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.

The Zombies’ biggest single, “Time of the Season,” and the album’s closing song, became a hit long after the band broke up. The single was punctuated by a real, definite period – the end of the Zombies. The album is a relic, the prized treasure of a band that broke up too soon and left the music world wondering just how good they could have been. But in 2008, Argent, along with the original members of the Zombies, save for the late Paul Atkinson, re-grouped in London to play three sold-out performances of Odessey and Oracle.  The performances were inspired, celebratory and long overdue. Thriller got a chance to talk to Argent about the reunion, the album and the unfortunate circumstances of the Zombies’ early career.

How did the Odessey and Oracle project come together after 40 years?

Well, how it actually came about was Chris White, our bassist who also co-wrote half the album, would often come to Clint and I’s concerts. He said, “Do you realize the next year is the 40^th anniversary of Odessey and Oracle?  We’ve never played it live. Why don’t we think about doing a performance of it?” We booked one night and it very quickly sold out. So, we did three nights. We wanted to mark it as a ceremony. And we wanted to accurately reproduce the album. When we were recording I added extra parts and extra harmony parts. We worked with Darian Sahanaja from Brian Wilson’s band, and he kindly came over and did that. We had our touring band to do the extra harmonies. I even bought an 1896 Victorian pump organ to reproduce Butcher’s tale.

Darian is Brian Wilson’s bandleader, and I know he has a lot of creative discretion when he’s setting up those shows. What role did he have in this arrangement?

He had no role at all in arranging it. He produced it and played on it. No role at all in arranging it. It was already arranged; it’s already there. We had two rehearsals with everyone involved. We were doing “Brief Candles,” and in one of the three part harmonies he came over to me and said “Rod, why are you missing out on that harmony that you did on the original album?” It was one note really, but it changed a detail of what was there. He probably knew the parts in his head better than I did.  It took a weight off my shoulders because I didn’t have to write out the Mellotron parts. I could trust him to play the lines as they existed.  It meant that I didn’t have to worry.

There’s a lot of texture and several overdubs on the album. Did any songs pose a problem?

Probably “Changes” but none of them were really a problem. With my touring band we would do some of the songs from the album on stage, but never the whole thing. There are maybe three or four songs that need absolutely every single part, every single sound to get it right. We needed that extra man power, and the Mellotron parts from Darian. When all the parts were in place they really came alive. “Hung Up on a Dream” is one and “Brief Candles” is another one.

“Hung Up On A Dream” is my favorite song on the record. I’ve tried piecing it together many times and I still can’t figure out whether it’s a euphoric song or a haunting one. Some tracks on the record can be ambiguous like that. Where were you coming from in the writing process?

It’s more dream-like, and I guess that was the process of writing it really. It was more the thought of it. It’s almost a dream the way the music sounds. Each song is just sparked by a different thing, like “A Butcher’s Tale,” which is my favorite track on the album. Incidentally there was a typo in the original title of that, It should have been “Butcher’s Tale on the Western Front 1916, not 1914.” Chris just read a giant history of WWI, and that song came from him reading that. In the same day you can feel something dark and go through any mood really. “Hung Up On A Dream” expresses that back and forth, but it’s also saying that that was the most fantastic experience I ever had.

Why did it take you so long to come back to Odessey and Oracle?

There are several responses to that. For many years I never had copies of my own records. When I’m involved in making a record it takes me about three or four years to listen to it objectively. You remember the process and the memories of recording it. You can come back ten years later and think, “My god that sounds great!” It takes distance before you can listen to your own work properly. I also look forward in my life. I am more proud of moving forward than looking backward. Since I got back together with Colin we wanted to do six gigs, and that’s turned into nine years of traveling the world. And we didn’t even play Zombies stuff. But as we started introducing it little by little, I found I really liked it. It always has to be in the context of writing new stuff. We are going to record a new album. Within that context I feel very happy doing any or all of the old stuff.  You can’t hear it when you’re too close to it. The mixing and the mastering make it impossible

Did the album’s acclaim in later decades catch you off guard? Did you ever get these sense people really missed the point in 1968?

