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Rod Argent interview August 2010

 

 

A recent photo of The Zombies

Rod Argent

 

 

Rod Argent is one of our leading songwriters and musicians, prolific since the early days of The Zombies at the start of the sixties. It was with The Zombies, formed in and around St Albans, that Rod first started to write songs and had two huge successes with She's Not There and Time Of The Season. Rod's association with singer Colin Blunstone also started here. In fact, they swapped roles at an early stage - Rod opting for the keyboards - a decision that seems so right now given his prowess and respect as a great keyboard player and Colin opting for the vocals for which he is now so renowned and regarded. The Zombies went on to record their classic album Odessey and Oracle, which many of today's musicians, such as Paul Weller and David Grohl, regard as an inspirational album for them.

When The Zombies split later in the sixties, Rod went into music production and then formed Argent who, once again, had huge success internationally with songs like Hold Your Head Up and God Gave Rock And Roll To You. Rod's cousin Jim Rodford, who had inspired Rod to become a musician in the first place, was a key member of the band and this close relationship was also to continue.

In the mid seventies Argent split and Rod focused on TV themes and scores but a chance one-off performance by Rod and Colin in the late nineties prompted a reunion. This resulted in a new line-up of The Zombies touring the UK, Europe and the USA. They have done so continually ever since, as well as the release of a lot of new material with a mix of reworkings of Zombies and Argent classics. Jim Rodford was a natural choice as bass player for this new line-up with his son Steve on drums. 

The fortieth anniversary of Odessey and Oracle brought several London concerts where the surviving four members of The Zombies performed the entire album and this association is to be repeated on the fiftieth anniversary of The Zombies in 2011. The band Argent also recently reformed for a London concert and are again likely to perform together in the future. 

Today, Rod is focusing on writing and touring with 'the touring Zombies'.

Having discussed the possibility of an interview from time to time, Rod and Digger finally decided to bite the bullet and do this in August 2010. The good news is we are already planning a follow-up interview for 2020!

 

 

 

 

 

  

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Digger: Hello Rod. 

Rod: Hello mate. 

Digger: How are you? 

Rod: I’m fine thank you. How are you? 

Digger: Great thanks. I’ve been on the phone all this morning doing interviews with clients. It’s interesting finding out about other people’s businesses and retro passions. So, can we dive into the questions? Who were your musical inspirations and heroes? 

Rod: Well, the thing is for me it was a sort of very catholic background. I grew up for the first ten or eleven years not really liking pop music because, at that time, it was all Perry Como and Hot Diggety Dog Diggety Boom What You Do To Me and that type of thing. But I loved classical music. Then I heard Elvis down at Jim Rodford’s place – obviously you know who Jim is - he’s my cousin and he used to live down the road from me. He played tea chest bass at the time, which, incidentally, he still sounds absolutely brilliant on. I saw him recently play it with a string and a broom handle and a tea chest with a mike inside it. Brilliant. But he was in one of the first electric bands in the area, so it was twofold really. My first real rock and roll I heard down at his place. I heard Bill Haley and I wasn’t really knocked out by that but then I heard Elvis and Hound Dog and it just completely shattered my world really. And shortly after that I saw Jim play live and he had one of the first electric guitars in the south of England. 

Digger: What sort of stuff was he doing? 

Rod: Oh, he was doing all the rock and roll that was around at the time. Elvis and Cliff and The Shadows and Eddie Cochran and all the normal suspects. Little Richard, Gene Vincent – all the rockers. But I was completely knocked out. I was eleven years old and I thought “I really have to be in a band some day.” His band was called The Bluetones. Having discovered rock and roll, very soon after that I discovered jazz and came across Miles Davis and Bill Evans the pianist and the people who were in Miles’ band – John Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley. I was completely smitten with that. 

 

 

   

Eddie Cochran and Elvis Presley

   

Miles Davis and Bill Evans

 

 

Digger: Were you already playing an instrument? 

Rod: I had two years of piano lessons, that’s all. I’m self-taught apart from that. 

