"I Want You Back Again" (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 Want You Back Again"

Colin:  Well, 'I Want You Back Again', it's, um, an interesting song in that it's one of the songs that we sort of rediscovered in this incarnation of the band.  I think we'd probably forgotten about it to some degree, and then we heard a- Tom Petty did a live version of-

Rod:  And used to talk about it for about ten minutes on stage before he did it.

Colin:  And we listened to this live version by Tom Petty, and we thought, 'Sounds pretty good.'

Rod:  'Why aren't we doing this?'

Colin:  Yes.

Rod:  Yeah.

Colin:  So I, I often say on stage [that] we're doing a cover version of Tom Petty doing a cover version of us, and this is the song:  'I Want You Back Again.'

"She's Coming Home" (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.

"She's Coming Home"

Rod:  'She's Coming Home' was a single.  In America, it was a, a small hit, but I always thought this could have been a big hit record, and we were very disappointed with the actual- the balls, if you like on, on, on the record.  We, we, we thought it was a little bit tame in its recording.  I think that the producer was looking too much for a particular - in inverted commas - 'gimmicky' sound rather than just being honest about the essence of the song.  It was actually covered, I think, by Brenda Holloway, at, at one point.  I know she certainly did it live on a big TV show, and I thought it was great, um, to hear her do that, but I was never quite happy with that [the production on the Zombies' version], and I think if it had sounded exactly, just simple and honest, I think it could have been a really big hit, so we were a bit disappointed, but I still love the song.  Um, I can say that, can't I?  It's one of mine, but, um, we still do it on stage sometimes, and I like- I prefer the way we do it on stage now and the actual sound to the original record.  'She's Coming Home.'

"Leave Me Be" (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.

"Leave Me Be"

Colin:  Well, 'Leave Me Be' is, uh, an interesting song because it was written by Chris White, and Decca Records were very keen on, uh, a new single every six weeks, so the pressure was on; after 'She's Not There', the pressure was on to have a, a follow-up, and really this was about the only song that had been written at that time; we didn't have a great backlog of songs because Rod and Chris were just finding their way as writers, so when Decca heard this song, they decided it would be the follow up to 'She's Not There', and none of us in the band, including Chris who wrote it, thought that this was a hit single, but in the U.K., it was put out as a follow-up to 'She's Not There', and I'm afraid it, it, it wasn't a hit.  You know, it didn't happen.  I think it's, it's a good song, but I, you know, I don't think it would ever be a single, and I don't think Chris would mind me saying that; I think he feels the same way.

Rod:  We also hated the production on it, which- we, we had a few issues with production on some of our singles, which in the end- I'm going way forward, but in the end, that's why we desperately wanted to produce an album ourselves, which became Odessey and Oracle, but that's in the future, but I think that was the first one where we thought- the very first session we'd done sounded great, all the four tracks we did on it.  'Summertime', 'It's Alright with Me', 'She's Not There' of course, and 'You Make Me Feel Good' all sounded great, but after that, sometimes we had issues with the way- we, we would often demo things, wouldn't we?

Colin:  Yeah.

Rod:  And-

Colin:  And sometimes the demo would sound better than the master.

Rod:  At least more whole to our ears, yeah.

Colin:  Mm.

"Tell Her No" (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.

"Tell Her No"

Colin:  Well, 'Tell Her No', we were, we were touring ex- extensively, and again we were recording very late in, in the evening, and, and they'd recorded about four or five backing tracks, and they just, you know, there would be four of them in the studio; they would just do the backing track, and I was in the control room, and I fell asleep.  Uh, we'd been working very hard, but I'm- I've always found it very easy to sleep anyway, but, uh, they woke me up to go and do the lead vocal on 'Tell Her No' and I- this is what I always remember about it is that I mumbled through the second chorus, but I kept going, and I thought, 'Well, we can put that right'.  You know, we'll- I'll just drop in on it.

Rod:  [mumbles in imitation of record]

Colin:  [also mumbles in imitation of record] and put the-

Rod:  People have been trying to work out what those words are, for years.

Colin:  And the producer said, 'Oh, don't worry about that; that's fine'.

Rod:  That was recording in those days.

Colin:  Yeah, so, 'Tell Her No' went on to sell nearly a million copies; it was a top five single in the States; and it has a, a mumbled second chorus, but I-

Rod:  I do remember also that we had a phone call halfway through that session from America; that was a big deal in those days.  Our American publisher Al Gallico was on the, on the line.  He said, 'I just want you guys to know that "She's Not There"s number one in Cashbox'.  We thought, 'Wow', you know.

Colin:  It was fantastic.

Rod:  Here we were eighteen years old, you know, and we had the number one in this hallowed land of America.  It was fantastic.

"You Make Me Feel Good" (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.

