The “unheralded” no-skips British invasion masterpiece that Paul Weller adores
1964 – that was the year that The Beatles first headed over to the US, and the British invasion officially began.
The reason The Beatles’ performance on The Ed Sullivan Show was so monumental wasn’t just because of the fact that they delivered a great gig and everybody loved it, but suddenly there was proof that a British band could make it in America – The Beatles showed all these other bands the way, and it was only a matter of time before they followed suit.
The Rolling Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham, put it best when he said: “There was no real future for a British band before The Beatles appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964… That was the turning point, after which there was an avalanche. It totally transformed the possibilities, and as usual, The Beatles were the frontrunners. In music, there is The Beatles, and then there is everybody else.”
Included in everybody else was the band The Zombies, arguably one of the more underrated bands in the British invasion, rising to prominence towards the back end of the decade, and their sound was incredibly trailblazing – a lot of the UK bands who made their way overseas essentially tried to replicate what The Beatles were doing, but not The Zombies. They were one of the early pioneers of what we now call psychedelic rock.
That might sound pretty straightforward, but when you look at truly exceptional psychedelic rock albums, the majority of them came out in the early 1970’s. This was because it took a while for the genre to really find form, as a lot of artists who were occupying the psychedelic space were mainly just trying to inject experimental elements into rock for the sake of it. There wasn’t really a plan in place, and the result was a lot of music that just sounded like a mess.
Jimi Hendrix hated a lot of early psychedelic music, as he felt it was all style, no substance, as bands put more effort into their light shows than they did their music. “Here’s one thing I hate, man,” he said. “When these cats say, ‘Look at the band. They’re playing psychedelic music!’”
“All they’re doing is flashing lights on them and playing ‘Johnny B Goode’ with the wrong chords. It’s terrible.”
Jimi Hendrix
This is why bands like The Zombies were so impressive, as they weren’t just trying to provide shape and definition to what was an elusive outline of a genre, but they succeeded in showing how much potential psychedelic rock actually had. It was layered and cinematic, but it also had all of the exciting elements that people who eventually grew to love psychedelic rock became obsessed with.
One artist who felt a particular draw to the band was Paul Weller. While the work he did with The Jam may not be considered psychedelic, there were melodic elements and uses of atmosphere which are certainly parallel to one another. Weller has admitted that it was the work of The Zombies, particularly their 1968 album Odessey & Oracle, which he called one of the greatest records to come from the British invasion.
“It was completely unheralded at the time,” he said, concluding, “Every track’s great. It’s very English, with wistful, autumnal melodies on it. In terms of strength of melody, this has definitely been an influence on me.”