Digger: Did you like the lessons or was it the old cliché of having to do it because your parents made you do it? 

Rod: I desperately wanted to do it. And I was always tinkling around on the piano in my house. When I started lessons, I really played less in those two years than I ever played before or since. (Laughs) But it did teach me where the notes were on the stave and it did teach me the rudiments of reading music, which I seriously got down to myself later on. 

Digger: Do you still find yourself now constantly improving or do you get to a ceiling or a plateau where it’s just a question of maintaining that level of competence? 

Rod: I think you should improve all the time really. 

Digger: Is there an irony that as you are getting older so it’s not so easy to do it? Does that apply? 

Rod: No, I don’t think it does. I think one thing is very important; what you're dealing with – the muscles, whether it’s the metaphorical muscles in your brain or your actual muscles. Physically, I think it’s very important to stay fit and to stay practised and that’s very true with singing as well. I think I’ve got a far greater range in my voice now and it’s a much better voice now than it was when  I was young, because I didn’t really deal with it properly when I was young. And I can sing much better now. But, I think you have to work at it as you get older – that’s the one thing Colin’s found. I mean, people are always saying to Colin “How come you can still sing like you do now?” His voice is stronger in some ways than it was – it changed a bit and that’s inevitable because your voice does change a little bit, but it can be stronger and more controlled than it was when you were young. You have to work at it, because if you don’t then it deteriorates and I think it's the same with playing a musical instrument. I just love playing though, and the fact that we’ve been on the road for ten years basically - Colin and me in this present incarnation, means that I get to play all the time. 

Digger: If you’d been asked in the sixties or seventies if you’d still be going full steam ahead in 2010 you’d probably have told them to get out of here. 

 

 

Argent. Rod, Russ Ballard, Jim Rodford and Bob Henrit

 

 

Rod: Absolutely, when I came off the road with Argent in 1975 I thought that was the end of my life of performing really, although I had 100% intention of staying in music. But it was in the year 2000 that we, by accident, got back together. And I’ve loved it and I think I’m a better musician and a better player now than I was back then. 

Digger: A slightly cheeky question – is writing songs that get millions of airplays to be recommended? 

Rod: (Laughs)

Digger: I’m thinking in terms of you having two or three songs that are up there – I can’t remember what the stats were but, for instance, Time Of The Season had over three million US airplays to-date last time I heard. 

Rod: Four million! 

Digger: There you go. That’s got to be rather nice because you’re obviously getting the residuals or whatever they call them for each airplay. So I suppose in theory there’s no imperative for you to even be touring? 

Rod: No, there isn’t. The income, thank the Lord, from maybe four or five songs really – Time Of The Season as you said, above everything. She’s Not There, obviously. Tell Her No, Hold Your Head Up – maybe those four songs, by themselves, have become ‘classics’ and that means that they provide what other people would have had to have sorted out a pension for. And it’s absolutely brilliant and it does give you the freedom, to a certain extent, to do very much what you want to do. And that’s the most brilliant thing about money, the fact that it can give you freedom to work and to be able to do what you would otherwise not be able to do. 

Digger: Your inspirations for songs. Are they different these days to what they were in the sixties and seventies? 

Rod: It’s something I find very hard to analyse because songs, for me, have always come from germs of ideas. Whether they’re ideas where I find myself playing a couple of chords at the piano or I’ll be wandering around and suddenly a lyric or phrase will pop inside my head. Or, alternatively, a little bit of melody will come into my mind. I don’t know where these things come from, but everyone has thoughts and things that occur to them so I guess in a way it’s just a musical version of that. 

Digger: I suppose it’s like me coming up with an idea or opportunity for my business? 

Rod: It’s exactly the same thing. I’ve always been able to, really quite easily, write melodies. That’s never been a problem for me. And, in fact, when I did so much television writing, which I did for about fifteen years or something like that. 

Digger: Can you just remind us of some of the stuff we might remember from that? 

Rod: Okay, well... oh God! Now you’re asking – it was quite a while ago. I stopped deliberately doing that around 1990 to be honest. 