"You Make Me Feel Good"

Rod:  'You Make Me Feel Good' was the, um, the first track ever written by, um, Chris White that we recorded.  I was a huge fan of Chris.  Um, I think, generally speaking, he came into his own a little bit later and became a- an absolutely wonderful writer, but he always had that spark of originality, um, but sometimes, you have to fashion things a little bit, but we all worked together on everything anyway, and we would take an initial idea and say, 'Well, why don't we make that minor chord a major chord?'  You know?  Things like that.  And this was one that we, we did that on.  It turned out so well that it was a toss up whether 'She's Not There' or 'You Make Me Feel Good' was gonna be the first single.  In the end, thank you very much 'cause I wrote it, 'She's Not There' was, but it could easily have been 'You Make Me Feel Good,' and 'You Make Me Feel Good' - in our opinion - should have been the follow-up, but in those days, they just threw everything out, and, um, it wasn't.

Colin:  It was-

Rod:  It was on the B-side.

Colin:  It was the B-side, yeah.

Rod:  Yeah.  But I still- we occasionally do it still on, on stage, and I still enjoy it.  'You Make Me Feel Good', Chris's first song. 

"She's Not There" (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.

"She's Not There"

Colin:  This is the track that changed our lives completely, and I- as I remember it, we were talking to our then-producer called Ken Jones, and he was giving us a pep talk before our first session in Decca Studios, West Hampstead in London, and he said, 'You know, you could always write something for this session.'  Rod picked up on it, and he went away and wrote this song.  I didn't know he could write songs, and he came back with this song, and it was 'She's Not There,' and we all knew it was a special song, immediately.

Rod:  And the extraordinary thing is, our very first session, um, and because we had absolutely no knowledge of all the pitfalls that can happen, you know:  the engineer couldn't get the right sound maybe or, um, maybe on the day, the band wasn't gelling, you know, when things were recorded.  We didn't know any of that.  We just thought, 'Yeah!'  I thought, 'Colin's gonna sound great singing it, and, uh, the harmonies are gonna be brilliant, and the band's gonna sound exciting, and it's gonna come out, and it's gonna be a huge hit,' and it was.

Colin:  But it wasn't all smooth going.  I'll just sort of say about the session for 'She's Not There':  it was considered the, the, the cool thing to do to record in the evening and into the night, so we started at about seven o'clock, and the engineer, who was a great engineer, but he'd been at a wedding all day, and he was extremely drunk when we got there, but worse than that, he was very aggressive as well, and I kind of thought- it just makes me laugh:  we've been in the business for fifty years [but] after twenty minutes in the studio, I thought, 'This is not for me.'  This guy was screaming at us, really screaming at us, but then we had a bit of luck, and he collapsed, and we carried the engineer out of the studio, up three flights of stairs, and we put him in a London taxi, and we never saw him again, and his assistant took over, and he was called Gus Dudgeon, and he went on to be one of the most successful producers in the world ever.  He did all of Elton [John]'s early stuff, David Bowie, many, many huge records, and that was Gus Dudgeon's first session, and it was our first session, and he never forgot that.  Uh, so 'She's Not There,' it had its moments.

Rod:  Had its moments, and everything was done very quickly, and that, all that drama was compressed into a short space of time, but it was dramatic, and, you know, we ended up with a hit after a day's recording.

WKYC Channel 3

Rod Argent - The Zombies' Co-Founder on The Beatles, Chick Corea, and His Love for the Piano

Rod Argent - The Zombies' Co-Founder on The Beatles, Chick Corea, and His Love for the Piano
Keyboard Magazine
By Kristi York Wooten

Photo by Dennis Beentjes

The Zombies are back on tour this fall, and co-founder Rod Argent is excited to be out on the road doing what he does best - reaching new audiences with mesmerizing keyboard solos on classic tracks including "Time of the Season" and "Hold Your Head Up."  Last year, the Zombies celebrated the 50th anniversary of their beloved 1967 album Odessey and Oracle with TV appearances and shows on the East Coast.  Original Zombies members Argent and lead vocalist Colin Blunstone (along with a full band) are on a run of West Coast dates beginning at the legendary Fillmore in San Francisco September 7.  Keyboard chatted with Rod Argent about his storied history as a rock composer and performer - and his love for the keys.

In the 20th century, pianos sold by the hundreds of thousands per year, but now, people can't wait to get rid of them.  There are even specific "graveyards" for the traditional wooden piano.  It's hard to believe, isn't it?

Small keyboards are portable and controllable and you never have to tune them.  So, in a way I understand why the piano is dying out.  I use keyboards on stage, but when Colin (Blunstone) and I do the occasional acoustic performance, I will always try to use an acoustic piano.  Even though you're mic-ing it up, every time you play a sequence or combination of notes and chords, the sympathetic vibrations from the other notes in the piano give a slightly different timbre to what you're playing, and that's something you cannot get out of a sample.

