Mini-documentary about the story of the album "Odessey and Oracle" by The Zombies, released in April 1968. The documentary also focuses on how the press reacted to the album and its singles back in 1968.
We all know the story about the million selling hit song, "Time of the Season" but I didn't know about the story behind the album, the break-up of the group and the fake Zombies groups. Thank you for the incredible story.
The word is overused, but "Odessey and Oracle" is the real thing, a masterpiece. It's so absolutely 1967 and surprised me at first in 1969. I bought it on the strength of the mega-hit "Time of the Season" which was unlike the rest of the album. With Colin Blunstone's foggy vocal, the organ and the minor key it was more like the Zombies of 1964-65. Still, I loved the album.
The chords throughout are outstanding. Rod Argent fab player. Story: I have three grown up children. Now. When they were young, they loved my taste in music. My youngest was the most impressed. Her fave album out of everything is THIS. In 2007 we went to see the Zombies, in a small venue in Cardiff. Maybe three hundred people. (Following week; they were playing a sell out tour in USA.) I managed to speak to a roadie, about my daughter and this album. He asked us to wait: She met Rod and Colin. We both did. They were amazed she liked them. She was only 13. They signed the album, took photos. No Smartphones then. They asked her which was her fave song; and it was the one you've got here. Up to the 5th min. They said they didn't play it anymore. Just before the last number, Rod asked for the light to be put on my daughter. Told everyone she was their youngest fan. Said they'd play it from memory. It was perfect. Thing is... This Will Be Our Year (another song from it) was rejigged by someone and it was in the Brit chart by a new artist. So my daughter could sing it to her friends; and she ended up playing the whole album to them. Most of them downloaded it. They still listen to it as adults. Thanks gents, for making my daughter so happy. We'll never forget you.
@@YesterdaysPapers thx I've just added more to it. Just remembered. Keep up this work mate. It's outstanding; and I love the way you separated that mellotron.
One of the best British album releases of all time! favourites for me are... Hung up on a dream, Brief candles, a rose for Emily and beechwood Park. Colin's vocals are a thing of beauty absolutely heartbreaking in delivery. Rods organ playing in Time of the Season is like a wild bird being set free, it soars triumphantly Ascending to unimaginable highs as the band leave the music business on a final blissful, blistering performance. The bowing out, from a truly great underrated band.
They came back. Colin Blunstone made three unforgettable and successful solo albums, produced by rod argent, Rod himself formed Argent, almost a hard rock band but with enough tender and classical moments. I absoluteloy treasure the 1st Argent album, it's so beautiful, and the second, which was more progrock, is fantastic also. In fact all Argent albums (7) were excellent. Unfortunately the last one, Counterpoints, was never released on CD.
Years ago I discovered "Odessey and Oracle" when one of my neighbor's had a yardsale with records they did not want anymore, all I can say is someone else's trash was definitely my treasure, I listen to that beauty of an album on many an evening. "Time of the Season" is one of the coolest songs ever I've ever heard. What a great story about The Zombies using The Beatles instruments as they're own budget was tight ... I fall in love with the 60s more each day. Great work on this documentary YP and fantastic music as always. Thank you 💜🤍
I can recall the first time I heard Odessey and Oracle and I remember being floored at how incredibly good it was. Not just Time Of The Season, but every single track is a beautiful piece in its own right. In 2017, I scored tickets to see the original band, minus Paul Atkinson who had passed on not long before. Of the hundreds of concerts I've been to in my lifetime, that show remains one of my all-time favourites. Even better, I got the opportunity to talk with bassist/songwriter Chris White and drummer Hugh Grundy. Both were absolutely charming, self-effacing and very down to earth. It was like talking with the next door neighbour. Considering my favourite part of any band is the rhythm section, this was an extra treat. We spoke at length about drumming techniques and the cool bass runs that filled Zombies songs and they were thrilled that someone had taken the time to notice the little things they added in. Though so very long in coming, it's a well deserved honour that Odessey and Oracle was finally recognised for the masterpiece that it is.