Digger: I can remember seeing your name on the credits and thinking “Oh, Rod wrote that!” 

Rod: I did the two ITV football World Cup themes and one of them was actually immediately after the World Cup – I think in ’86, it was taken up by The Big Match and was used by them for years. (Rod hums it.) And as soon as it finished there Saint and Greavesy took it up for their theme tune. So that was supposed to be a four week do that ended up being on for years. I did the scores for some big major TV film series like Solider – The History Of Men In Battle. I did the theme and score for Reach For The Skies which was again like a history of aviation. 

Digger: Commercials? 

Rod: No, songs I’ve written have been used in commercials a lot but I’ve never written for a commercial. Lots of theme tunes, like one for a Paul Nicholas series called Bust which ran for years. 

Digger: What do they do? Do they say “There’s a programme about such and such and it stars so and so and we want you to come up with something? Is that the brief you get?  

Rod: Yes. Exactly, but the way I used to write for those, and I don't generally do this for songs - I quite deliberately tried to write them quickly and away from a piano. So if someone asked me for a theme, I would take fifteen minutes and I would just walk into the garden with a sheet of manuscript paper. And at the end of that fifteen minutes I’d return with a melody written down. The World Cup theme that ran for years – that’s how I did that. And I did it with Peter van Hook, the drummer who was a colleague of mine at the time. We put that together in an afternoon. But you tend to write broader melodies if you do that and you don’t get distracted by chord changes and that changes the melody. Just writing the melody as it is, then I can sometimes spend hours or days messing around with chords and harmonies and progressions underneath that melody.  

Digger: Do you make a distinction between the theoretically disposable stuff for TV themes and something for a Zombies or Argent song which you hope might have more longevity? Would you spend more time on them?  

Rod: I would certainly make a division between them. Songs are very important to me and a song is a wedding of musical and lyrical ideas and the two things have to work together. And it’s funny with lyrics – you can write a lyric which looks brilliant on paper and which sounds crap when it’s sung. Words have to sound good sung and it can effect how good the melody sounds. They’re very important, but again, songs can be written quickly or over a period of months.  

Digger: What do you think of rap and all that sort of stuff?  

Rod: I wouldn’t condemn it but it doesn’t speak to me at all. I finally got to the stage – I used to pride myself on really not looking back and I didn’t even have any copies of my old songs for many years, actually. I just used to look forward and get excited about what’s along the path in the future. But, I got to a certain point in life where I think age did catch up with me and I think rap was the point that it didn’t touch me or move me at all. I can see the point – strangely enough the drummer I mentioned Pete van Hook used to really love some of the rap things because of the rhythmic nature but it’s not for me and that’s probably my age.  

Digger: Is there a book in your head?  

Rod: No, I’ve been asked and I always loved writing when I was young. If I hadn’t managed to make a career in music.... I deliberately applied too late to get into university, because I desperately wanted the band to turn professional when I was seventeen or eighteen. So, the only ones that were open to me, I deliberately applied late for. Then the headmaster phoned my parents and said “He hasn’t applied, he's missed the deadline blah blah blah.” And he sort of applied on my behalf! So, anyway, I did get into university, but there wasn't much left. But I still couldn’t get in that year. I did the next year, and studied for an English degree. I had a vague idea about journalism and it was the only subject at school I was any good at. And crap at everything else.

Digger: Maths?  

Rod: Maths? I did get my O-Level but it took me something like four attempts to do it.  

Digger: It’s funny because often there is a strong link between music and maths.  

Rod: People say that but certainly in a practical sense I couldn’t get my head around it at all.  

Digger: There’s a lot of practical stuff with instruments and obviously you read music as well.  

Rod: I taught myself when Argent came off the road. I could read music, but not great and I spent a year just putting anything I could find in front of me to sight read. It didn’t matter how slowly and I did that for two or three hours a day for a year. At the end of that year I could read pretty well.  