You're best known for organ and electronic keyboard sounds, but me tell me a little bit more about your enduring fascination with the acoustic instrument.

I do have a love of the piano as an instrument. It was a dream of mine, my whole life really, to acquire a Steinway Model D Concert Grand, particularly the German one.  I did that about nine years ago, and I play it every day.  I absolutely love it.  I'm self-taught, like lots of people, but in 1999 when I decided to walk away from production and before I got back together with Colin to play live (as The Zombies) again, a very dear friend of mine who is a classical musician suggested I do a piano album called Rod Argent, Classically Speaking.  I didn't think I could do it, but he persuaded me, and I played the music on a Steinway, a Bosendorfer, and others.  Three tracks were my own compositions but the rest included Chopin studies, Ravel, and some of my favorite pieces.  There's no way that recording could have been made on a sampled instrument.  To get the nuances and the timbre, you can't beat an acoustic piano.

The Zombies feature piano, organ, Mellotron, harpsichord and all sorts of sounds.  How did you decide which to use?

When I first started out back then, there was nothing else available except an acoustic piano. [Although I love it], I couldn't wait to leave that scenario.  Generally, the pianos that were available for practice or in venues in the early days were a semitone down from concert pitch, which threw all sorts of curves into our performances.  Secondly, you couldn't hear me onstage unless I did a sort of Jerry Lee Lewis lift.  My vanity meant that I was doing that all night long, and the quick of my nail would be completely bleeding.  I'd put plaster on it halfway through the evening and Colin would always judge how good the gig was by the amount of blood!

Photo by Dennis Beentjes

That's what led you to electronic instruments?

That's when I discovered the Hohner Pianet (Mk 1), a fantastic instrument.  It had sticky pads that hit the tine, stuck to it, and the pressure would become too much and the tine would break away like "boooong," and that was the way the note was produced.  You could hear me onstage for the first time.  Mine [used on the Zombies' classic, "She's Not There"] was played so often it lost its stickiness action and bits of hair would get caught in there and also moisture.  I would have to take the top of the piano off and blow it dry with a hair dryer before going on stage.  That instrument was used all over the early Zombies records, it was very biting.  Manfred Mann had one, and I think even The Beatles used those instruments in the early days, too.  Even with the band Argent, I still used [the Mk1 occasionally].  I loved the sound of it, but today I can't find one that sounds the same.  I always remember in the 1970s when Argent supported Chick Corea on tour.  One night, Chick walked into the dressing room and I was in the middle of drying my keys with a hair dryer.  [Laughs] I had to talk him through what I was doing.  He was lovely about it.

What other gear did you love?

After the Pianet, I got a Vox Continental.  But by that time, I'd already heard Jimmy Smith on "Walk on the Wild Side" and was just blown away with the grit and the soul and the excitement of the Hammond B-3.  Years later, the Mellotron came about when we started recording Odessey and Oracle [at EMI Studios, now known as Abbey Road].  We walked in virtually the day after the Beatles walked out after having finished Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.  We used studio 3, and we had the same engineers.  Without asking anyone, we just used the instruments which had been left lying around.  The Mellotron was there, and in my head at that moment it seemed like a cheaper alternative to a string section, which we couldn't have afforded at that point.  That instrument had its own character completely [listen to The Zombies' "Changes"].  Recording with the Mellotron at Abbey Road was a great piece of happenstance I'm still pleased about.

Photo by Dennis Beentjes

Soloing is a lost art.  Instrumental solos aren't found in the structure of most rock and pop songs today.  Did you always compose your solos ahead of time or was it more organic and improvisational?  And how does it feel to play those solos onstage in 2018?

If you play all the alternative takes of our studio recordings of [The Zombies'] "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season" and [Argent's] "Hold Your Head Up," you'll hear that they are totally different.  They were all completely improvised.  It's an inevitable process.  When you play something many times, an improvisation seems to gradually coalesce into something which is not identical but has the same sort of signposts.  That used to worry me, but I read an article by one of my heroes, Bill Evans, who said exactly the same thing: a solo is improvised the first time it happens and that's the joy of it, and then it takes a shape [thereafter].  It's important that playing solos should be a natural reaction to whatever's going on around you in the moment.  This is one of the musical things that is a joy for me [on tour right now]: I get to keep things fresh.  Having done "Time of the Season" a million times, night after night, I throw something different in there to keep the other guys on their toes.  They react, and we can suddenly go somewhere else in the song.  If, in one night out of five, you're able to go to a completely different place in the moment, that feels great.

Rod Argent's Studio

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In honour of #NationalMusicDay, here’s a look inside Rod’s studio! What’s your favourite Zombies track? 🎶

A post shared by The Zombies (@thezombiesofficial) on Jun 21, 2018 at 3:07pm PDT

CBS This Morning

Interview:

Performance of "She's Not There":