Wickham Festival 2023: She's Not There hitmakers The Zombies to make their festival debut | Interview

But by the time it was given a low-key release in 1968 the band had already split up, despondent at their lack of success in following up their huge debut single, She’s Not There. By the time the single Time of The Season belatedly hit the top three of the US charts in 1969, a year after its release, it was too late.

Frontman Colin Blunstone became an insurance clerk for a time before returning to music with a solo career, while co-founder, keys player Rod Argent went on to find some success with the band Argent.

The pair returned to playing regularly together in 2000 under their respective names. It took several more years for them to be convinced to resurrect The Zombies name. They have been touring and recording ever since – releasing the well-received Different Game album earlier this year.

And next weekend they play the main stage at Wickham Festival on Sunday evening.​

Looking back at when he and Rod first played together again in 1999, Colin tells The Guide: “In many ways, we had to start right from the beginning again, playing really small places.

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“By continually touring, we've managed to build up a pretty extensive fanbase around the world, but particularly in America. When we first went back to America in about 2002/2003 we were astounded at the interest in The Zombies over there.

“I think both of us thought that much of what The Zombies had done was forgotten, but that wasn't the case at all. Eventually we were encouraged to pay more and more Zombies material. It was took us about seven years to arrive at the fact that we should actually tour as The Zombies!

“It was sort of a strange process, really, that we we were the last people to realise that there was a huge interest in The Zombies. It's been a very pleasant surprise – but it was a genuine surprise. When we first restarted we hardly played any Zombies tunes at all, but bit by bit we were encouraged to include more and more songs. So now we play a completely Zombies programme.”

Of course, the band were more than familiar with America. in their first flush of chart success, they played there as part of “the British invasion”.

“We followed pretty closely on the heels of The Beatles. I think they went in ’63 we were there in ’64. Of course it was a very exciting time to be in a British band in America, because they dominated the charts and there was just huge interest in all British bands that went there, so that was really, really fantastic.”

Their love affair with America has continued to the extent that they were inducted in the 2019 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame alongside Def Leppard, The Cure, Roxy Music, Radiohead, Janet Jackson, and Stevie Nicks.

"That was a wonderful evening,” says Colin. “There were 17,000 people there in the arena, that was a big night. It was a magical evening, absolutely wonderful.

"It was very exciting and it also helped to, in some ways, validate what we've been doing with the second incarnation of the band in the 2000s as well, but also what we did between ’64 and ’67. I think that part of the problem for us was that we'd always sold as well or better around the world than we had in the UK, and we didn't realise it in 1967.”

The band had originally split in the face of perceived indifference. However, they have since discovered that they were perhaps more successful than they had realised.

“Over the next few years, we've realised that we always had a hit record somewhere. Of course, hit records are not the be-all and the end-all of our musical career, but it helps. It stimulates interest for you to go and tour in that particular territory. So in some ways, it is important to have hit records and it certainly was then. It was the time when singles were all-important. It changed towards the end of the ’60s and into the early ’70s when albums became much more important.

“After we finished we realised that we had in fact had hits in Canada, we had hits all over Europe, particularly France and Holland. And we've had hits in the Far East and not many people have toured in the Philippines, but that was one of our biggest territories. When we first went to the Philippines we had about six or seven records in the top 10.”

Colin recounts their first time in the Philippines, where they experienced real Beatlemania.

“It's a big country – I had visions of an island in the middle of the Pacific but it's lots of islands. I was really unprepared for what happened. We were rather badly managed, to be honest, so we had no idea what to expect when we got off at the other end. In my imagination, I thought we might be playing in the bar in a hotel or something. I thought we’ll have the days off – we can get on the beach and get a tan.

“We got off the plane and it was a nighttime. I thought it would be quiet, but there were thousands of people in the airport. I got off the plane and I did that terrible looking back thing thinking there must be someone famous behind me. As we got closer we realised: ‘Oh my God, they're here for us!’

“We opened up this place called the Araneta Coliseum in Quezon City near Manila – we did a 10 day residency there. I only remember Friday 28,000, Saturday matinee 15,000 and Saturday night 32,000. It stayed big audiences, but I can't remember all the numbers now, for 10 days, so it was an incredible experience.”

With Odessey and Oracle now held up as a classic, how do they feel about the album’s slow-burning path to part of the pantheon?

“We tended to gauge everything by the UK and American charts, which is a huge mistake. We released a single, Care of Cell 44, which is the first track on the first side. To my ears that is the most commercial track on the album, I certainly thought that at the time, but it came out and the only person who played it was the wonderful Kenny Everett.”

Everett was at the time on the recently created Radio 1.

“But when the album was actually released it was almost ignored. Kenny was the only DJ that was interested in it and there was a reviewer in Disc magazine called Penny Valentine who gave it a wonderful review. I remember those things so vividly because everyone else seemed to pretty much ignore it!

"It took years for people to get interested in it – probably about 10 years before we started to get incredible articles about the album. No one's promoting it and no one's marketing it, but gradually it built up so people like Tom Petty, Dave Grohl... and in this country Paul Weller who always names it as his favourite album. If you're with Paul Weller and that subject comes up and you haven't heard the album, he will go and buy you a copy!

“And of course, Rolling Stone named it as one of the top 100 albums of all time in their initial top 500 albums of all time.

"If you talk about the ’60s people will talk about either Sergeant Pepper or Revolver from The Beatles, and often it's Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys and then quite often they go to Odessey and Oracle as the third important album from the ’60s. It's an incredible story when you remember that it was totally ignored when it was released.

"It's extraordinary because there were times when I really thought it was all forgotten. It's quite a sort of romantic story really, because you have immediate success and then you go to obscurity and then against all the odds you're rediscovered. I don't think anybody really quite understands how that happened.

“I often think that the album sort of fought for itself, almost like a person. There's such a lot of competition to get the kind of acclaim that that album has got that it had to fight very hard, I tell you.”

While it would be easy to rest on their laurels, the band has continued to release new material. Different Game is their fifth album this century.

"We wouldn't have formed the second incarnation of the band just to play the old repertoire. It's absolutely vital to us that we write and record new material. And then we have the thrill of going out and playing live all around the world, promoting new material, and of course the old catalogue as well. We were really lucky in that the old songs sound as fresh and relevant today as they did when they were recorded. They mould very well with the new material. You can't really tell what's new and what's old and we're really fortunate in that.

“Different Game did pretty well, actually. It did actually chart which is lovely for us! It charted here, and it charted in America as well. So that was fantastic.”

And of course his friendship with Rod, who is The Zombies’ main songwriter, is key to their enduring longevity and appeal.

“Rob will always say that he grew up learning to write songs for my voice. And whatever song he writes, subconsciously, he's always hearing my voice in the background when he writes. It's the same story with me, I learned to sing professionally to his songs. We went through that period of finding our musical voice, if you like, together. You can only do that once, and we did it together, and we've remained friends.”

Wickham Festival takes place from August 3-6. Weekend tickets £220, day tickets from £60. Show of Hands, The Proclaimers, Midge Ure and The Saw Doctors headline with dozens more acts on the bill. Go to wickhamfestival.co.uk.