Time of Their Season
R.E.M.'s Peter Buck interviews one of his musical heroes, the Zombies' Rod Argent, on the brink of the British musician's historical Seattle stop.
Tools
As Buck was about to call one of his all-time artistic heroes, the Zombies fan explained his passion for the band: "They're the most harmonically complex band of the '60s, and rhythmically, a lot of it had to do with the way jazz is played. A lot of the solos, particularly. But even in the rhythmic arrangements, some of the early singles are very jazzlike. And Odessey & Oracle just stands the test as a really great record. You could still play it through right now and there's nothing you cringe on. You know, even Sgt. Pepper--which I've never been a fan of all that much--listen to that and there's a couple of songs where you just think, 'Well, you know, I don't want to hear "Lovely Rita" again.' But you don't really feel that way with Odessey & Oracle."
Buck also cites modern bands like the Shins as continuing to carry on the Zombies' sonic tradition, a cultish appreciation that originally came from three well-known singles--"She's Not There" (1964), "Tell Her No" (1965), and "Time of the Season" (1969)--and a much later fervor for the band's compilations and box sets.
Stranger Personals
On the eve of R.E.M.'s recent European tour, Buck and Argent had the following telephone conversation about the history and legacy of this well-loved band. --ed.
I just wanted to say I'm a huge, huge fan, and I'm so excited they asked me to do this. Um, I'm also not much of a journalist, so...
[Laughs.]
If there are any kind of, um, moments where I get confused, feel free to jump in and help me out, okay? Oh, yes, I'm very flattered that you should turn up and do this. I mean, you know, I'm a great fan of R.E.M. as well.
Well, you know, I live in Seattle now, obviously, and when I first moved here it was all kind of hard rock, and then I started talking to a lot of people in town, and everybody here loves the Zombies. Wow.
Have you found, over the years, that people have understood more of what you accomplished than maybe they had in the past? Very much so. I mean, it's a strange story, really, because we were together, as you probably know, professionally for about two years, and about two years before that, semiprofessionally. And we had hits around the world, here and there. We broke up with "Time of the Season," which was from the album Odessey & Oracle. [That album] sort of charted but it wasn't really a big hit, and then about 15 years later, it started to sell, along with the [Zombies compilations]. We'd learned about a year ago that the Zombies compilations in all their forms actually sold worldwide about 100,000 a year, year in, year out--which, you know, for a band that broke up all that time ago, is... well, for me, it was extraordinary.
I think [your] story has gotta be one of the weirdest in rock and roll. I mean, because for [a band of] teenagers, the first song ["She's Not There"] was a huge hit single, and hugely sophisticated.... It seemed like the record company never let you really make a real album, though, until Odessey & Oracle. I think there's some truth in that. You have to remember, in the mid-'60s, albums sort of came out on the back of hit singles. Consequently, we just made that first album [The Zombies (Featuring She's Not There and Tell Her No)] and it was done, literally, in a couple of days. With no time spent on it at all. We weren't allowed to go in and even redo vocals. I remember doing a version of "I Got My Mojo Working" and just trying something on the vocals, and I came back and hated it, and I said, "Oh, I've got to do that again," and our producer said, "No, no, it's fine"... and that was it.
It was strange--the very first session we did was "She's Not There," and that was the second song I've ever written, and it was written for the session. And you know, when you're that young, it's the one time in your life when you have absolutely no knowledge of all the pitfalls that can happen along the way to making a good record. I thought, "Yeah, I can write a song that's as good as what the Beatles are doing, and it'll sound great, and it'll be a big hit here and in America and everywhere else." And it was! I was knocked out, but I wasn't surprised. I just thought, "Well, this is what happens; this is what you're supposed to do." I had no idea that you could get a bad engineer, or the singer might not suit the song, or something might go wrong in the recording, et cetera. We were so lucky everything fell into place.
We had a really good producer--he worked magic on that first session, really, and the engineer went out halfway through the session to a friend's wedding which was next door, and he came back absolutely pissed, and he couldn't carry on with the session, so the producer said to the tape operator, "I'm afraid you're gonna have to take over." And so that was Gus Dudgeon's first-ever session as an engineer--of course he went on later to produce all of Elton John's stuff.
It was quite magical, the first session. But then, because the producer really came from a bit of an older school, he looked back on that first session, which was a hit all around the world, and said, "Okay, what made that record a hit?" He said it was Colin's breathy vocals. Well, you know, I'm second to none in my admiration for the way Colin sings, but it was more than just Colin's vocals--it was everything. It was the fact that everything worked together and all the elements went together. So when we did more subsequent sessions with that producer, he was always trying to emphasize Colin's breathy vocals, and to my mind it was to the detriment of other things.
We would often record some stuff and because we weren't allowed anywhere near the mixing sessions, we'd go out thinking "that sounds great!" and then we'd come back and, often in a bit of dismay, listen to the mixes, because he seemed to have taken the balls out of the mixes. It was because of that frustration that when we thought we were probably breaking up, Chris [White], the bass player, and myself said, "Look, we may well be breaking up, but we'd really love to produce an album ourselves before we break up," 'cause we wanted to just get that out of our hair, really. And that's how Odessey & Oracle came about.
