The Zombies – R.I.P.
(soniclovenoize reconstruction)
Side A:
1. She Loves The Way
They Love Her
2. Imagine The Swan
3. If It Don’t Work Out
4. Smokey Day
5. I’ll Keep Trying
6. Conversation Off
Floral Street
Side B:
7. I’ll Call You Mine
8. Telescope (Mr.
Galileo)
9. I Know She Will
10. To Julia (For
When She Smiles)
11. Don’t Cry For Me
12. Walking In The
Sun
This is a reconstruction of what would have been the final
Zombies album, an intended 1969 release as a posthumous follow-up to their
sleeper-hit Odessey and Oracle. While
all 12 albums tracks were collected in the box set Zombie Heaven in 1997 and
then sequenced as originally intended as an official Japanese release in 2008,
my reconstruction attempts to create a more well-rounded and cohesive album
with a new sequence that more evenly distributes the posthumous 1969 Argent-led
tracks with the overdubbed 1964-1966 Blunstone-led outtake tracks, as well as
using alternate mixes of both. Also
through creative editing I was able to add more Colin Blunstone vocals to the
album and less Rod Argent lead vocals.
In effect, my R.I.P. seems a bit less awkwardly anachronistic, and more a
cohesive theoretical baroque-pop follow-up to Odessy and Oracle.
The Zombies are a perfect example of how sometimes great
things can be overlooked and simply fall through the cracks. Despite consistently producing some of the most
well-crafted and well-performed pop-rock songs of the 1960s, the
amount of new material from the band approached a near standstill by
1966. The music scene was becoming
increasingly psychedelic and the generally straight-laced Zombies were in danger
of becoming irrelevant. With a label
quickly becoming uninterested and a live circuit drying up, they pooled
their own scant resources together and financed the recording of their
sophomore album, a sink or swim record entitled Odessey and Oracle. Recorded literally as The Beatles walked out
of EMI Studios after completing Sgt. Pepper in 1967, The Zombies utilized the plethora
of exotic instruments their British pop brethren left lying around. Adorning magnificently-written psychedelic pop
songs with these instruments as well as serendipitous harmonies, the outcome
was one of the greatest masterworks of the 1960s, let alone 1967. But the unfortunate reality is that relatively few
people really paid attention. The
magnificent “Care of Cell 44” ceased to be a hit, live gigs dried up and singer
Colin Blunstone, having no stake in The Zombies’ publishing royalties, left the
band because he simply didn’t have the money to continue. The album was released to silence in
1968.
Yet due to friends in high places—namely Al Kooper who
championed the band to Columbia in the US—Odessey and Oracle was given a second
chance on the other side of the Atlantic.
But because of the fatal choice to push “Butcher’s Tale” as a single,
the album again fell to silence. It
wasn’t until another year passed that radio picked up on “Time of The Season”
which propelled the song to an eventual status as an anthem of the Summer of Love,
despite being two years late and from a band that had ceased to exist. But keyboardist Rod Argent and bassist Chris
White, whom were already occupied in their current project Argent, were offered
the chance to essentially capitalize in the unexpected interest in
the dead Zombies who were suddenly undead.
In an effort to create closure to the band that had passed away before
it’s time—and a chance to not only clear the vaults but to advertize their band
Argent—the pair began work on the final Zombies album, the posthumous
R.I.P.
The plan was simple: the first side of the album was to
feature “new” Zombies recordings and the second side of the album to feature
newly finished outtakes from the numerous singles-sessions from 1964-1966. Argent and White collected the best of the
series of demos recorded in-between the demise of The Zombies and the formation
of Argent, recordings which were used to secure their own record contract. While sometimes reminiscent of the mid-60s
psyche-pop of The Zombies, their songs bared a stronger resemblance to the
tail-end of the 60s and the hard rock/prog of Argent. In stark contrast to this, the outtakes found
on side B were simply anachronistic, sounding exactly like they were: tracks
recorded around1965 with new layers of lush harmonies and some with new
orchestration. As it stands, R.I.P.
sounded more like a document of how far recording techniques had progressed in
the 1960s. Of the Side B tracks, only
“Walking In The Sun” approached the soundquality of Side A with newly recorded
symphonic instruments and new lead vocal by Colin Blunstone juxtaposed with the
backing track dating from a demo session in 1964. Singles were released for “Imagine The Swan”
and a newly-finished “If It Don’t Work Out” (which was originally a 1965 demo
for Dusty Springfield), both failing to replicate the success of “Time Of The
Season” or even their 1965 hit “Tell Her No” and the R.I.P. album was
scrapped.
