Colin Blunstone
Appearances
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
but it's too late to say you're sorry how would i know why should i care please don't bother trying to find her she's not there well let me tell you about the way she looked the way she had tanned the color of her hair her voice was soft and cool her eyes were clear and bright but she's not
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
That's right, the very first tour we ever did. And we were fantastic Burt Bacharach fans. I still am a big Burt Bacharach fan. He just writes the most wonderful songs.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
No, because the version I'd heard was by Dusty Springfield, and I think she had a hit in America with that version, but she didn't have a hit in the UK. It's funny how that happens. You know, people can have hits with a wonderful version of a song in one country, and it doesn't mean anything in another country. Very strange.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And now you're hearing the sweet and swinging sound of the zombies one more time in The Look of Love, written by Bert Bacharach.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Now here's a group which has only experienced moderate success here in Britain, but which has had several big hits in the States. Singing for you, we present The Zombies. You're my lover, I do my thing with you.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, I mean, it really intrigues me because I sometimes think that records have a life of their own because everything was against this record. We recorded it for CBS Records in London. They'd only just started up. They were quite a small company in London. And they gave us a very limited budget. I think it was £1,000, which even in those days was a very small budget for doing an album.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And there wasn't a lot of enthusiasm. We'd had quite a few flop singles. We'd just come back from a disastrous tour of the Far East. And we went into the studio, recorded this album, and there really wasn't a great response in the UK. I don't think in America they didn't want to release it at all.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
But Al Cooper from Blood, Sweat and Tears was in London and he just bought a lot of albums, took them back to America and he wrote the sleeve notes on this album in America and he just felt that this album stood out from everything that he brought back from the UK. So he alone is responsible for... for what happened with Time of the Season because I think CBS had given up on this album.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
But he said, listen, this is a wonderful album. You must release it. When you think of how major record companies get behind some records or some acts and they put lots of money into promotion and marketing, and probably the band have just come off a huge hit as well. And so you know that something's going to happen with this record.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Time of the Season had no right to be a hit, but I'm very, very glad that it was a hit. And even in the studio, I tell this as a story against myself, I didn't really like the song, and I didn't want to sing it. And it had been written more or less in the morning before we recorded it, and I wasn't too sure of the exact melody.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And it's a Rod Argent song, and he's very emphatic that when he writes a melody, he wants it exactly as he wrote it. And quite so. I mean, I agree with him. It should be like that. And Rod and I had a set, too, in the studio. It was in Studio 3 at Abbey Road. And he wanted this song absolutely as he wrote it, and I kept making little mistakes.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I said to him, Rod, listen, if you know how to sing it, you come in here and you sing it. And he said to me, mind you, the language was a little bit richer, I hasten to add. He said to me, Colin, you're the singer, you sing it. And it went on from there. It was quite a fiery moment. But I mean, I'm really glad that he made me stand there and sing it. I would be very upset if I hadn't done it.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, Rod Argent and Chris White had been very successful as songwriters for the Zombies and for other artists as well. And I think that had fired their enthusiasm and they knew they wanted to stay in the music business. But for the other three, I mean, we were really struggling just financially.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
because concerts were few and far between, our records weren't selling, and we were quite frankly going broke. And so it was getting more and more difficult for us. On top of that, we had worked absolutely solidly for three years. There were no sort of three weeks touring here and then six months off or something like that. We worked solidly.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And just speaking personally, I think I was very, very tired. And just a little bit disappointed with the way things had gone. Remembering that we started off with a number one hit record, a gold record, She's Not There. And from there on in, we seem to have gradually slipped down the hill of success or however one explains it. And so I think personally, I was feeling very disappointed.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I remember we were having a rehearsal. Rod Argent and Chris White were sharing a flat and we were having a rehearsal there. And Paul Atkinson said, listen, guys, I just think that's enough for me. I think I need to move on and do something else. And Rod said, well, listen, if one guy's going to leave, I think we should all perhaps get out and try new things. And I said nothing.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Colin Blenstone, welcome to Fresh Air. Terry, thank you very much.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I just kept my head down and thought, oh, my God, what's happening? And I just went out for a long walk.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, unfortunately, the band had finished at least an hour, at least an hour, at least a year before Time of the Season was a hit. And in that time, everybody was doing very different things. And really, at the time, it felt impractical for us to get back together again. Again, with the benefit of hindsight, I think it could have been done if everybody had wanted to do it.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
The competition was held in Watford Town Hall, which was about eight miles away from St. Albans, where we all went to school. And Watford Town Hall was quite a big venue for us. It held about 2,000 people. And because there were 10 bands on every night, they all had their supporters. And it was absolutely packed. And it was a bit like a football crowd.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
You know, everybody had banners and bells and rattles. And it was quite a sort of a wild place to play. And we won our heat. I think there were sort of 10 weeks of 10 bands. And the winner got through to the final. And then we won the final. It was a magical evening. I'll never forget it.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Oh, I was hoping you weren't going to ask me that. We sang a Beatles song, You Can't Do That.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
You know? I've got something to say that might cause you pain. Do you remember that one?