Picked this up when I was nine years old… it is still one of my top 5 albums of all time and I believe it shaped a lot of me as a kid. I had the chance to meet and make an acquaintance with Paul Atkinson, the guitarist before he passed away and he shared many cool stories with me about his time with the Zombies, guitars and stories with the Beatles. In many ways I thought these guys were actually cooler than the Beatles…!
I love Rod's follow-up band, Argent. They were truly underated & under-appreciated as well. Agent put out albums that I truly love. Argent + Rodford + Ballard + Henrit = great music !! 🚬😎
@@markhunter8554 And Blunstone & Argent started touring early 00's till the year of Covid-19, and after the lockdown they resumed heir touring. 2023-2024 have been booked already.
Still a highly underrated band (as they don't have a very extensive discography and disbanded before the 60s were over)..but this album is an iconic 60s pop gem
I recall hearing somewhere that the A-side in the States was “Friends of Mine” but some deejay flipped it over and suddenly got all these calls and that’s how “Time of the Season” got going. Saw them in 2018 when they reunited and played it in its entirety. One of my all time favorite shows. I bought an autographed copy in the lobby which I have framed. Best $50 I ever spent. Also had the original Date single of “Time…”. which I bought as a 7-year-old so I loved the reviewer’s comment about it appealing to those with “discerning taste”. Haha.
Nice! I also saw them on their 50th anniversary tour of Odessey that year and also bought an autographed record! One of the best concerts I've ever been to. I daresay Chris White singing The Butcher's Tale as an old man with his thin, reedy voice was more impactful and haunting than the original.
Shindig magazine recently did a very good feature on The Zombies and Colin Blunstone where Colin told some stories about rehearsing and recording Odyssey and Oracle.
And the Zombies, now in their 70's, recently played a live concert in Nashville, according to what I heard from another RU-vid channel, where I've heard immense respect for Odyssey and Oracle.
A friend gave me a bunch of 45s back in the mid-70s. A couple of Elvis singles, a couple of Ricky Nelsons, "Black Land Farmer" by Frankie Miller, and "Time Of The Season"/'"Friends Of Mine" by the Zombies. I had never heard of the Zombies until that time. Seriously, there was such a wealth of great music around in the '60s that some of the best just never got the attention it deserved. Thank god the music is still around so we can catch up on all we missed.
Just got to see them live last weekend. Mind blowing!!!! Still resonates quite massively, an experience that only compares to hearing them on record for the first time. Collin's voice holding up extremely well, and Rod's organ equally authentic, yet more seasoned where appropriate. Brilliant flow of energy between band and audience. Starting the U.K.-leg of the tour now -Treat yourself if you get the chance!
I love The Zombies. I feel so lucky I got to see them back in early 2017... I enjoyed every second of it. They put on such a great show; they've still got it!
"Time of the season" was originally a flop upon it's U.K. release? Is that what I just heard?. Oh well, I think we all agree on it's timeless greatness (no pun intended).
Trivia fact. O&O was not originally mixed for stereo. The band did the mono version themselves. CBS demanded a stereo mix, so Argent & White paid studio time out of their own pockets to mix it themselves.
YP, Thank you ever so much for posting this. Here in the States, there was not much released on album. When London released "Early Days" in '69 to cash in on the success of O &), I grabbed it right away despite the drawing of the group on the cover. It looked like a 10 year old drew it and was one of the worst covers that i have seen. In the Early seventies Fusion magazine (Boston based) rated 'all' of the songs of the Zombies (38 maybe?) they were aware of and all got good reviews. I shouldn't prattle on, but the Zombies (and Hollies, kinks, and Yardbirds) were the mainstays of my listening in the sixties. Argent and White seemed to write nothing but quality stuff.
Many. Beautifull songs.i remember when I loved her,my favorite,beechwood park.leave me be,she's not there,tell her no.ive got there early viynl LPS, and cds. Both a and b sides were always great,and for many British invasion groups as well.
This made me want to find this album on Apple Music. How did I not know this music existed? It’s blooming marvellous. Love it. If 4 twenty something pretty blokes came up with this today, it’d sell like hotcakes and make pop music fun again. Just beautiful.