Of the 12 songs slated for the album, most trickled out as
bonus tracks on various compilations throughout the decades. It wasn’t until 1997 with the insanely
comprehensive four-disc box set Zombie Heaven that the public heard R.I.P., as
all 12 of the tracks from the album were featured on the ‘rare/studio outtakes’
disc . Finally in 2000, the same exact
R.I.P. masters as found on Zombie Heaven were released as their own standalone
album in correct track sequence, albeit as a Japanese import with numerous
bonus tracks (followed by a 2008 compilation of outtakes from this era of the
band called Into The Afterlife). In
plain sight—but also apparently as overlooked as Odessey and Oracle was in 1968—we could hear
the bizarre combination of late-60s proto-prog and mid-60s pop. Perhaps we can have a second memorial service
for The Zombies and allow this album to better rest in peace?
My reconstruction of R.I.P. had two main goals:
1) To resequence the songs and use some
alternate mixes so that the vast time difference between recording dates is
less-apparent, making the Argent-led songs and the refurbished classic Zombies
songs intermingle, in turn making a more cohesive album.
2) Less Rod Argent and MORE Colin Bluestone! After all, he was the voice of The
Zombies. To do this we are able to use
recordings from Blunstone’s first solo album One Year (produced by fellow
Zombies Argent & White), replacing Argent’s vocals with Blunstone’s. Just as well, we will drop the two weakest
Argent-led songs for others, making the album more Zombie-like and less
Argent-like.
Side A begins much as the official R.I.P., with “She Loves
The Way They love Her”. Instead we use
the version from One Year but with the audience sound effects from the R.I.P.
version overdubbed at the appropriate points, effectively “replacing” Argent’s
vocals with Blunstone’s. The R.I.P. mix
of “Imagine The Swan” is next, with the orchestral mix of “If It Don’t Work
Out” from the compilation Into The
Afterlife following, an attempt to make a more baroque-pop follower to Odessey
and Oracle. Next, Colin Blunstone’s lead
vocal from “Smokey Day” is extracted from his One Year album and superimposed
into the alternate mix of Argent’s “Smokey Day” (a bonus track on the Repertoire remaster of Odessey
and Oracle), again creating a new Colin
lead vocal that sings a harmony to Rod’s.
Note that the vocals fall out of sync in the last verse, due to Colin
intentionally deviating from the rhythm of the vocal; no attempt was made to
change his artistic decision to sing the verse in that manner. The R.I.P. versions of “If It Don’t Work Out”
and “Conversations Off Floral Street” end the side, the later being the only post-break-up
song on the album featuring the original Zombies lineup, including guitarist
Paul Atkins and drummer Hue Grundy.
Side B opens with the R.I.P. version of “I’ll Call You
Mine”, following with an unused Argent track from this era which seemed more
appropriately Zombie-esque, “Telescope” from the Into The Afterlife
compilation, which replaces “Girl Help Me”.
My own unique edit of “I Know She Will” follows when the first half of
the orchestral version from Into The Afterlife is edited together with the
second half of the full-band mix found on the R.I.P. album, creating a strong
dynamic and emphasizing its orchestration.
Next is another “more Zombies-like Argent track” taken from Into The
Afterlife and remixed my myself, the classical “To Julia” which occupies the
same idiosyncratic function as “Butcher’s Tale” held on Odessey and Oracle and
replaces “I Could Spend The Day”. The
R.I.P. mix of “Don’t Cry for Me” attempts one final ruckus before giving way to
my own unique edit of “Walking In The Sun”, again editing the orchestral
version from Into The Afterlife onto the full-band R.I.P. mix, creating a wide
dynamic.
Sources used:
The Zombies - Into The Afterlife (2007 Rhino Records)
The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (1992 Repertoire Recrods)
The Zombies - R.I.P. (2008 Imperial Records Japan)
Colin Blunstone - One Year (2007 Water Music Records)
flac --> wav --> editing in SONAR and Goldwave -->
flac encoding via TLH lv8
*md5, artwork and tracknotes included
