Colin:  Yeah.

Rod:  Everything was mixed in a couple of hours.

Colin:  Well, um, Rod and I just went and had a couple of pints

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  at the top of the road in a pub.

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  And then we came back.

Rod:  And we thought, 'Where's our track gone?' bec-

Colin:  Uh, and he [presumably Ken Jones, the Zombies' producer] played it, and I thought maybe- in my mind's eye, I thought maybe he got someone else in to play an alternative version.  I couldn't work out what we were listening to.  It bare- it had no relationship to, uh, what we'd done.

Rod:  Because when we did it, it had a bit of a, a rough edge to it, which we really liked.  Colin sang it great.  Um, it was a very uncharacteristic [electric] piano solo.  I mean all, all the solos were always improvised, you know?*  I, I, I never constructed them.  If you listen to different, um, takes of our songs, you'll hear a completely different solo on each one, and this was no exception, and I started hitting a little contrapuntal thing, two-handed thing, and I- it was just on the spur on the moment.  I loved the way it came out.  It sounded quite rough, but in a good way, quite biting, and when we came back to listen to it, everything was really smoothed out, and, and for the whole band, it actually lost some of the excitement.  We, we've never done this on stage, have we?

Colin:  No.

Rod:  I mean we did it- I remember we played with the Who, and Pete Townshend liked it very much, and he, he went out front to listen, and, at the time, and he, he said, 'Oh, I couldn't hear what you were doing in the, in, in the solo' 'cause he, he liked the, the quirkiness, you know, of, of, of, of what happened in that solo, um, but I was fond of the track at the time, and we all thought it sounded great before the mix.  We, we were probably a little bit too hung up on all of this because we knew the track so well, um, and sometimes we wanted it to, um, in our mind's eye, to be as good as it could be, and, and so we tended to discount what we ended up with, and, and actually sometimes going back and listening to them, it's much more attractive than we thought at the time, you know?  What was in our head.  So I still think it's worth listening to, but I think this was the, you know, one of the tracks that we thought had lost again.

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*The solo in "I'll Keep Trying" seems to be an exception to this.  There's very little difference between the solo in the demo version (available as a bonus track on Begin Here) and the solo in the final version.  Obviously, there was some degree of planning since the electric piano and electric guitar play basically the same notes (with slight differences in articulation).

"Just out of Reach" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"Just out of Reach"

Rod:  This is one of Colin's, and, uh, it w- was it your first real [song]?

Colin:  I think it was my second song that I wrote.*

Rod:  'Just out of Reach'.

Colin:  Yes.

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  I mean, we had to write for a deadline.  We'd been asked to write some music for Otto Preminger's film-

Rod:  Oh, Bunny Lake Is Missing.

Colin:  Bunny Lake Is Missing, and the way the deal was put together, they wanted three new songs written and recorded in about ten days.**  They had to be new songs, and, again, Rod and Chris didn't have a great backlog of songs, and so, uh, you know, I, I'd always been really intrigued and impressed by the way they wrote songs, and these were- this is one of the times when I thought, 'Well, at least I'll have a try', and so I wrote this song really for a deadline.  I mean, sometimes people say, 'How do you write a song?' and, and the answer would be:  you get the phone call, and, and that's what happened:  we got the phone call 'We need three songs written and recorded in ten days', so, um, I had a go, and this is the result of it, and-

Rod:  I, I think 'Just out of Reach' is a great snapshot of what sixties singles or records should sound like.  It's very sixties, very characteristic, but it was very naturally done.  I think it works great, and we often still do it on stage.

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*If I'm not mistaken, the first was "How We Were Before."

**The other two Zombies songs in the film are "Nothing's Changed" and "Remember You," both written by Chris White.

"I Love You" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"I Love You"

Rod:  'I Love You' is a, is a track that we still do on stage now, and I, I think it's, uh- Colin always had a little bit of troub- um, a problem with- when he first heard the lyrics, you know, 'I love you.  I love you.  I love you,' um, but I think it's a terrifically constructed song.  This is one of Chris's early songs that I really, really like 'cause it's so dramatic, and you've got that really high bit where the band stops and Colin sings, 'I don't know what to do.'  We opened the set for ages, in this incarnation, so often with this, with this track, and it's a great little concise example of what the Zombies are in a way, and that's why I love it as an opener.  We've opened for so long with it that we don't open with it now, but we may, may go back to doing it at some point, uh, because it's got, um, three-part harmony.  It's got Colin singing really at the top of his register, which he still does on stage; we do everything in the original keys.  It's got a short but quite jazzy electric piano solo in the middle.  It, it's a sort of concise way of looking [at] what the Zombies had distinctively at that time, and, uh, I'm really fond of it.

Colin:  I, I was always a little concerned that we opened with that number 'cause it's got a top B and, um, it's easier to do it in the middle of the set, but it is, it is a good opening tune, but, you know, I've gotta be ready to get that note.

"Whenever You're Ready" (Track by Track at Gibson)

[Obviously, the videos in this Track by Track series were all filmed the same day, but for easier indexing, I'm putting them under the dates they were posted.]

Rod:  This is, uh, Rod Argent here from the Zombies.

Colin:  It's Colin Blunstone from the Zombies, and this is Track by Track at Gibson, and we're on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.

"Whenever You're Ready"

Rod:  'Whenever You're Ready' was, um- we'd discovered bands like the Impressions, and I wanted something with that sort of feeling.  What did, what did we used to do on stage by the Impressions?  I can't remember.

Colin:  'I'm- I'm Alright'?

Rod:  'It's Alright'* and also 'People Get Ready'.

Colin:  OK.

Rod:  Used to do that, didn't we?  And it was my attempt to do something slightly in that style.

Colin:  There was an ongoing battle with our producer.  Lovely guy, very talented bloke, but there was an ongoing battle with him, really for the whole time we were recording till we got to Odessey and Oracle, about the kind of sound he was putting on the records, but he was very, uh, he was very strict.

Rod:  Very autocratic, wasn't he?

Colin:  Very autocratic.  We didn't go to the mix sessions at all.  He insisted that he did that without us there, and def- this was one of the songs that we were definitely, uh, unhappy with, not the song, I hasten to add, but the sound of the record.

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*A live recording of 'It's Alright' is included on various collections of BBC sessions the Zombies did, along with a cover of the Impressions' 'You Must Believe Me'.