Rod Argent is a pretty satisfied man these days. The Zombies, the band he co-founded as a teenager in 1961, have recently returned from a sell-out tour of the UK, promoting their best album for decades. Different Game finds The Zombies doing what they’ve always done best: deftly orchestrated pop songs with exquisite harmonies, great melodies and heaps of musical invention. Almost exclusively written by Argent, and voiced by Colin Blunstone (the other mainstay of the original line-up), it’s better than anyone has any right to expect from a band whose core duo are now deep into their 70s.
It’s hardly been straightforward getting here though. Having started out by gigging locally around St Albans in south-east England, The Zombies won a competition to find the “top beat group in the country” in May 1964, after which they were ushered into the studio by Decca. Written by Argent, debut single She’s Not There was an instant classic, hitting big both at home and in the US. It also established the band’s sound, largely based around Argent’s dextrous keyboard-playing, informed by rock’n’roll, jazz and classical music. George Harrison gave it the thumbs up on BBC TV show Juke Box Jury, which delighted Argent no end. “He said, ‘Oh, well done Zombies. And if that’s actually their real piano player, then he’s really good,’” Argent recalls. “I can feel my excitement even now. It was like having word from Mount Olympus.”
But a mixture of bad luck and mismanagement meant that The Zombies could never quite build momentum, despite the Billboard success of another Argent hit, . By the time they recorded their psych-pop masterpiece – 1968’s – the band had more or less decided to split. They landed a posthumous North American hit with Argent’s majestic , though its creator had already moved on. “We’ve never been musicians that would want to capitalise on things, we always wanted to look forward,” he explains. “When I first formed Argent I just wanted to explore a few boundaries and see where it took me.”