Digger: Do you find that The Americans and The Europeans – because obviously you are touring in those places quite a lot, are more appreciative and informed than UK audiences? Or are they just different? In my experience we tend not, in this country, to appreciate our musicians and the details of their work as much as elsewhere.  

Rod: I think that is true and I think it’s extraordinary sometimes. Going to France – we did two gigs recently and three gigs last year. The audiences, not only were they very young. They were in their twenties and they knew every word of all The Zombies' songs we played.  

Digger: Probably better than you did?  

Rod: Well yes, quite often. And they were singing along. Quite incredibly informed. In America, generally the audiences are much more vociferous than they are in England and much more enthusiastic and overt. But it can vary between being incredibly informed and only knowing a couple of singles.  

Digger: What do you see as your biggest achievements and what do you still want to do?  

Rod: Oh! I don't think I can choose anything that’s a biggest achievement. I’m proud of having written songs that have been successful. I’m proud on a long-term basis because I went to a minor public school when I was young and I’ve definitely got my reservations about being there. But one thing it did teach me, I think, is how to apply myself and the fact that I’ve managed to teach myself certain disciplines like learning to site read that well. When I really wanted to come to grips with jazz harmony I made myself study it and got inside the things I really loved hearing and I’m quite proud of being able to discipline myself like that. Although I’m a complete mixture of someone who’s very lazy and someone who is very applied – it’s a bizarre mixture.  

Digger: I can understand that because I’m basically lazy and would prefer to be served tea and biscuits while lying in bed watching telly until two or three, then have a light lunch and go somewhere nice for the evening! But I force myself to be the opposite. It must be my Catholic upbringing.  

Rod: The strange thing is that there’s an incredible pull towards that for me but if I do it for any length of time in any one day I start feeling so guilty that I don’t enjoy it at all and start feeling irritable. It’s the two things working together.

Digger: So you have a little voice telling you to do all this stuff?  

Rod: Exactly.  

Digger: It might be difficult because the scene has changed so much. But what sort of advice would you give to someone starting out today to some youngster who wanted to start a band an wanted to start writing music? Maybe they’re even doing that. Is it different these days because they have the technology and can record in their bedroom and they don’t need a record deal to get their music published and out there?  

Rod: I think it’s always been very hard to find a career path in music and for different reasons. I mean, obviously when I started the record industry was on a bonanza.  

Digger: How long did it take you to be ‘discovered’?  

Rod: I knew the point was coming up. We’d been semi-pro for three years and I knew people would be leaving school and going their separate ways – some into jobs and some into university and I desperately didn’t want to break the band up so I remember seeing this Herts Beat competition come up. And thinking that was the opportunity to be 'discovered' if you like, or to get a record out.  

Digger: Were there any of your contemporaries around there who came to anything or did they all fizzle out?  

Rod: The Bluetones were in it, strangely enough, and they got knocked out in the semi-finals stage. But, strangely enough, my memory is that after the finals Decca – because it was much easier to get a record deal then, the whole industry was very different, Decca said they would give a record to the band that won the Herts Beat competition. Now my memory is that they shouldn’t have done, but they offered us a contract after the semi-final. Then we did actually go on to win the final.  

Digger: Ah! What was the feeling when you got your first number one or the first time you went to The States? Can you remember that feeling even now?

Rod: I can and it was a fantastic feeling. But it was like living in a dream. It was euphoria, but I have to say, with the sort of naivety and arrogance that you only have at that age because you don’t know any better or any of the pitfalls – certainly I expected it. (Digger laughs) And I thought “Yeah!” Because the thing was I’d never written a song – well, one song actually called It’s Alright With Me which we used to do semi-pro on stage. We did later record it. Then we recorded Summertime, which was going to be our first release. And then this 'producer' who was actually the father of a friend of our bass player Chris White, who was a generation up from us said “Look I think you’re very talented you guys but I think we should do another session.” He said “Why don’t you write something for the session? “ And that’s exactly what I did. I thought “I can write something that’s as good as The Beatles” with this incredible youthful confidence. And wrote this song and thought it was a great song and was going to sound great with Colin singing it and it will get to number one. And it did! (Both laugh) So it was a mixture of being 100% euphoric, because it was everything I wanted and at the same time I expected it because I didn’t know how the script could go differently. I very soon found out. We only ever had one hit in this country ever. That didn’t even make the top ten – that’s what people forget. In the rest of the world we had several very big hits.  

