Rod Argent can't tell you what makes the psychedelic "Time of the Season" by the Zombies so insanely catchy, but we have a few ideas.
First you’ve got that breathy, punchy hook at the beginning, like “Come Together” but better.
Then you have Colin Blunstone’s voice asking “Who’s your daddy?” — all adolescent insolence. Then there’s that Bach chorale chorus, like some kind of highbrow throwback. And, cue the Hammond organ: more coolness.
The single, from "Odessey and Oracle," sounds as good now as it did in 1967. For Argent, 71, songwriter and keyboard player for the Zombies, the intervening 50 years have not dimmed the pleasure of performing the tune onstage, which he will do, with most of the band's original lineup, on Saturday at the Variety Playhouse.
You might think high falsettos and swirling vocal harmonies would be challenging for musicians who are no longer insolent adolescents, and are, in fact, in their 70s.
Not so, says Argent, calling from a rehearsal hall in New Jersey before embarking on the remainder of their “Odessey and Oracle” spring tour.
“We do everything in the original keys,” he insists. “My voice is better now than it was all those years ago.”
The Zombies got together as high school students, and bassist Paul Arnold came up with the name, a long time before George Romero made zombies cool. They won a contest sponsored by a newspaper, and cut their first tune in 1964, "She's Not There," which, astonishingly, went on to sell a million copies.
“Tell Her No,” the follow-up to “She’s Not There,” also did well, but subsequent efforts did not. A lack of charted singles back in England led to the band’s breakup in 1967, shortly after recording the album “Odessey and Oracle.”
The record was released in the U.S. in 1968 only due to the insistence of musician and former Atlantan Al Kooper (of the Blues Project and Blood Sweat and Tears). It caught on slowly. Then "Time of the Season" began to hit in the U.S., eventually climbing to No. 3 in 1969.
By then, Argent and Blunstone were in their own bands, and Blunstone even took time out to work in the insurance industry.
As a result, the band never played the songs from the album together onstage until a reunion concert more than 30 years later.
Now they're making up for lost time, and during this tour are performing the album in its entirety, along with other music from their catalog. Argent, whose solo band also had a memorable hit with "Hold Your Head Up," talked recently about the challenges and pleasures of going on the road as a septuagenarian, and about the vibrant musical ecosystem that gave birth to the album.
The band recorded “Odessey” in 1967 in the famed Abbey Road studios, where engineers had just finished twirling the dials on “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.”
The staff appreciated the Zombies’ more 9-to-5 approach. “None of the engineers wanted to work with (the Beatles),” Argent said, “because they kept such late hours.
“The Beatles had just walked out and left all their instruments behind,” Argent said. “I had never seen a Mellotron before. Without asking anybody’s permission, I took the cover off the Mellotron and started using it.”
He also took advantage of what was a novelty at the time, the possibility of multitracking. Both the Beatles and the Zombies were fascinated with the Beach Boys and with leader Brian Wilson’s mad masterpiece, “Pet Sounds,” created with the then-cutting-edge eight-track deck.
Both wanted to emulate Wilson’s layers of superimposed sounds.
Argent said the engineers at Abbey Road used two four-track machines to approximate that same density. But it takes more than five musicians to play such compositions on stage.
To help cover those multiple parts, the five-piece band — Argent, Blunstone, Jim Rodford (who replaced original Paul Arnold on bass), Chris White (who replaced the late Paul Atkinson on guitar) and Hugh Grundy (drums) — are augmented in the current tour with Jim’s son Steve Rodford (drums); Tom Toomey (guitar), Darian Sahanaja (keyboards) and White’s wife Viv Boucherat on vocals.
“We do replicate every note that’s on the album,” Argent said. “That’s the way we wanted to do it.”
The album wasn’t perfect, and that included the misspelling of the word “Odyssey” by the artist, Terry Quirk, who created the psychedelic cover painting.
Argent said the artwork had already gone to the record label before the band discovered the error, and it was too late to change it. He still wishes they’d got it right. “I hate it, but it is what it is.”
CONCERT PREVIEW
The Zombies
8 p.m. April 8. $40-$191. Variety Playhouse, 1099 Euclid Ave., Atlanta. 404-524-7354, www.variety-playhouse.com.
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