Rod Argent

I'm here with my wife. I've never spent a spring since we've been in this house, which is in the past six years, and it's in the most beautiful setting, and I've never had the chance to share with her, you know, everything coming out in wonderful bloom and walking and being able to spend time with her. I've always been on tour somewhere, which is fine in itself. But for those first two months, it was like a justified

holiday and something that we really enjoyed together. But I'll tell you what, after about four or five months, I just had enough And now I'm screaming because we started a new album and um, I'd already ready written three songs for it, and we we got into a finished stage and we were really feeling like we were rocking UM,

and then suddenly we couldn't do anymore. And and uh, we did another couple of tracks where I could actually use technology as it is and sending over what we used to call the tapes a long time ago to UM to a bass player who lives in Denmark and he would put his part on, you know, in the

way that people do like that. But I love, actually on some of the songs the whole band to be together, because sometimes it can take you in a direction, even when you're on sound check and you think you've got something that really works, UM, but it tells you within a couple of minutes no, that that that's that's not how I thought it would be at all, and you

take it into a different direction. And so we've got our first meeting and rehearsal together and recording with the whole band again together UM in two weeks time, and I'm so looking forward to that. I have to say, now, you say you're in this beautiful occasion for the last six years without giving the address, generally speaking, where is it. It's in It's in Hampshire, UM, and I'm about an hour south of London and it's in the beginnings of what is known as the South Downs National Park. So

the countryside around here is absolutely glorious. Um And I had no idea it was as absolutely lovely as this, but it really really is. Everywhere you go in whatever direction you go, you go through gorgeous villages, gorgeous protected countryside. You know, it's it's a very lucky place to be. I think we're very lucky. So if you've only been there for six years, where were you before and what

motivated you to here? We were actually in a house that we've been in for thirty eight years in Beforshire, which is north of London. Um, in a little village called Silso and Stilso was a lovely little village when we first moved into it, but as is the way of the world, it got gradually built built up more and more, and bypasses and and main traffic roads went all around the place. Um and it's I think we've just got out in time. My wife said, UM, if we are going to move, we've got to do it

now before we get too old. So so we made that decision. Okay, generally speaking, are you turned on creatively by the city or by the country's isolation help or does inspiration come from other actions going downtown people come in. Well, I mean anything can give you a little bit of inspiration. And when when you're in lockdown and you're not doing anything at all, um that that's not the greatest place

to be. Um. I always remember Charlie Parker reading about Charlie Parker saying that UM to a young Miles Davis. I think it was so it might have been somebody else saying, listen, whatever you do, even if it's just a walk outside down the alleyway in between sets, do it so that you get some sort of outside input that can just I don't know, just broaden your perception a little bit, you know, in whatever way. And I think that's very true. Actually, I think you do need

um other things going on. And I have to say the more I've been in lockdown that to some degree, the less I've wanted to go out, and I don't think that's a good thing. Um Well, I found the same thing in that I'm almost you know, the first month or two of lockdown, people called you haven't heard from in years. Then that stop. It's like I don't want an intermediate zone. I want to be hunkered down and then if everything's open, I'll go out in between.

It is just too frustrating. Yeah, absolutely, yeah. So how have you filled the time you're reading, you're listening and s eating? Would even doing? Yeah, I mean I have to say so that much really current music, and um, I mean maybe that's just a factor of my age. Really, UM,

I still do you know what. I still go back sometimes and play the early Ray Charles records or UM or the Miles Davis um albums Night when he first got together with John Coltry and Canniball Laderie, and I can still sing some of the solos on those very first records that I that I got to know in those days. And I've got a jukebox, and my jukebox is full of early Elvis and Little Richard and and you know all those all those things, um, And I do find from my limited perception, I do find quite

a lot of modern music. Not everything, but quite a lot of modern music, a little bit mechanical in in just it's just the way it affects me. And I often think that where and when we started out to make anything work, you had to make You had to have a structure that worked. You have to you have to write something with a good chord sequence with um, with something that just works and builds and has a shape. Um.