Digger: And then there was the slow burn of Odessey and Oracle which is a strange phenomenon.  

Rod: Very strange indeed – for something that came out even with a number one hit on the album in America it sort of charted, but only at the bottom of the charts.  

Digger: Did that feel special when you were recording it at Abbey Road?  

Rod: Well it felt like a real freedom – we loved the first session we did and what the producer did but we became very disillusioned with the way he was producing our records after that and we sort of felt in the air that we were going to split up. And if we were going to, Chris and I desperately wanted to produce an album ourselves before we split up because we wanted a record of some of our own ideas being expressed properly. That’s why we did Odessey and Oracle.  

Digger: Was the writing a collaboration? It’s very diverse and some of it is quite dark.  

Rod: It wasn’t a collaboration. People always talk about it being a concept album but it wasn't it was just a album of songs. Although someone said the other day that they were all linked to certain moods and emotions. I thought actually that was probably just how we were at the time.  

Digger: Only in the same sense that The Planets is a concept album.  

Rod: Exactly, we didn’t think “How are we going to link that song to this?” We didn’t do that at all. And Chris and I have always written separately.  

Digger: There’s some dark stuff there. For instance about guys stuck on barbed wire and their body parts being flown about everywhere from the first world war.  

Rod: That’s my favourite song on the album in some ways that Chris White song.

Digger: And didn’t he do well at the concert?  

Rod: Yes. He really did yeah and I think it was a bit of a seminal moment for lots of people who hadn’t seen Chris live on stage.  

Digger: Including himself! (Both laugh) For some time anyway.  

Rod: Exactly.  

Digger: You’ve got this great following as well from lots of people in the business, which can’t be bad.  

Rod: And it’s grown as well. As I often say on stage the first guy I remember ever talking abut Odessey and Oracle is Paul Weller when The Jam were number one in the charts and he was asked what his favourite album was.  

Digger: Did you sit up and say “What did he say?”  

 

 

Paul Weller

 

 

Rod: I couldn’t believe it. The two things are so far apart and funnily enough I liked The Jam even though it wasn’t the sort of music I could see myself playing.  

Digger: I admired their drummer Rick Buckler.  

Rod: I was completely gob smacked. He’s kept that up. As you know he bought tickets for all three days to Shepherd’s Bush, but just the other week he was on Radio Two on the Ken Bruce show and he said “I remember the very first time I heard Odessey and Oracle, it gave me chills and it’s certainly my favourite of all time.” And people like Dave Grohl from The Foo Fighters, Belle and Sebastian. Actually there are loads of young bands that I can’t bring to mind now and that’s helped. The album now – it’s never going to sell like Dark Side Of The Moon – it’s a minor seller in a way, but in that frame of reference it sells quite substantially just year in and year out. And it’s very nice thank you.  

Digger: Is touring harder these days or is it more enjoyable because you do it in comfort these days? How does it work?  

Rod: No, we don’t do it in comfort. In fact, when we tour in the UK we can never get it together at all. I always drive myself as far as possible. We stay in better hotels than we used to. Believe it or not we often travel around in a rusty old van. We can’t seem to get that organised here. In America we travel around in very big modes of transport and we tend to in Europe as well. The actual touring – the physical effort of travelling was always tedious and as you get older it becomes even more so. The things that don’t change, and it’s such a privilege to be 65 and go on stage and the energy you get from an audience is just phenomenal. You honestly do feel exactly as you did when you were eighteen.  

Digger: And every gig is special? I often wonder that being in the audience because it seems like a special night for the performer and the audience and maybe they aren’t exaggerating – maybe this one IS special just like last night’s was.  

