The strange case of the fake Zombies
Just as The Zombies were on the brink of superstardom in America and achieving everything they’d worked toward for over half a decade, they split up. In the absence of The Zombies, cunning figures in the music industry saw an opportunity to make some quick cash and exploit the popularity of their hit single ‘Time Of The Season’.
Prior to the release of their album, Odessey and Oracle, The Zombies decided to part ways after noticing their popularity dwindle. Unexpectedly, ‘Time Of The Season’ became a sleeper hit in the United States, and a year later, it somehow climbed to third place on the Billboard Hot 100. However, The Zombies had already moved on to new musical adventures and were unable to capitalise on their new-found success.
Delta Promotions decided to form two versions of The Zombies, which catered to their fans in different areas of the country. One band was from Michigan, and the other was based in Texas. If they were marketing themselves as a tribute to the English band, that would have been acceptable, but Delta instead tried to dupe people into believing they were the real thing.
Despite both bands selling well in each city they visited and gigging most nights, each band member reportedly only earned $200 a week. After The Zombies caught wind of what was happening in America, former member Paul Atkinson went down to a show by the fake outfit in Los Angeles and recorded their lies on tape.
Meanwhile, Chris White told Rolling Stone they were “taking money from our fans and dragging down our reputation”. He also claimed to the publication that one of the fake bands “had the cheek to phone up [the label] in Dallas and ask for $1,000 in publicity money”.
White also posed as a Rolling Stone journalist to the management team of the fake group, who told him The Zombies’ lead singer had passed away, and two more original members had left, which is why there had been line-up changes.
White later told Buzzfeed in 2016 about a meeting at CBS Records with local radio promoters in New York about a forthcoming fake Zombies show: “I said, ‘Well, it’s not the real Zombies, we are here.’ They said, ‘We don’t know, you might be the fake Zombies. How do I know you’re really Chris White?’ That’s when we decided to go back and do the third album and establish that we were alive.”
The Zombies’ Rod Argent later admitted to Sound On Sound: “It did infuriate us. We were actually offered a huge amount of money to reform after ‘Time Of The Season’ was number one. But by that time we’d already, all of us, embarked on different courses and it did not feel right just to chase the buck and abandon everything else, even though it was very tempting in material returns. It was a moment of madness. So other people leapt into the void and tried to cash in.”
In the age of social media, a stunt like this would be impossible for anyone to pull off. However, back in the 1960s, the music industry was still like the Wild West, and plenty of cowboys were prepared to trample over anybody to earn a paycheque.
