Celebrating ’60 Years on Tape’, The Zombies concluded their long tour schedules in America and Europe rounding up what was to be their last-ever outside of a festival following founding member Rod Argent’s recent stroke (keyboard, backing vocals); an admirable feat considering its two founders are fastly becoming octogenarians. This was a special evening to close their careers with, full of guest performances and rarities. The night even began with an introduction from special guest, Paul Weller, who has been a lifelong fan, supporter and advocate of the band’s music.
Colin Blunstone (vocals) reminisced about the band’s first recording session at Decca studios back in 1964 when introducing the first and rarely played track, ‘It’s Alright with Me’; its hints of punky, fast played blues rock making it an unusual tempo opener for the band. They resumed with ’60s rock ‘n’ nostalgia with a Titus Turner cover of ‘Sticks and Stones’, then a classic in the way of founding bassist Chris White’s ‘I Love You’, one of their best written songs. Having released a successful new studio album last year, ‘Different Game’, they also performed from its tracklist as on their recent tours, with the title track and then doing their early hit single, ‘Tell Her No’. Their next guest was Stevie Wonder protege, Sarah Brown, a backing singer whose current touring schedule includes singing with Simple Minds; she performed a blowout version of George Gershwin’s ‘Summertime’, mixing in soul and cool jazz to the set.
For the second set, after a short performance from guests ‘The Wandering Hearts’, the band introduced more of their guest singers to cover their critically acclaimed and most adored 1968 album, ‘Odessey & Oracle’ – much performed from over their touring years – first with The Hoosiers’ Irwin Sparkes singing ‘Care of Cell 44’, doing its chirpy melody in his own style. Then Paul Weller returned with his voice well suited to the organ-rich medley of ‘Beechwood Park’, although after his performance he strangely never came back to the stage. He made way for original Zombies bass player and songwriter, Chris White, who despite not being the best of vocalists sang the touching ‘Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914)’ about his uncle never returning from war – actually in 1916 – in a more prog-rock vocal, a duet he did with Argent’s Church organ.
And finally, Blunstone resumed the proceedings with perhaps the band’s most well known yet criminally underrated song, ‘Time of the Season’, featuring Argent’s elaborate keyboard solo, which earned them a standing ovation at a sold-out Barbican Hall. The long intricate keyboard solos continued in Argent cover ‘Hold Your Head Up’, which they typically got the audience to singalong too, its guitar wonders also going into the next song, ‘She’s Not There’ in the form of a solo which preceded a bass solo, as played on tour, sampling famous basslines such as The Kinks’ ‘You Really Got Me’ with stripped down drumbeats. The Zombies finished their set with all guests (minus Weller) coming out to sing ‘She’s Not There’, appropriately having been their debut single 60 years earlier and traditionally ended poignantly on a duet between the founding members, ‘The Way I Feel Inside’. Huge thanks to The Zombies for 60 years of fantastic releases and hard touring that has touched fans worldwide.
07/06/24: The Zombies @ Barbican, London.
Photos © Fernanda Bavaresco.
© Ayisha Khan.