And these days it's to make something work. You can every everybody samples things, and you can just loop a drum loop and you can get a great sounding little bass loop and throw that on and and and it sounds like a groove immediately. And you can put two or three things together and it almost sounds like a record. And and then you auto shoot the vocals and you get that sort of metallic sound on the voice that

everyone seems to have these days. Um. You know, I I know, I'm this is a huge generalization, and I quite understand that. No. I mean, the you know there thinking amongst older people is if you trash the younger music, you just don't get it. It's a nege. But we lived through the Renaissance. I mean, I always say, like in painting and sculpture, there was only one renaissance. They've been painting and sculpting since then and the era certainly you were a member of that in the sixties and

the seventies. That's why they call it classic rock, but switching gears a little bit. You talk about your wife, You've only been married once, right, I've only been married once. I met my wife when she was eighteen and I was twenty two. Uh, and we we sort of lived together for a few years and then we got married in nineteen seventy two. And I'll tell you what, Bob, and this is not just sentimentality. We're happier now than we've ever been. Okay, what was she doing when you

were she was eighteen? And where were you at in your career when you were twenty two? Um, when I was twenty two, we'd already I was nineteen when she's

not there, became a number one record in cash box. Um, and our first gig in America was at the Brooklyn Fox Mary the Case Show Christmas Day in nineteen sixty four, and we were we were scared shitless actually, because we we thought, here we are five skinny, young white Englishman and we're going to go and play with some of our heroes, like you know, Benny King, Patty LaBelle was on there, Um, Dion Warrick, and and we thought they're gonna hate us because they're gonna say these guys coming

over and creaming, you know, creaming everything, and they're just bringing back American music. But it's a pale imitation. But that wasn't the way they they looked at it at all. And I remember we actually walked into the Brooklyn Fox and we had a sound check and the person sound checking before us was Patty LaBelle, and we thought, oh my god, you know, how how are we gonna you know, we were nineteen years old, how are we gonna follow that?

But you know, we did, and she became a really good friend and she introduced us to remember her saying, there's this young kid on the block. You've really got to check out our names a wreatha. And this was the day. These were the days before Aretha was a

soul singer. She was doing her cabaret thing with CBS UM and uh and she told us about Nina Simone and it was just wonderful, and she would she would just talk to us every night and tell us about the Black Church and how that affected how they sang, you know, and and how obviously Aretha came up and probably Nina as well, and how she came up and how that affected her um her style of singing, and obviously that's where Ray Charles came from in the first place as well. Um, and it was just it was

just wonderful. But you're totally right, I I think I was so so fortunate to be born in the time of what was a great cultural explosion because we just had the war and in the UK ten years after the war there was real austerity, that really was and suddenly the younger generation started to get a little bit of money. Um, we heard Elvis, which actually lew our socks off. I mean, for me, it was like hearing black music by proxy, because I had never heard any

rhythm and blues at that point. And I know I'm not the only one. I mean it was the same for the Beatles, for Van Morrison, Eric Burden, all these guys. Um. And it was just a wonderful time to be ensconced in all that. And and I mentioned the early Miles Davis group that was fantastic as well, huge energy, but really really inventive and and and the wonderful thing was that the older guy, once we were lucky enough to get a record deal, the older guys in the record

business didn't understand what was going on. They hadn't got a clue, so they left it up to the bands. They left it up to them to follow whatever direction they wanted because they were from a previous generation. And it meant that there was none of this um product management all the time, and all the sort of DJ what do you call it, playlists and and and and very governed you know, playlists or anything like that. And you know what, the people the public absolutely adored that.

They ended adored the real enthusiasm of the DJs who would get knocked out by a particular record and play it and play and that enthusiasm really infected the listening audience. It was just a fantastic time. Um, we'll get back to that time. Let's just kind of close the loop on this. So how did you How did you meet your wife? I met my wife because sorry, I was whispering on there and going around and around the houses.

