(soniclovenoize “1966 Album” reimagination)
Side A:
1. Indication
2. I’ll Call You Mine
3. Out of The Day
4. Is This The Dream?
5. Goin’ Out of My Head
6. A Love That Never Was
Side B:
7. She Does Everything For Me
8. Call of The Night
9. How We Were Before
10. This Old Heart of Mine
11. Gotta Get A Hold of Myself
12. I Don’t Want To Worry
This is the second entry in my reimagining of The Zombies discography, which attempts to reorganize the band’s output into five separate albums. This album attempts to collect The Zombies’ material from 1966, as a stopgap between my previous reconstruction Remember You (which collected their 1965 singles) and their legendary psychedelic masterpiece Odessey and Oracle (1968). Using the band’s Spring 1966 single sessions as the base of the album, this represents what I believe is a very specific micro-era of The Zombies: the transition from their early pop singles into a more psychedelic album-oriented direction. I’ve also made some unique edits to some of the tracks in order for this collection to sound more like a unified and cohesive album.
After the double-punch of back-to-back hits with “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”, pop-rock darlings The Zombies spent the majority of 1965 attempting to replicate their success. Despite a great number of original songs penned by bassist Chris White and keyboardist Rod Argent, nothing seemed to stick, and the band focused on touring. One final attempt at a single was recorded in November 1965 and showed a slight change in musical direction: “Is This The Dream”. A great pop single with a decidedly beefy, Motown flavor, the song did not make a dent in the charts as it was hoped.
By the time the band regrouped to try to create another hit, rock music was already changing. In May 1966, entered the studio to record the more colorful and uptempo “Indication” and “She Does Everything For Me”, the piano jaunt “I’ll Call You Mine” and the moody “Gotta Geld a Hold of Myself.” “Indication” failed to chart when released the following month, despite being up to snuff and showing the band developing musically, akin to the Rolling Stones’ Between The Buttons and The Beatles Revolver. Returning to the studio that fall, the band shifted gears completely and recorded the Dianne Warwick cover “Goin Out Of My Head”, with a decidedly lounge atmosphere, complete with vibes and horns. For good measure, the band also recorded studio demos of several new compositions, such as Argent’s ballad, “A Love That Never Was”, White’s garage rocker “Out of the Day”, White’s dirge “Call of the Night” (which was later rewritten into "Girl Help Me” for the RIP sessions). Additionally, the band produced group home demos without drummer Hugh Grundy, such as Colin Blunstone’s scant original “I Don’t Want To Worry”.
Seeing the ending was near, The Zombies decided to go out on a high note, and self-produce one final album they could be proud of. After relentless rehearsals throughout 1967, the band entered into EMI Studios in June–directly after The Beatles, who had just finished Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band–and quickly tracked the perfect psychedelic pop album, on their own terms. The resulting album Oddessey and Oracle, although a masterpiece, was completely overlooked and its lead single “Care of Cell 44” did not chart. Going their separate ways, Argent and White continued their musical partnership into the progressive rock band Argent, with Blunstone, Grundy and guitarist Paul Atkinson all resorting to day jobs. It wasn’t until legendary American keyboardist Al Kooper rediscovered the album and gave “Time of The Season” a push as a single, that the album got its due: becoming a hit in 1969, a year after the band had broken up!
The purpose of this series of Zombies album re-imaginings is to reconstextualize their discography away from singles and into albums for appreciation, and the goal of Call of The Night is to represent this specific transitional era of the band that typically gets glossed over. Being a fan of “Indication” and its associated 1966-era tracks, I’ve always felt it unfortunate that there was not a full album’s worth of material from this era to collect together as its own thing (the songs are usually clumped together with The Zombies’ 1965 singles, which I feel is its own era in itself). But are we actually able to construct a 1966 album? We actually can!
The basis of Call of The Night are the five studio tracks recorded in 1966: “Indication”, “I’ll Call You Mine” (the original, ‘undubbed’ version), “Goin Out of My Head", "She Does Everything for Me” and “Gotta Get A Hold of Myself”. Additionally, we will use the three studio demo tracks recorded around this time that seem to work well as singular songs: “Call of The Night”, “Out of The Day”, “A Love That Never Was”, as well as the home demo “I Don’t Want To Worry” (I have added reverb to the last one to smooth it out and make it sound less demo-y). Struggling to fit more material, we will use the live BBC session of “This Old Heart of Mine” from November 1966, in which I have re-edited to omit the audience and announcer to make it seem like a standard studio recording. With only ten of the necessary twelve songs for an album, we’ll have to look backwards into 1965 for two ‘filler tracks’ that were previously unused in my 1965 Album reimagining Remember You: “Is This The Dream”, a late 1965 single that to this ear sounds more at home on this 1966 album than with the 1965 singles; and Blunstone’s quaint ballad “How We Were Before”--which in itself wasn’t actually released until 1966 as the b-side to “Indication”, as the band held it over too!
Sources used:
- The Zombies - Zombie Heaven (1997 CD release)
LISTEN TO THIS RE-IMAGINING ON MY PATREON
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