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Yeah, I do too. And we sang Summertime, which went on our first album. And we did it as a sort of a jazz waltz. It was very jazzy. And we sang a couple of other songs, and I can't remember what they were.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, quite simply, because we'd been for the first few weeks of our career together. This was just when we were at school. I think to start off with, we were the Mustangs. And we found that there are a million bands called the Mustangs. And then we were the Sundowners and we had the same problem.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And Paul Arnold, who was our original bass player, there was only one change in the band, and this is while we were still at school. He came up with the idea of the Zombies, and I think we all thought that no one else would be crazy enough to call a band the Zombies. And so it really, I think that in a way it was an act of desperation.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
We were just trying to find something that no one else would have thought of. So we ended up as the Zombies.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, I think a lot of the sound really comes from the writers. We had two unique writers in the band and very prolific writers as well. And I think possibly, especially Rod Argent, his songs were, I think... Well, truly wonderful. I think they were brilliant songs. And he also was a brilliant keyboard player. So you've got these great keyboard breaks that he would keep putting into songs.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Also, he was a very accomplished musician, even at an early age. He understood a lot about music, which certainly he was in a different league to me. So a lot of our chord progressions and the bass notes we put on the bottom of chords were quite unusual. And he also understood vocal harmonies because he was in the cathedral choir until he was about 17 or 18.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And if we played a gig on a Sunday night, we'd have to go and pick him up at the back of the cathedral where he'd been singing in whatever the thing had been at the cathedral. And he'd have to be taking off all his church clothes and getting into his rock and roll gear. And then we'd go off to the rock and roll gig. So I think our harmonies helped to make things a bit different as well.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I think there were lots of things that contributed towards it. But the songwriting and the vocal harmonies. And then maybe there's a little bit of the interplay between Rod's writing and my voice. I mean, both of them, Chris White and Rod Argent, used to write songs for my voice.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, especially for those days, I sang in quite a high key, you know, compared with lots of other singers. Nowadays, lots of people do that. But I think that was one of the things. I think I tend to sing sad songs better than happy-go-lucky songs. So often songs would have a sort of a haunting quality about them. She's Not There is probably a good example. I think they would look for that.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Songs in minor keys perhaps would be another thing they would look for. So lots of little things all added up to the zombie sound.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I think, as I remember, we'd been touring with Dionne Warwick, who you would call Dionne Warwick. And through that, we'd got very interested in Burt Bacharach songs. And I have a feeling that Rod Argent, who wrote this song, was going through a period of being influenced a lot by Burt Bacharach. With regard to the session...
