Зомби: История британской рок-группы

English rock band

The Zombies are an English rock band formed in St Albans in 1961. Led by keyboardist/vocalist Rod Argent and vocalist Colin Blunstone, the group had their first British and American hit in 1964 with "She's Not There". In the US, two further singles—"Tell Her No" in 1965 and "Time of the Season" in 1968—were also successful. Their 1968 album Odessey and Oracle was ranked number 100 on Rolling Stones 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and number 243 on Rolling Stones 2020 list. The Zombies were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

Three members of the band, Rod Argent, Paul Atkinson and Hugh Grundy, first came together to jam in 1961 in St Albans, Hertfordshire. Argent wanted to form a band and initially asked his elder cousin Jim Rodford to join as a bassist. Rodford was in a successful local band, the Bluetones, at the time and so declined, but he offered to help Argent. Rodford would later join in 2004 when the band reformed. Colin Blunstone and Paul Arnold joined the other three to form the band in 1961, while all five members were at school. Some sources state that Argent, Atkinson, and Grundy were at St Albans School, while Blunstone and Arnold were students at St Albans Boys' Grammar School. However, both Blunstone and Grundy came from Hatfield and both sang in the choir there at St Etheldreda's Church. Argent was a boy chorister in St Albans Cathedral Choir. They held their original rehearsals at the Pioneer Club, then situated on Hatfield Road, using equipment lent to them by the Bluetones. They met outside the Blacksmiths Arms pub in St Albans before their first rehearsal and gained their initial reputation playing the Old Verulamians Rugby Club there. Argent said "We met outside a pub. We were too young to walk in the pub”. Blunstone added "I was literally in a corner singing to myself, doing a Ricky Nelson song, and 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'".

Originally named the "Mustangs", the band soon realised that there were other groups with that name. According to Blunstone, "Every young band wants an original name. We were just in our teens. We tried the Mustangs. To be honest, I didn’t really know what a zombie was". Argent said "Well, we chose that name in 1961 and, I mean, I knew vaguely that they were: sort of, you know, the Walking Dead from Haiti and Colin didn't even really know what they were". "It was Paul [Arnold] that came up with the name. I don't know where he got it from. He very soon left the band after that". Arnold explained the name, saying "I thought this was a name that no one else is going to have. And I just liked the whole idea of it. Colin was wary, I'm sure, at the beginning, I know, but I always, always really, really liked it".

In 1964 the band won a £250 cash prize in a beat group competition organised by the Watford Borough Council and sponsored by the London Evening News. They signed a recording contract with Decca and recorded their first hit, "She's Not There". It was released in mid 1964 and peaked at number 12 in the UK, becoming their only UK Top 40 hit. The tune began to catch on in the United States and eventually climbed to number 2 in early December. It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc by the RIAA.

Like many other British groups, the Zombies travelled to the United States to tour on the momentum of their hit single. Among their early US gigs were Murray the K's Christmas shows at the Brooklyn Fox Theatre, where the band played seven performances a day. On 12 January 1965 the band made their first in person appearance on US television on the first episode of NBC's Hullabaloo and played "She's Not There" and their new single "Tell Her No" to a screaming, hysterical audience full of teenage girls. Of the eight original tracks, Rod Argent supplied the album's biggest hit, "She's Not There", and the songs "Woman", "I Remember When I Loved Her", plus "The Way I Feel Inside" which was the shortest track on the album at 1:28. It might have been shorter, had not their recording manager and producer Ken Jones added the sounds of footsteps and a coin dropping, which contributed to the feeling of alienation that the song projected. Bassist Chris White provided "I Can't Make Up My Mind", the quirky "I Don't Want to Know", plus the beaty "What More Can I Do" which, at 1:38, is the second shortest cut on the album and contains a simple but distinctive drum riff. The final original was an instrumental written by Ken Jones, "Work 'n' Play". The Zombies continued recording original songs through 1965 and 1966, trying to achieve chart success. There were enough tracks to have filled a follow up album, but due to the band's lack of chart success, most of these tracks remained unissued at the time.

In 1967, frustrated by their continuing lack of success, the Zombies signed a recording contract with CBS Records for whom they recorded the album Odessey and Oracle at EMI's world famous Abbey Road studios. The band's budget did not stretch to session musicians, so they used a Mellotron to fill out their arrangements. According to Argent, they used John Lennon's Mellotron, which had been left in the studio after the Beatles' sessions for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The album was mixed into the standard mono; however as another concession toward their limited budget, Argent and White (who, due to their songwriting royalties, had earned more than the rest of the members) personally paid for stereo mixes. Quirk was Blunstone's and White's childhood friend and was living with White and Argent in their apartment during the album's recording. Regarding the misspelling, Quirk said "There’s lots of theories online about why it’s spelt wrong, but there’s no conspiracy".

With the band experiencing a declining demand for live appearances, they split up after a final gig in mid December 1967. In April 1968, Argent explained the reason for the band breaking up, saying "We don't want to end up playing for £20 a night in third class ballrooms. We are still in big demand on the university circuit and are getting a lot of work. We want to quit while the going's good".

Odessey and Oracle, the band's swansong album, was released in the UK in April1968, months after the band's breakup. The album suffered poor sales. It was only released in the US because musician Al Kooper, then signed to Columbia Records, convinced the label of the album's merits. One of its tracks, "Time of the Season", written by Argent, was released as a single in 1968 and spent a long period as a 'sleeper'. Eventually, in 1969, it grew to become a nationwide hit in the US, peaking in the Hot 100 (Billboard) at No.3.