Rod: I think, as you get older, and if you’re doing it for the right reasons. And ,as we said earlier, I’m not doing it because otherwise I couldn’t make ends meet I’m doing it because it’s such a buzz to be doing it on stage. So if you are doing it for that reason then the fact is there are very few professions where you can be 65 years old and they're not just winding you down. I’m writing new material for a new album and planning tours. And that’s very energizing. The being on stage and playing feels 100% the same as it did then – the difference is that I don’t want to do anything after the gig, I just want to get back to the hotel and go to bed. I mean you still come off stage on a high and it still does take you a couple of hours to wind down, but even though you’re hyped-up at least I feel pretty tired compared to when I was eighteen and the night would just be starting.  

Digger: You settle down to a glass of hot milk and a documentary on telly?  

Rod: Exactly. I mean everybody's different. Colin and I feel like that. Jim Rodford, who’s older than me always winds down with a pint after a show and he likes to do it that way. The last thing I could imagine myself doing is going out somewhere else after a gig. At eighteen you’re hyped up but still have the energy to party rather than wanting a good night’s sleep.  

Digger: (Laughs)  I’ve got a couple of daft questions now. 

Rod: Darts?!

Digger: No! D.A.F.T - Daft. 

Rod: I thought you said darts! (Both laugh) 

Digger: Yes. Who won the world championship in 1982? 

Rod: (Laughs) Jocky Wilson! 

Digger: Talking of which, did you see that on TOTP2? Dexy’s Midnight Runners had a hit called Jackie Wilson Says but when they appeared on TOTP the morons who created the backdrop for them had a huge photo of Jocky Wilson. I’ve seen this two or three times and I’m not sure whether it was a wind up. 

Rod: (Laughs) That’s very funny. 

 

 

Jocky Wilson says

 

 

Digger: Can I just ask you ‘The dinner party question’? Who would you have if you could invite anyone from any time? 

Rod: It’s very difficult. With the proviso that I could invite people that I really admired and I wouldn’t be tongue-tied. Because in real life, the people who are real heroes I’d shy away from meeting. 

Digger: Do you find yourself in the situation with people like others would find themselves with you? “I don’t know what to say because I like what you do so much”? 

Rod: Absolutely 100%. I think it’s partly to do with the worry that you’re gonna let yourself down or be an idiot. 

Digger: You’ve only got a very short opportunity to say something and it might come out all wrong. 

Rod: Exactly. 

Digger: I’ve actually done that with somebody once. It was a famous American actress and I met her in Harrods and she just couldn’t understand what I was saying – a mixture of my accent, because they’re not always tuned into the way we speak and also nerves. It was a complete humiliating disaster tinged with total confusion! 

Rod: I’ve got two tiny stories to tell you. One is concerning myself. When I was doing the Tanita Tikaram album, which ended up selling 4.5 million albums, there was one track – Pete Van Hook and I were producing this album and there was one track called For All These Years – I think that was it. Anyway, there’s a beautiful trumpet on it played by Mark Isham. And when we were recording it the guy from Warners was down at the session and I said to Pete “Do you know? There’s only two people really that we need on his album to play trumpet that would fit the bill. One’s Mark and one’s Miles Davis. Ha ha.” And Miles has been a lifetime hero for me. The guy Malcolm from the record company said “We’ve just signed Miles. In fact” he said “you won’t believe this, he’s in London at the moment. I’ll call him and he’ll come down and do it.” And I said “No, absolutely not. I cannot meet him. I just cannot.” Because if anything went less than 100% right I’d feel like committing suicide – I couldn’t live with myself. The other story involved Pete Van Hook again. He was producing a big interview at Abbey Road and The Beatles were recording when they got back together again, obviously without Lennon. 

Digger: This would have been for The Anthology I suppose? 

Rod: Exactly at The Anthology time. Pete has always been in awe of The Beatles, as have I as well. They were an enormous influence. 

Digger: You’ve worked with Ringo recently. Did you find yourself in that tongue-tied situation with him? 

