The Zombies come again to life discovering contemporary success with a brand new viewers

Given that the Zombies had solely two UK hits and launched only one LP throughout their three years of 60s stardom, it’s all going fairly effectively for them. The band are again with a critically-acclaimed album, Different Game, whereas formally being a museum attraction.

Four authentic members have been welcomed into the Georgian splendour of St Albans Museum for a night of chat and acoustic music on Friday, marking the opening of The Zombies Come Home, an exhibition that harks again to their 1961 formation as schoolboys within the metropolis.

It’s been a curious, roller-coaster profession. The band break up on the finish of 1967, notching up their largest hit two years later.

A six-date reformation of singer Colin Blunstone and keyboard participant Rod Argent in 1999 by no means ended and now they’re a transatlantic pressure – inducted into America’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

The exhibition, initially stymied by Covid, is now extra deserved than ever.

“It’s great!” Argent, 78, says cheerfully. “My parents always lived in St Albans and I was a choirboy at the cathedral. My cousin, Jim Rodford” – bassist in Rod’s post-Zombies band Argent and for the Kinks for 19 years – “turned me on to rock‘n’roll by playing me Elvis’s Hound Dog when I was 11, in 1956.

“It turned my world around and made me feel that as soon as I was old enough I had to form a band.”

The schoolboys obtained collectively, creating clever R&B pop combining Blunstone’s delicate vocals and Argent’s dancing piano runs. Their first single, the traditional She’s Not There written by Argent, made the Top 10 at dwelling however topped the US Cashbox charts, spawning large American excursions.

“It became the first self-written Number One single by an English group in America after the Beatles,” says Argent. “We were touring there and, 19 years old, I’d called my mum. She said, ‘You’ve just been on the Nine o’Clock News’.”

Those days have been a fairytale. “Just eight years after I’d first seen Elvis, Colin and I and the rest of the band wandered up the drive at Graceland and knocked on the door. We were like kids wanting Elvis to come and play. But his dad said sorry, he’s away filming but he loves you guys.

“Much later, a DJ told us that Elvis had three of our songs on his jukebox!” Yet the one different single to bother the charts on the time was Tell Her No, additionally in 1964.

The band – Argent, bassist and different fundamental songwriter Chris White Blunstone, guitarist Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy – have been musically gifted, however “were not well managed,” says Argent. “The two writers had a very good income yet the others didn’t get anything like what they deserved. Then Paul said ‘I’m getting married and I’ve got no money – I’m going to have to leave and get a job’.”

Preparing to document their second album, they determined that in the event that they didn’t get one other hit they might name it quits. There was no hit they usually’d walked away earlier than the album, Odessey and Oracle (the mis-spelling by the psychedelic cowl’s artist proved too troublesome to change), was even launched.

It didn’t come out within the US till producer Al Kooper (who had performed on Bob Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde) championed it and picked a single, Time Of The Season, which shot to No 1 there.

“In fact,” says Argent. “It became a No 1 pretty much all over the world except the UK. Here it’s been out five times but was never a hit. Extraordinarily, even if we play to a really young audience, everybody knows it!

“We were offered a million dollars to tour and could’ve got back together – but we wanted to move forward, not rake over the coals.”

Blunstone, 78, says: “Rolling Stone named it one of the 100 top albums of all time. It was a strange situation, we’d all moved on to other things.

“That was 1969, well after we’d split up. Rod had formed a production company with Chris and they produced my first solo album, One Year, with the hit single Say You Don’t Mind.”

Unscrupulous US promoters then created pretend Zombies to money in. One of the touring “Original Zombies” combos featured Dusty Hill and Frank Beard, later of furry Texan blues rockers ZZ Top.

“The original tribute band!” laughs Argent, whose personal band, Argent, by 1972 had hit the US Top 5 with Hold Your Head Up and later created rock anthem God Gave Rock And Roll To You.

The Zombies didn’t carve out a brand new profession till the twenty first century, turning into a daily in vibrant spots just like the Boom Boom Club at Sutton United’s Surrey floor, earlier than winding up with US administration and big US live shows.

It was nonetheless very a lot a St Albans affair, that includes Jim Rodford till his loss of life in 2018, and his drummer son Steve. And there have typically been two Zombies side-by-side. In 2008, the fortieth anniversary of Odessey and Oracle, the 4 surviving authentic members (Atkinson died in 2004) reconvened.

“We’d never played it live. We were going to play one night, but that grew to three. Then more, and we took it to the States…”

Says Argent: “On the first night our manager said, ‘Oh, Paul Weller’s in the queue outside’. I said for goodness’ sake invite him in! He came all three nights, singing along, and bought us a magnum of champagne. Robert Plant was there too.”

Now, although, the band think about their music of right this moment with Different Game, a psychedelia-tinged album full with string quartet. That doesn’t imply they’ll’t revel within the exhibition. So what’s in it? Well, not Blunstone’s Aran sweater – that’s nonetheless on the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

“They’d asked for anything from the early days,” he says. “I found this old jumper. I was wearing it when we recorded Odessey and Oracle, lush, pure white, long on the hips, it was at the bottom of a cupboard, shrunk out of all recognition, no longer snow white!”

But there’s a statuette marking their authentic US No1, and which has been within the Hall Of Fame. From this yr one other statuette comes from South By South West, the influential pageant in Austin, Texas, celebrating their profession.

There are guitars, together with a duplicate of 1 Buddy Holly performed.

“It’s a wonderfully engraved guitar, presented to us by Buddy’s widow after we became ambassadors to the Buddy Holly Educational Foundation,” says Blunstone.

The Zombies story is instructed in new cinematic documentary Hung Up On A Dream, directed by Robert Schwartzman, nephew of Francis Ford Coppola and cousin of Nicolas Cage. Tom Hanks is govt producer. The movie has been screened on the prestigious Woodstock Film Festival in New York. Only every week in the past was a spotlight of the Doc’n Roll Festival at London’s Barbican and obtained a last-minute St Albans exhibiting final evening – TV streaming to return.

Today there may be an exhibition of the work of Odessey and Oracle artist Terry Quirk and Vivienne Boucherat, spouse of authentic bassist Chris White; a jazz brunch with present guitarist Tom Toomey and a blues night in reminiscence of Jim Rodford.

There’s additionally a strolling map of town that includes Zombies landmarks – and even a stall in the marketplace. A spring UK tour is about to be introduced they usually have secured the rights to all their early recordings, which means fashionable re-releases are on the playing cards.

“Who’d have thought we could be museum pieces?” laughs Blunstone.

“But we try to get people to understand that we get our energy out of what we’re doing now.”

• The Zombies exhibition is open now (stalbansmuseums.org.uk). Different Game is on Cooking Vinyl Records. Tour updates: thezombiesmusic.com