I can't believe that [the Zombies] went from not ever really making a real coherent record to producing your own kind of masterwork. How did that happen? Because we were frustrated with the production that we'd been having. I mean, it was such a different scene in those days, Peter. It was much more insular, and we often didn't know we were having hits in other parts of the world. We wouldn't find out until much, much later. So to us, just being in England, we thought, well, you know, nothing's happened for a year. And everything moved so quickly in those days. I mean, the Beatles would have two albums out in a year! There was a fast turnover, and it seemed to us that we'd gone for about a year and, from the English point of view, nothing seemed to be happening.
I could quite understand Colin, in particular, feeling dissipated. He wasn't getting any income from writing, and I was still getting income from writing, and so was Chris White, so I didn't feel so pressured. But Colin just got really disillusioned.
We decided we wanted to go into Abbey Road [Studios], and at the time we didn't understand how difficult it was, actually, to record at Abbey Road if you weren't an EMI recording artist. The Beatles pretty well locked the place out anyway--at least, you know, one of the studios. Or more than one, sometimes. But we managed to get in there, and the Beatles had just been experimenting with four-track welded to another four-track. So suddenly multitracking was on the scene, and we got in on the very early days of multitracking.
As I remember it, we were working with eight-tracks in Abbey Road, which felt like a plethora of tracks in those days. And we had so much enthusiasm, we had so much to get out of our systems, that it all happened very quickly.
God, it's just so weird because you had a big hit and you went off immediately to [the band] Argent, which I did get a chance to see--most of us in America didn't get a chance to see [the Zombies]. I could see the Zombies stuff in Argent, though. It was a great show, great band, and I loved the records. Well thank you! I mean, just to sort of fill you in, I never thought I was gonna play live again, Peter. To be quite honest, I came off the road in '75, and around that time everything seemed like such a big deal: huge trucks, we carried our own PA a lot of places, we carried a Hammond around--we had to do everything. It seemed in the end that the last thing we ever came to do was the music, in a way.
I got really disillusioned on the last tour of the States--we'd lost so much money, I think we'd lost about $50,000 dollars--and I came out and felt just tired of it. At the time I'd had quite a few offers from various sorts of areas, and for about 10 or 12 years I did very little but produce. It was only that I've got some friends who don't live too far from here, who are an older generation of jazz musicians--John Dankworth and Cleo Laine. They're sort of the older statesmen in this country. They had a theater at their place for many years, and John crept away with a million pounds to match three million he was given by the national lottery to build a new theater. He said, "Why don't you do a concert?" and I almost turned him down. I said, "Well, what am I going to do, John? I haven't played live for..." whatever it was--many years. But as a labor of love I'd put out a solo classical piano CD and I was very proud of it, and John said, "Well, do some of that!" And so I did; I put this concert together, and I did half an hour of that stuff, and then in the second half I got all the original Argent to come back together. It was a lovely concert--it was absolutely great, and I had a ball. I knew that Colin was in the audience, so on the spur of the moment I said, "Colin's in the audience--if he fancies it, would he come up and sing 'She's Not There' and 'Time of the Season?'" The place erupted, and we did it, and honestly, it felt as if we'd done our last gig about two weeks before.
I've always resisted re-forming the Zombies.... I've never wanted to just sort of go out and make a quick buck and do something cynically, 'cause that feels to me then like you're saying, "Well, my life's finished now--let's see what I can pick over and get something out of." But this feels like it's got such a resonance with that stuff that we're even thinking of including the word "Zombies" on the next album, because it feels as if it's naturally taken that course. So you must have a listen to that when it comes out!
Yeah, I'm looking forward to it! You know, the thing you've got to remember is that most of the bands from the '60s that did really great work lasted long enough that people could see them, like, in a real concert situation, with a real PA that worked, and they could play more than 15 minutes. The Zombies didn't really ever get that chance. Nope.
You did those kind of Dick Clark tours, apparently, and I don't know anyone personally who saw the band in their heyday, so it's kind of you doing a public service to come back and bring it around. Well, I mean, the thing is that even in the last two years, we've always enjoyed doing all the old Zombies material. I feel proud to do it. So we do stuff from Odessey & Oracle; we do some old singles that I never thought I'd ever hear again, let alone play! It's great playing all the old stuff, but it's great having a way forward as well. But what is interesting, as I've said, is that without trying, it's the same... because it's the same elements, and the way we wrote songs, the way I wrote songs in those days, for Colin to sing, wasn't thinking in a contrived way. It just feels like a blast to go out and bloody play again, you know?
I know what you mean--[R.E.M.] is doing a little tour this summer, and we just said, "Well, we're going to go back and play some things that we haven't played since 1984," and we're playing them and we hadn't played them in, God, 15 years, and I just realized, "These were pretty good songs," you know, and I hadn't ever played them to death. That's just lovely, going back after all that time.
Colin Blunstone and Rod Argent of the Zombies perform Fri Aug 15 at the Crocodile with the Minus 5 and the Vells, 9 pm, $20.
R.E.M.'s next release, In Time: Best of R.E.M. 1988--2003, is due out in October on Warner.
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