Every artist borrows (read:  steals) from other artists, past and present.  It is part of what makes the art of music so beautiful – this endless conversation between a musician and every musician who came before him.  Good musicians can sound exactly like their idols.  Great musicians can cover up those idols and make the listener believe that no one has ever done anything like them in the history of music.

The current issue of Thriller examines the second category – people we’ll call “Innovators.”  Two such innovators are Mark Mothersbaugh and Rod Argent . . . 

Words by:  Dante Lima

In 1968 Rod Argent and his band, the Zombies, recorded one of the most breathtakingly gorgeous albums of all time, Odessey and Oracle. The band who pioneered psychedelic pop and became famous for their singles, “Tell Her No” and “She’s Not There,” embarked on the painstaking journey to record and self-produce their second album, an amalgam of psychedelic sound-scapes, traditional ’60s pop and Victorian vignettes. What should have been the album that launched the Zombies into the realm of the Beatles and the Beach Boys as one of the most innovative and melodically pure bands of the era instead existed as their swan song.

*Features audio / multimedia*

Five of them sat around the table – Mark Mothersbaugh, Michael Jackson, Andy Warhol, Warhol’s young male protege and a woman whose breasts Mothersbaugh had seen on cable TV.  The noise was blinding in Studio 54 as disco’s faithful pounded the dance floor.  The next thing Mothersbaugh knew, Michael Jackson was passing him a joint filled with