Oh yes, before i forget. Thank you for giving special recognition to this marvelous recording. It’s not unusual for works of art to find their place in history far beyond their debut. ( Stravinsky coming to mind). However, the side bar, this being the band’s au revoir-AMF, was always particularly saddening. Nevertheless, we can rejoice that the guys, the real guys, can finally, a century later, belatedly, “cash in”. Bless.
Hey YP, big thank you for all the info here. One of my all time favorite albums, perfection really, a gem that sounds as fresh today as it did 55 years ago. Yikes, has it been that long? Al Kooper is mentioned in the vid and it was he who hipped me to this LP. I played it until the grooves were worn down and with every listen I was in awe. Care of Cell 44 ( "and it questionable taste..." ???) Changes, Butcher's Tale, A Rose For Emily, Brief Candles, Beechwood Park etc. What songwriting!! There's not a dud on the album. How could those singles from the LP not have been hits in the UK.? And how in heavens could they have missed out on Time of the Season? "This group seldom gets the success it deserves from British fans" I was under the impression that She's Not There and Tell Her No were big hits in the UK. Am I wrong? Zombies fans should watch Otto Preminger's excellent film Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965) for a rare appearance by the Zombies singing on a TV in a bar scene.
Glad you enjoyed it, Willie! "She's Not There" and a few other songs were hits in the UK but, by the time the Zombies released those "Odessey..." singles in late 1967, I believe they hadn't had a hit since 1965. Many pop bands from that era lost some of their popularity when the British R&B boom exploded with bands like the Stones, Yardbirds, etc...
Alan Bown Set were a great band. They were firstly pretty much a soul band but come 67/68 they morphed into pop psyche. Try My Girl, the Month of May. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-N0Nyi9ySHqo.html
Thank you YP. Epic records (US) put out a two-album Zombies compilation called Time Of The Zombies in 1974. The second album in the set was the complete Odessey and Oracle album. I was lucky enough to read a review of it and picked it up when it came out. Love that album and love The Zombies.
The Zombies did great music remember hearing Time of The Season on the radio when I was a kid I'm 67 now though that song was one of the best songs of the 60's the band had a cool name too
In it after Time of the season my favourite song is Beechwood Park. It has a wonderful sunshine psychedelic 67 feel about it with a nostalgic tone that really takes you back to the summer of 67. It is a crime that the public in Britain did not make those singles and album a hit
Awesome so glade you did a show on the Zombie's there very cool and very underrated to this day but since they went into the hall there more well known and appreciated. Love me some Zombie's. Thanks for another cooolll show. T.C.B.
The Zombies did indeed reform after Time of the season and released 2 new singles in 1969. From the original members, only Rod Argent and Hugh Grundy returns, but the bass player was Jim Rodford who continues to play with Rod on the band Argent in the seventies.
As mentioned, love your adaptive use of the themes from the songs to help the story along. Snatches of Beechwood Park, This Will Be Our Year, Rose For Emily, Changes--perfect!
Zombies don’t get the recognition they deserve. The fact that they had to practically beg to get into the phony RnR hall of fame is sad. But I know it meant a lot to them. So for that, I’m happy for them.
Thank you YP!!!! This is one of my all-time favorite albums! Do I need to be ashamed to say that I would rather listen to this album than Sgt. Peppers? (Even though we can thank John for leaving his Mellotron behind!). Seems the Zombies had as much bad luck with record companies as the Yardbirds. I think Beechwood Park, Rose for Emily, and the monumental Hung up on a Dream are among the most gorgeous songs I've ever heard, but every song on the album is great! Plus a rare Chris White lead vocal on the anti-war song! Thanks again!
Same here. I love both albums but I'd rather listen to "Odessey..." than "Sgt. Pepper's". Pepper's was obviously groundbreaking and innovative and the great songs are really great but I never cared much for stuff like "When I'm 64" or "Good Morning, Good Morning". On the other hand, I love all the tracks on "Odessey...".
Although The Zombies were awfully unlucky to be overlooked when they produced their masterpiece, at least Odessey and Oracle was subsequently rediscovered and the band has had a career renaissance on the back of it. I wonder who or what was it that brought the record back into the public consciousness? Also, are there any other little known gems from that mid to late 60s period that remain to be unearthed?