But when we did them marry the case show, Um, there was some choreography that was going on on the show, and there was the choreographer was a woman called or a girl called Molly Malloyer, and she got married to she started going out with Paul Atkinson and guitarres and eventually married him. And she came over to the UK and she formed a dance company and my wife was the lead dancer in that in that dance company at that time. And I went to Um, I went to

a party one night. UM, and uh, she grew up. My my wife grew up with someone called Arlene Phillips, who who who has made a name as a choreographer over here, and she's been on the you know, the dance programs and everything. Um. And I thought she had the most beautiful face I've ever seen in my life. And uh, Colin the bastard actually got in there before me and said and invited her out and actually took

her out. And I had phoned Colin up because Colin and I we've always been really good friends and and Colin and I I had this thing where we wouldn't try and step on each other's toes if when it came to girls, you know. So I phoned him up and said, look, I know this is really unusual, Colin, but would you mind if I I said, I'm I'm pretty besotted with Kathy. Would you mind if I gave a call And he said, listen, mate, He said, you might you might even marry her. Ha ha. So so

so go ahead if you feel that strongly. So I did, and then went out with her and we we never looked back, really, I mean we It was a pretty loose relationship for maybe two two or three years. Then we moved in together, and then we got married. So how do you keep it together? The itinerant life of a musician? I know, Well, the thing was because maybe

because her life started as a dancer. She became an analystic psychotherapist in the second half of her life, but in that first half of the life, she was a dancer, so she understood, um, what creativity was and how you had to follow it, etcetera, etcetera. And she was always, you know, wonderful about that. I still feel very guilty now when we go on tour, because you know, we often, Bob, we often do three tours a year in America. Um,

and that means a long time away. Um. And I wouldn't say we're isolated here, but it's, um, you know, it's it's it's a pretty secluded spot and uh. And I often feel that I'm being very unfair to her, but in actual fact, um, it's it's worked beautifully. I mean maybe that helps in a way because it always feels great when we get back together again. And how many kids do you have and what are they up to? Now?

We've got two kids. A daughter is actually an academic but she um is living with her husband in Austria. And we've got one grandson, which is the only one we're going to get which is which is her son. And and my son unfortunately has some mental health problems. But he met a lovely girl who was actually a great university um uh when she had a mental breakdown and they got together and they've been together now for

twenty years. Um. And that's fantastic. And my wife and my daughter is very very happy in Austria uh and having a great life. So you know, we have to count a blessings really, I think. And are they off the pay roll they make it independently or you help them out. I don't have to help my daughter out at all. Her and her family are doing brilliantly well. Um. But and she writes academic books and one thing and another,

and she's the most beautiful girl as well. She looks fantastic, which she's not a girl anymore now she's you know, for they thought it, um, but my son I help out and I account myself in the most privileged position to be able to be in a position where I can continue to support them so that they don't have to live off the government or whatever. So they have a good life. It's fairly sheltered life, but you know, they're very happy. So I'm I'm very happy with that. Okay,

let's go back to the beginning. Where in the UK are you originally from St Alban's which is a little It's not a little, it's a city twenty miles outside London, north of London, and lived there for when we went to Bedfordshire that that's only up the road as well, because I always wanted to be in touch with my mom and dad as well. My dad was a a a dance band musician from the age of seventeen to

the age of eighty three. There was a there was a wonderful moment when we had a guy doing our boiler in sils and he came up and said, what's your dad? Then? Is he is he a musician at all? I said, yeah, he's he's got his own dance band, he's and is he how old is he? I said, what is as one now? And he went, oh, my god, and I said um. And just the other day he was complaining he wasn't getting enough work. Okay, so you're growing up at St. Alban's. How many kids in the family, Um,

just two. In our family, my mom was was one of eight children, UM, and and all the brothers and sisters. Her brothers and sisters had kids, and some of them had three four kids. I think one of them had five actually, So I had a huge number of cousins and they all stayed around the Stormers area, so there was always a very good family social scene around St. Orban's. We all lived very close and we all used to

visit each other. My my closest cousin was Jim Rodford, the guy who was later in the Kinks but formed Argent with me um and later in the Incarnation of the Zombies. UM. And he became a mentor of mine because he was four years older than me, and he was the guy that introduced me to the music at Elvis. UM. I remember one day I went down to his house,

only four dred yards away. His mom was my mom's best friend, and um, he was playing me some Bill Haley, and I said, well, it's all right, you know, I don't mind it, okay, okay, And he said, well, let's listen to this, and he played me handled and it just blew me away, blew my world away, spun my world around, and then to my parents horror. For six months, I didn't want to hear anything but the royalst rock