Rod: Do you know? A little I did, a little. Anyway, Pete, who is a very confident guy but he was too shy so he dispatched Mo Foster the bass player who he knew had met The Beatles quite a few times before to go and ask them if they’d do an interview. Well they immediately said yes, before it was actually stymied by one of their higher ups who said “Do you realise they haven’t done an interview all together for so many years. It’s not going to be with you.” The Beatles were almost on the point of walking into the studio and doing it. So, all that went on and then later the next day Pete was wandering down the Abbey Road corridor when who should be walking the other way but all three of the surviving Beatles walking towards him. They nodded at him in a friendly way as they usually are and Pete just blew it! He lost it! (Digger laughs) He said “Um, er, I’m the guy that was doing the programme that you were going to be interviewed on.” And George Harrison said (Liverpudlian accent) “You’re not Mo!” And Pete said “No, no, I’m, um, I’m, um.” And Pete forgot his own name. (Digger laughs) And The Beatles are looking at him in disbelief and he fled in complete embarrassment and he couldn’t show his face in front of them all the rest of the time they were there. But, to get back to your original question, if you take that out of the original equation then, oh God, there’s so many people. I’d definitely say Miles Davis and Bill Evans, Elvis certainly. I’d say a couple of very obvious people – Shakespeare and Bach, who is probably the greatest musician who has ever lived. 

 

 

J. S. Bach

 

 

Digger: Yes, you can hear one or two influences in some of your stuff. Just one or two. 

Rod: (Laughs) One or two, here and there. 

Digger: What makes you laugh? 

Rod: I love any good comedy. Like a lot of people of my age, I find the comedy these days actually not that funny. It sounds like people are shouting at you. Shouting and being aggressive. Whereas along with most of my generation, I found Monty Python totally unmissable and all the things that spun off from that. Fawlty Towers and so on. And Blackadder – not the first series, but everything after that was very, very funny. There are things today that I hear and find funny, and we laugh a lot when we’re on the road with the band. Just various surreal things. 

 

 

Fawlty Towers

Black Adder

 

 

Digger: What makes you angry? 

Rod: People's prejudices, I think, make me angry. I hate racial prejudice. 

Digger: Is it getting better in this country do you think? 

Rod: I think in some ways it is yes. In spite of lots of people maintaining it isn’t. I think it’s very different in America, not to say that there isn’t still huge racial prejudice in America, because there is everywhere. 

Digger: It’s a two way thing. 

Rod: It’s very much a two way thing. But, I remember in America when we first went over – the very first tour we did in ’65 was with a lot of black acts on the Dick Clark tour and we were very friendly with them, obviously. I remember one night going into a restaurant with the whole tour after the show and we were driving on to somewhere else. The black group The Velvelettes were on the tour with us and Colin had his arm around the singer Caroline and I had my arm around one of the other Velveletttes and we were just walking into the restaurant. The whole place just fell silent. Totally silent. 

Digger: And you probably had long hair too? 

Rod: Yeah, well now you wouldn’t think it was long but probably for those days. And the tour manager ran up to us and he shepherded everybody out and he said “We were lucky you didn’t get shot.” And they were serious. When you’re eighteen or nineteen years old you think it’s a bit of a laugh and “Nah, it’s not really happening.” You don’t realise how seriously practical some of these things are. That has obviously changed 100% now and things have got a lot better but there’s still a lot around. So I hate prejudice and injustice but I can’t think of anything else off the top of my head. 

Digger: What makes you hopeful? 

Rod: I am an optimist by nature, I think, and I do definitely in most ways see myself as a glass half full person rather than a glass half empty one. So, in a big sense, I do despair a bit about the fact that there are so many people on this planet and the population increases at an exponential rate, as it has to. Then somebody said the other day that a quarter of the people who have ever lived are living today. And that’s absolutely extraordinary. If you think what on earth is it going to be like in fifty year’s time. And I despair about that, because I think that’s where the root of most problems are because we draw away all the world’s resources and we alter the balance of the planet and we might pass the point of no return for that reason alone. I can’t really see an answer to that and I do worry. 

