The Zombies, Commodore Ballroom, Friday, April 21, 7 p.m.
It’s The Zombies’ year – but it took a long time to come.
The iconic 1960s band, responsible for such era-defining hits as “She’s Not There” and “Time of the Season,” has been touring its much-beloved 1968 LP Odessey and Oracle throughout North America this year, in celebration of the album’s 50th anniversary.
The Zombies’ surviving original members Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, Chris White and Hugh Grundy, as well as a different iteration of the band featuring Blunstone, Argent and other performers, will be in Vancouver next Friday performing Odessey in its entirety.
(The famously misspelled album title was left unchanged in production and has since added to its mystique.)
While Odessey and Oracle is one of the most critically acclaimed albums in popular music history and has received numerous accolades over the years, including being listed at number 100 in Rolling Stone magazine’s 500
Greatest Albums of All Time list, it has only been in the last decade or so that The Zombies have been able to benefit from the record’s slow rise to the top.
The band had already broken up by the time the album came out in 1968 and upon release it was mainly dismissed and overlooked.
“It’s been great fun to get back on stage and do this album which nobody wanted back in 1968,” says Zombies’ bass player Chris White from a hotel room in Cleveland, Ohio.
White, who was one of Odesesy’s primary songwriters and was responsible for penning seven of its 12 tracks, talks candidly about the album’s 50th anniversary tour and the positive attention its received half a century after its initial release.
“It’s been phenomenal to be quite honest. I mean, standing ovations. It’s very heartwarming – something that wasn’t wanted 50 years ago. The nice thing is, it’s people of all ages. Kids as young as 10 and nine have been brought up by their parents on this record and they’ve taken to it like ducks to water really. It’s fantastic to see.”
Odessey meandered in the album charts and received lukewarm reception from critics back in the late ’60s, but it carefully clawed its way back into the public consciousness over the ensuing decades, in large part due to the influence the album has had on a younger generation of musicians and fans.
“Slowly over the years it has gained a reputation and a lot of younger musicians have quoted it as being instrumental in them starting music,” White says.
The Zombies started on their own musical journey when the band formed in England in 1962. The band’s debut single, “She’s Not There,” was a hit in 1964 and represented the group’s early sound that drew from R&B, beat music and jazz.
White also notes blues and classical as having a strong influence on the band’s sound, as well as the boundary-pushing music of Chuck Berry, The Beatles and The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album.
When The Zombies come to Vancouver next week, White says the audience can expect a two-part set.
The first will feature an assortment of Zombies hits from throughout the band’s career performed by its current iteration of touring and recording members that doesn’t include original members White and drummer Grundy.
After the first set, which will include performances of songs from the recently released 2015 album Still Got That Hunger, the original Zombies will take the stage and perform Odessey from top to bottom, kicking off with the breezy piano chords that introduce “Care of Cell 44” and finishing with ’60s anthem “Time of the Season.”
“We never performed it in ’68 – the first time we performed it was in London on the 40th anniversary – and so we decided to do it again because the demand for it was such,” White says.
“We just got together and when we’re on stage, even though it’s 50 years later, it feels like we’re still in our early-20s. It’s a great feeling.”
According to the band, after this tour they won’t perform Odessey in its entirety ever again.
In celebration of the album’s 50th anniversary, the band has also released a book commemorating its legacy.
The Odessey: The Zombies in Words and Images will feature pages of handwritten lyrics as well as commentary delivered by musicians and artists reflecting on specific songs and their influence, including insights from Graham Nash, Tom Petty, Brian Wilson and Carlos Santana.
“It sort of justifies what we were doing at the time and it’s wonderful. Some of those remarks are unbelievable,” White says about the new book.
Looking back, White says the band was always disappointed that Odessey didn’t make more of a splash when it was first released, especially since they put everything they had into it at the time.
But now that the album’s finally getting the attention it deserves, he says he’s humbled and encouraged by it – it just took a little longer than expected.
“Who knows what makes something successful, it just moves them,” he says. “Who knows what the future holds, you can never tell.”
In addition to The Zombies’ Vancouver concert next Friday, they will also be releasing a special seven-inch vinyl album for Record Store Day, April 22.
The B-side of that record will include the original version of “This Will Be Our Year,” a White-penned song off Odessey that he says has become a “perennial wedding song” due to the track’s intimate, tender melody and theme of resounding hope.
With The Zombies’ renewed success in the last several decades, the theme of hope in Odessey is perhaps more relevant than ever before for the band.
“You come up with an idea and I liked the idea of hope,” White says about the song and how the notion of hopeful optimism and love permeates all of Odessey.
He then recites the song’s refrain: “‘This will be our year, took a long time to come.’”