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
We would record probably three or four, maybe five backing tracks in an evening at Decca Recording Studios. And then we would put vocals on. And it would probably be 12 o'clock or 1 o'clock at night before I got around to singing. And I always remember this session because I was fast asleep when they finished. And they woke me up to sing Teller No.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And in fact, there's a mumbled line in the middle of Teller No because I was half asleep when I was singing it. And I said, listen, guys, I better just do that again, because there's this mumbled line. And they said, oh, no, no, that's fine. Don't worry about that.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I've heard stories of people in bands who have been trying to copy our version of Teleno, and they've been desperately trying to work out what the lyric is. And after 15 or 30 years or whatever it is, I have to tell them, well, you shouldn't have bothered, because it's just a mumble. So there is no lyric there, really.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
It I'll leave it to you to find out, because I can't remember off the top of my head.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
No, really, I can't remember. It's something like, you play the song, and then I'll have a think about it while you're playing.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
It sort of sounds like don't love her love from your arms or something, but really it's... I always heard it as don't hurt me now from her arms, and I figured, well, I don't know what that means, but it's all right.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, what it means is it was a rather sleepy zombie who was trying to do his best, but was a little bit not with it. He was amongst those not present.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, it wasn't something that was specifically written. It was, okay, Colin, now do a little bit of something here. It probably would have been similar, but it wouldn't have been exactly the same.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Well, the surprise for me was the reaction. I mean, I wasn't particularly aware of the fact that we were part of the British invasion. I'm not sure if that term was used certainly to me at the time. I mean, I know the expression now. So I can't really say I reacted to that phrase when I was there.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
But what was interesting to me was the enthusiasm and the huge numbers of the fans in America for all music. I mean, things were a little bit more basic back here in the UK. We would be travelling in the back of an old van. There were very few freeways in this country. We call them motorways. So we would be travelling on country lanes, vast distances in a broken-down old van.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
It wasn't terribly glamorous, really. Except we were having fun. We were 18 years old. What did we care? But then when we went to America, we were playing to huge audiences and very, very enthusiastic audiences that were screaming and screaming and rushing the stage and tearing our clothes off. And it was all pretty exciting stuff, really. Very exciting.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
Very lucky is the expression I was thinking of. Well, I enjoyed it very much. Definitely, it was wonderful.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
I don't think it did too much in our band, but again, probably better if someone else judged it, because we sort of had periods of...
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
success and we had periods of not being so successful and we were brought down to earth with a big bump and also in the band no one was allowed to get too carried away I mean we'd grown up together and anybody who got too carried away would be slapped into place pretty quickly it was very exciting and it was great fun but we all still lived at home with our parents we still lived in the little area that we'd grown up in
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
No, we didn't, actually. And I think that image-wise, I think it was a weakness in the band. I think we were together professionally for three years, although we were together for four years at school. Towards the end of the three years, I think we were getting the image thing a bit more sorted out, but it had just been a natural progression for us.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I think that we needed help, I think, earlier on. How could it be any different? Our first record had been a huge hit
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
record around the world and some of the guys had just left school and i don't know how much other bands thought about image but we certainly didn't and i wish that some shrewd character had given us a bit of help there and then you just mentioned spectacles two of the guys wore very heavy rim spectacles and at a time when if you're in a teenage band of course you want to look fairly attractive for people and it wasn't very fashionable at the time
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
for young men in rock bands to wear glasses. And towards the middle or the end of our professional career, Paul Atkinson stopped wearing those heavy-rimmed glasses and wore contact lenses, and he was a very good-looking lad, and I think it might have helped us a little bit if he'd wore contact lenses from the beginning. But just little things like that I think we could have looked into.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
And I think also She's Not There is a very charismatic song. It's eerie... almost could be a little bit sinister, and I think we could have worked on that. Instead of which, we came with a very jolly little tell-her-no number for our second record, which didn't seem to me to follow. She's not there very well, really.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
When you met people in the media, I think they quite liked it because we turned up on time.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
We didn't spit. But when you actually put that into an article, I think it can put people off. People want rascals and rogues and naughty boys, you know.
Fresh Air
Zombies Frontman Colin Blunstone
then do you know what he did do you know what this guy did people love that you know but then they're not having to face it first hand so in a way I think that it went against us a bit mind you I'm saying all this with hindsight I didn't realise it at the time we were just making it up as we went along