Digger: We get rid of one threat and then another one comes along. We eradicate illnesses and the threat of nuclear war and then terrorism and global warming take their place. 

Rod: Yes. It really is a continual thing. I do think generally that most people – I look at them and see them wanting to be a force for good. I think in an individual way that's how I look at people and that's what my nature is. Whereas another person might look at people and think they’re inherently bad and they only do the occasional unselfish thing. I tend to come from the other direction. 

Digger: People are good unless they’re programmed wrong or have had some really bad experience. 

Rod: Yes. Exactly. 

Digger: So, can you tell us about your current and future projects? Obviously the Argent reformation is a big thing. 

Rod: It is a big thing in the sense that the way I see it at the moment personally, although things can always change, is we’ve got the basis of a set together for a festival. It’s great fun to play with the guys and it’s something we may be able to visit occasionally. At the moment I feel it’s enough for me, it’s all I can do, to put enough creative input into the band I’ve been with for the last ten years. To try and record new stuff and push the boundaries of that which I think is continually developing. We’ve had a change of guitarist - we’ve got a brilliant new guitarist – a wonderful acoustic guitar player as well as electric, and that’s a shot in the arm in a sense. And I think the band’s sounding as good as it ever has. And that’s exciting. I get excited about writing new material. It feels at the moment that the material is coming together for this new album – because it’s our fiftieth anniversary of being formed next year and we’re going to try and release an album and a tour and do a big concert in London. 

Digger: Will that be Shepherd's Bush do you think? 

Rod: It will be Shepherd’s Bush. 

Digger: So you’ve got three bands really? 

 

 

The Zombies recording their classic album 
Odessey and Oracle at Abbey Road

 

 

Rod: Three? Oh! You mean the original Zombies, the touring Zombies and Argent? Yes, I see the creative nub now being the touring Zombies if that’s what you want to call them. Because they’re all great musicians and we all know each other very well now. And it feels like we’re still managing to develop the sound and the stuff that we’re doing. That, to me, feels like the vital creative way forward. And I would love actually when we do this fiftieth anniversary concert at Shepherd’s Bush to get Chris and Hugh to come up and do three or four songs as part of the evening. 

Digger: Is the relationship you’ve got with Colin almost like a marriage in a way? Not trying to be impudent, but you’ve been together longer than most marriages and you spend a lot of time together. How well do you get on? 

Rod: We get on great. We always have done really, even from the early days of The Zombies. In those days, we didn’t have our own rooms and it was always Colin and I that used to room together. We didn’t stay in particularly close touch in the years we weren’t working together, but we always stayed in touch. And if I did a big concert I’d always be pretty sure that Colin would be in the audience. And likewise, you know. The way I put it in the past is that I grew up learning to write songs with Colin’s voice in mind, generally speaking anyway, and Colin grew up learning to sing my songs. So that’s something you can’t go back on and wouldn’t want to. So we have been joined at the hip in many ways. And even when The Zombies broke up, Chris and I produced his first album after his little foray being Neil McArthur for a little while which I don’t really consider being part of his career. 

 

 

Colin Blunstone in the seventies

 

 

Digger: Well, Rod, many thanks for that. We’ve finally done it after all these years!

Rod: Can you imagine how long it would have taken me to email that back to you? 

Digger: I wouldn’t have asked. I’m going to have to type it up anyway so can you imagine how long it’s going to take me to do that?! (Both laugh) 

Rod: I’d rather it was you. 

Digger: I’ve been looking for some software that converts conversation into text but it’s still nowhere near sophisticated enough. Can you believe it in this day and age? There’s nothing that does it properly. There’s some that need to get to know your voice. But there’s nothing that will do it so I have to do it the old-fashioned way. But it soon gets done with thirty minutes a day...

Rod: Good luck. 

Digger: Thanks Rod. 

Rod: Thanks Digger.

 

 

Rod with wife Cathy and an award for Time Of The Season