It was a huge surprise to me. For many years I never listened. Then, I listened to it in 1997, after the Zombie Heaven box set came out. They were original
master tracks. The compilations that come out are generally third or fourth generation. That was the first time I listened to the whole album in twenty to thirty years. Listening to it properly. It sounded incredibly English, in a sort of pastoral sense. It felt like the English culture, compared to the singles we’d done at the time.

Where did the English sound come from?

I do know where that came from. Chris and I desperately wanted to do an album and produce it ourselves before we broke up. We weren’t happy with the way we were being produced. It created a unity about the album and gave it it’s own stamp. We recorded it quite quickly, in actual studio hours that is. Because we were free to pursue our own ideas, it was an individual result.

Your band is often associated with the beginnings of psychedelic pop, and naturally psychedelic drugs. Did drugs have any role in the creative process?

Drugs had no role at all. I’ve never been interested in doing drugs. It seemed like a very crude way of getting an effect. I’ve always loved jazz and classical music as well. I was always very aware of Charlie Parker saying that mind-altering substances never made you play better. And with his struggles I took that to heart. That’s my personal take on it. People are free to do what they want.

Are you offended that people view it that way?

I don’t find it offensive at all. The music came out of what it came out of. It didn’t come out of drugs. We don’t have any drug references. We had a song in Argent called “Sweet Mary,” and it got banned because people thought it was a reference to marijuana. But of course that’s false.

I’ve always felt Zombies singles; especially from Begin Here were just as good as any singles of the ’60s. Are there any reason songs like “Whenever You’re Ready” were never chart busters?

I have absolutely no idea why “Whenever You’re Ready” was never a hit like the others. The actual production we were very unhappy about. The technical part of producing that record could have been more honest and earthier. When we produced our first sessions I absolutely loved it. Instead of just taking each song as it was, our producer tried to emphasize the breathy quality of Colin’s voice. It was artificial and it drove us mad. It could have sounded a bit more exciting.

Now that you and Colin Bluntsone are back together, what does the future hold?

It’s very hard to speculate. The thing that I love most is to work out new ideas and perform them on stage. Without any question, we will make a new album this year. That will be Colin and myself. There have been some fairly interesting suggestions for later on in the year, but I can divulge that info. I feel pretty exhausted at the moment. We just did a three-week tour of Europe and a five-week tour of the UK. I can’t wait to have this month free. The band we’ve got is terrific. I’m looking forward very much to hear new things we’ve done on the radio. Things always sound different on the radio.  Very few people have the privilege of doing what they did when they were eighteen.

What type of music inspires you now?

When I was fifteen years old, I adored Miles Davis, and Elvis and the Beatles. I haven’t changed. As a musician though, my technique has gotten better as I’ve gotten older. I haven’t heard any other person from the rock world do an album like Classically Speaking, not that I’ve heard anyway. I couldn’t have done it five years before I did it. I spent a year practicing three hours a day. That’s the only way you can do that kind of stuff. But other than that I think I have gotten better because I play a lot. I don’t listen to as much new music as I should. When you’re in your 60s you don’t do that.

What do you think when young people like myself recognize music you made forty years ago?

I get incredibly excited, because we’re one of the bands that are lucky to have new fans coming all the time. Typically we’ll play to an older audience. Sometimes we’ll play to crowds or people in their twenties, and they’ll know every word. It feels like the music is speaking to people of a young generation today, as well as the older generations. It’s a lovely feeling. We got an award this year, from Mojo Magazine. They awarded our album a classic status. The Fleet Foxes, an absolutely wonderful band, came up to us and said we based our sound around Odessey and Oracle, and that makes me feel fantastic.

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Buy this album: Odessey and Oracle

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