The album was never out of print. Also, the compilation Time Of The Zombies from 1973/4 brought it to the attention of a new generation of listeners. By the early 1990s it was already selling quite well, and the Zombie Heaven box set in 1997 gave it a further push. When Argent and Blunstone started touring together again in 1999, they discovered that audiences wanted to hear these songs. And the rest of the story just wrote itself.....
I bought the album in 1969 or 70,when Woolworths were having a clear out of poor sellers ,it cost £1 or less ,a great buy as I played it a hell of a lot,a very adventurous work ,but albums were just about to become heavier with a strong blues influence.The only thing that irritated me was that Woolworths put an awful sale sticker on the cover that couldn't be removed without tearing the colourful cover,it bothered me for years!
It's a famous story, but I do wish a documentary about an album would spend a few more minutes on the songs themselves, both musically and lyrically. The business side of pop music so often overwhelms any discussion of why one might want to listen to it now.
What a legacy to have been recorded at the home studios of the Beatles and Stones. I remember 93 KHJ and the Real Don Steele. I grew up in Los Angeles and listened to that AM station. Don Steele died of cancer in 1997 and today KHJ is either a Spanish language station or a news or talk radio station. Those call letters were retired back in the 1980s.
My older brothers hade the radio on all day every day so i heard all the great 60's hits and dj's here in LA its now in my dna ha ha loved the zombies cheers
Really great you give more recognition for this wonderful album. Such music should never fall into opscurity. And this is the sad fate of Kaleidoscope/Fairfield Parlour. From home to home is my favourite album of all time. Peak of British Pop Rock, in the same tier as Revolver, SGT. Pepper or Odyssey and Oracle. Hope i will see such a documentary about this band and album, they realy deserve to be recognized. Keep on the good work!
Influenced by both "Rubber Soul" and "Pet Sounds" but superior to both. I remember when it came out it was probably considered out of step with the era, but like Forever Changes by Love, and the Kinks "Village Green" has stood the test of time.
This album is in a class of it's own !! . I cherish my Canadian press on Date LP. Great accurate doc - well produced and I enjoyed the instrumental re-tracks behind the video.
Sort of like what happened to Big Star over here in America. A lot of critical praise but that's all. And don't get me started on Tim Buckley. Still, score another one for John Peel. He got the Zombies. Always ahead of the game.
@@YesterdaysPapers Kenny Everett was the BBC dj who championed the Zombies perhaps the most. He played O&O in its entirety on his show the week it was released, which was very possibly against BBC policy.
Time of the Season flopped?! It's one of the greatest songs of the era. ...and Al Kooper's taste was impeccable. I love all this early work, especially with Blues Project.
I saw Blues Project in the fall of '66, and it was the first show that I saw, heard really, that did not sound tinny. It was the first show that I saw where the band drowned out the audience. A good thing as the show just staggered me and changed my mind about live music. It's still in my top 5 shows that I've seen.
@@wyliesmith4244 Sometimes I wish I had a time machine to experience all the great psychedlic bands live. '65-'72 was the best era for music in my opinion. There was so much innovation and nobody was afraid to experiment with different sounds and instruments.
@@lethrbear32 Live music improved by leaps and bounds after the arrival of marshall amps.And no bands had monitors to hear their own sound. in fact it did not take long for monitors to reproduce sound than the actual amps of '64 and '65. But looking back, I was so frustrated that bands played in a local venue ten miles away and I never knew about it (where was the internet when I needed it?). The Woodrose Ballroom in South Deerfield, Massachusetts had the velvet Underground a bunch of times (with Doug Yule though, and maybe not Lou Reed), and the Allman brothers played there - with Duane and Berry Oakley - several times. James Gang with Joe Walsh too. I am sick thinking about what i missed.