In 1968, Argent and White began working on material for a possible new band when they were approached by CBS to do another Zombies album. Several new tracks were cut with a line up of Argent, Hugh Grundy, Rodford (bass) and Rick Birkett (guitar), and were combined with some old Decca out takes and demos that were overdubbed and enhanced in sessions at Morgan Studios in London. The album, scheduled for release in 1969, was cancelled and only a couple of the songs, "Imagine the Swan" (one of the newly recorded songs) and "If It Don't Work Out" (a demo of a song that Dusty Springfield recorded and released in 1965), were put out as singles instead. (Some of this material was released on various compilation albums during the 1970s and 1980s, and the album, titled R. I. P., was finally released in Japan in 2000). The Texas group featured bassist Dusty Hill and drummer Frank Beard, soon to be members of ZZ Top. In 1969, Rod Argent formed the band called Argent with White as a non performing songwriter. Atkinson worked in A&R at Columbia and Grundy joined him there after a brief spell in auto sales. Blunstone started a solo career after a brief period outside the music business, including working in the burglary claims section of the Sun Alliance insurance company. Both Argent and White provided him with new songs. He also did studio vocals for the Alan Parsons Project.

The twosome reunited to play shows together in 2000 under the Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent moniker and moved to the U. S. in 2001. They recorded an album, Out of the Shadows (2001), and continued playing live shows together into 2004 when they began going out under the name "The Zombies" again. The new line up included Keith Airey (brother of Don Airey) on guitar, Jim Rodford on bass, and his son Steve Rodford on drums. In 2002, Ace/Big Beat released the 48 track The Decca Stereo Anthology, which, for the first time, mixed all the Decca/Parrot recordings into true stereo. An album of new material released in 2004, As Far as I Can See , received poor to scathing reviews from both Pitchfork and AllMusic. He died later that year on 1 April 2004, in Santa Monica, California, from liver and kidney disease. In 2005, Blunstone and Argent released a DVD and 2 CD album (Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre) and continued touring with the Zombies. To mark the 40th anniversary of Odessey and Oracle, the four surviving original members of the Zombies participated in a three night series of concerts at London's Shepherd's Bush Empire Theatre between 7 and 9 March 2008. Blunstone and Argent's respective websites had advertised that the concert of 8 March was recorded for a CD and/or DVD release later in 2008, and the CD was officially posted by Amazon. com to be pre sold for a release of 1 July 2008. Both CD and DVD were officially released in the UK and several other countries. In 2006, Argent performed and toured with Ringo Starr as part of the All Starr Band. Argent performed the Zombies' songs "She's Not There" and "Time of the Season" as well as "Hold Your Head Up" from his other musical group, Argent. In 2010, Ace Records released a series of six 7 inch vinyl EPs. All the tracks were new to vinyl, with some rarities taken from the Zombie Heaven box set, as well as previously unreleased material. Tom Toomey replaced Airey on guitar. In 2011, "The Zombies featuring Colin Blunstone & Rod Argent" released their new studio album Breathe Out, Breathe In. Reviews were generally strong, and included 4 star reviews from publications including Record Collector, Q, Uncut, the Daily Mirror and The Independent. The band set out to tour annually in the UK, US, Canada and Netherlands. The 2011 tour included Japan, France, Germany, Greece and Israel. In 2012, band members participated in the unveiling of a commemorative plaque at the Blacksmith's Arms, a St Albans pub where the Zombies met for their first rehearsal. On 19 July 2013, it was announced that the band would be appearing on the second annual Moody Blues Cruise, 2–7 April 2014 on the cruise ship MSC Ship Divina. In 2014, the Zombies performed in festival circuits including the Austin Psych Festival and San Francisco Stern Grove Festival. The next year, the band announced they would embark on a 2015 American tour of the Odessey and Oracle album with White and Grundy returning. The Zombies' sixth album, Still Got That Hunger, produced by Chris Potter, was announced for a release date of 9 October 2015. The album's recording was successfully funded by crowdfunding service PledgeMusic during August 2014. The Zombies toured the US in the autumn of 2015 to promote Still Got That Hunger and were again joined by surviving former members White and Grundy, along with keyboardist Darian Sahanaja and White's wife Viv Boucherat (on backing vocals) to play the entire Odessey & Oracle album. On 30 October 2015, the Zombies made a guest appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.

In 2017, the four surviving original members (Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, Chris White and Hugh Grundy) re united for a North American tour marking the 50th anniversary of the recording of Odessey and Oracle. The first stop on this tour was a first time performance in Jamaica, as the featured artist on the Flower Power Cruise on the Celebrity Summit while in port in Falmouth. A popular podcast, S Town, used "A Rose for Emily" as its closing music. This exposure helped The Zombies land a guest appearance on Conan in May 2017. Commenting on the album's half century of popularity, Argent said “At the time we made it, we would have thought it was complete craziness that the songs would resonate 50 years later". the first nomination for the band since coming into eligibility in 1990. The Zombies were nominated again for the Hall in 2016 and in October 2017. They were announced as one of seven inductees for the 2019 class in December 2018. The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

In May 2019, The Zombies announced a co headlining tour with Brian Wilson and Al Jardine of The Beach Boys called "Something Great From ’68’" featuring The Zombies performing Odessey and Oracle, in addition to other greatest hits. This tour would also feature the four surviving original members (Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, Chris White and Hugh Grundy) in addition to the band's current line up. In late 2021, the band announced they would be undertaking extensive tours of Britain, the US, Canada, and Europe, between February and September 2022. However, in January 2022 it was announced that the UK part of the tour would be postponed until 2023. In October 2023, the band performed at the Royal Oak Music Theatre in Royal Oak, Michigan.

Members of the classic lineup are listed in bold.