Mention of a fake Zombies doing the rounds , reminded me of seeing The Easybeats some years ago. For many years l had been under the illusion that the band were from Australia, with a Liverpudlian drummer. To give them credit, they did a great version of ‘ Friday On My Mind’, but when they chatted in between songs ,they all sounded as Brummie as Jeff Lynne . I had been deceived all those years😀
2UW's John Thompson of the late '60's show 'Thompson's Underground' (Sydney, Australia) obviously liked the album. He played 'Hung Up On a Dream' around October 1968 (I still have a recording of that show) and I was blown away by it. However it took me a few years to track down the album.
The Beatles were a vortex that sucked up so much of the hype back then. There were several psychedelic albums that deserved just as much acclaim as Sgt. Pepper's. The Pretty Things S.F. Sorrow is another album that is criminally underrated.
Seems Abbey Road was the epicentre of Pyschedelia in '67 and '68 with The Zombies and Pretty Things following The Beatles and Pink Floyd into the studios. Four classic albums recorded within two years. Some albums like wine need time to mature.
Odessey and Oracle would be enormously beloved and influencial on US Indie artists/ bands like Elliot Smith and Elephant 6 collective in the 1990s/2000s and there would be many cover versions of songs from the album
I absolutely love this album. In fact I love The Zombies. A Rose for Emily and Hung up on a Dream really stand out as obviously Time of the Season does.
@@YesterdaysPapers I must admit, the first time I ever heard it, I was a little disappointed. I thought the album would be full of stuff like She Does Everything for Me but boy did it grow on me.
@@maurice8607 I love their early singles as well. "Odessey..." is very different but, at the same time, it sounds like a very natural evolution from their early stuff. The Zombies were tailor-made for that 67/68 psychedelic pop era. It's a pity the album wasn't appreciated when it was originally released.
@@YesterdaysPapers I think the b sides especially stand out but overall absolutely fine singles. Indication is quite unbelievable. Just out of Reach is superb. And such a fine clip of them in Bunny Lake is Missing. Apparently its from Ready Steady Go. I only recently heard the original of She Does Everything for Me by We the People. Both versions really really good. God, I love this group.
@@YesterdaysPapers that’s tremendous work. Very evocative of the songs without actually BEING the songs. As a long-time songwriter and bassist, I applaud you!
Possibly THE great lost psychedelic album. From my point of view "Time Of The Season" is one of the weaker tracks, and it's not exactly filler. "Hung Up On A Dream" is unbelievably good.
One thing that occurs to me regarding the power of album covers...of course back in the day, we didn't have easy access to music mags, copies of Rolling Stone were few and far between. So I used to routinely pass this one by, not giving it a second thought. I thought the cover looked kind of cheesy, or cheap, like it was a cobbled together mish-mash of old rubbish. Teenagers can be very fickled, and I was put off just by the cover alone 🙄 "Season" is definitely a classic tho 😻✌
I'd love a similar deep dive into "Begin Here", I tend to think people largely ignore it in favour of Odessey, but it's just as an important and superb work and one of the most essential British Invasion albums. The Zombies never had good luck in the native UK, despite being one of the biggest icons of the British Invasion. Why do you think that is?
"She's Not There" and a few other songs were hits but, like many other pop bands from that era, the Zombies lost some of their popularity when the British R&B boom exploded with bands like The Stones, Yardbirds, etc, All the Merseybeat bands who were succesful in the early days of the Beatles also faded away when the R&B boom exploded. The Zombies seemed like the perfect band for the 1967/68 psychedelic pop era but I guess the fact that they weren't a new band meant that many people thought they were just an old band trying to make a comeback.
Begin Here has some great Classics. There's a few versions with different track listings though but there's some greatness there beyond She's Not There and Tell Her No.
The breakup of the zombies is one of the most baffling things. They were just start to gain momentum commercially and critically in their new direction. They already had a string of hits to build on too. I think Argent perhaps wanted to save his creativity for something else. As did Collin. But the breakup of the zombies is weird. I’ve never met anyone that said anything negatively about any of their music. They were a musician’s band.
Chris White and Rod Argent had decided to break up the band before even starting to record O&O. It became their shot at making exactly the type of album they wanted without having to worry about whether it would sustain The Zombie's career. Not all the other members were thrilled about the breakup.