and roll. I could get my hands on Little Richard as it was at the time, you know, Jerry Lee Lewis of course, um and then that quickly introduced me to Ray Charls and all that sort of thing. But it was a very very musical family. My mom got me involved in a great choir from the Asia of about ten years old, and that gave me a real, really broad sort of panoply of a sort of umbrella

of music. And and by almost by the condition of os Moses, I sort of you know, drew that in and and and it exposed me to stuff that I would never have heard otherwise, wonderful music by Bark and you know all the other things. But at the same time, that's when we started the zombies, and and I couldn't bear to tell the master of the music that I was going off early on a Sunday evening to do a gig with the zombies of rock and roll, gimee with the zombies, you know, and at one for a second, sorry,

did your mother work outside the home? She didn't know what she did much later in her life she did. When you were growing up, she didn't. And that was your was your father's main source of income. The group know that his main source of income was as an aeronautical engineer. He worked in a in a the hat Field Aeronautical Works, which was about five miles away from St. Orban's. And Colin came from Hatfield, and you know that that provided a link as well. But I don't think and

his father worked there too. Um, Jim's father worked there, but I don't think they. I mean, obviously Jim's father and my father knew each other, but I don't think Colin's father ever did. But there we are, okay, and your sibling older, younger male female. It's it's my sister and she's ten years tipped between ten eleven years younger than me. Okay, so you're the golden child and you're growing up in St Alban. Sounds like your father made

a good living, so it wasn't like you were economically struggling. Well, we weren't economically struggling struggling, but we lived in a council house. We lived in a council house, UM, and my father UM was making out the time twenty pounds a week. UM. This was in which was much more of an average wage, but a lowish average wage at the time. And you're growing up, you're going to school. What kind of student were you? Were you popular? Do you fit in? And we're more of a loner. I

was fairly much of a loner. I mean not completely loner. Um. It was a school that my mother really wanted me to get into. It's it's what we call a public school over here, which is it's like a private school to either. It's only called public because I think King King Henry the eighth um designated a few schools for the children of the clergy or something like that, so it became more of a public school anyway. I had to take an exam. I got a scholarship to go there,

which was a very good start. But after being in the sort of B form, I quickly was pushed down to the C form and it wasn't until the streams divided and I could concentrate on the arts rather than the arts and the sciences that that I started to make more of a mark academically. Um. And there was only one thing I was ever any good at, bob, and that was English. And and I would have certainly gone to university at the time if it hadn't been for the band starting to take off. But so so

that route was then closed to me. Um. But you know, but it was a very it was. It was a pretty highly rated school. Okay, so you're growing up, when do you start taking the piano or whatever you take lessons? Well, I only ever had two years piano lessons in my life, and that was between the ages of nine, nine and eleven, Between the ages of nine years old and eleven years old. Yeah, Um, And you know what, in that time, I played the piano less than, uh, than I ever did before or afterwards.

I always I could always pick out a tune on the piano, and in fact, strangely enough, I remember my parents buying me a harmonica when I was about seven or eight years old, And somehow I always had this um facility to look at music visually and and I could always work out where the tune had to go when I was playing the harmonica, because I could I could work out that this was a whole whole tone, that was a whole tone, that was a half tone.

It just seemed natural to me somehow, so I could always play a tune on anything that people gave me. When I first picked up a guitar, I I saw immediately that, you know, two threats was a tone and then just one threats half a tone, So I could always do that. UM and I played by air really and when I when I had the piano lessons, it gave me the very basic grounding of what mew of what notes were and how they associated with notes on

the piano. And then when I was in the choir it showed when I when we were singing, we obviously sang by music all the time, so that gave me a good grounding there. But that was it, really, And and then I started playing by here. I remember there was a song called Swinging Shepherd Blues. That was the first thing I ever worked out the piano. It was

a hit hit song before rock and roll. UM, and I thought I discovered the whole secret of Western harmony because I just I played everything in the key of C at the time, and I worked out that if you played you know what I know now know as a triad, you know, a basic call of C, C, E, N G, and then move my hands up there, right up all the way up to an octave, that I could harmonize. I thought almost any melody with one of

those three or four chords that were there. And it was much later that I got more sophisticated and started to experiment from there. But that was the first thing. And that The amazing thing is I only read about a year ago that that Paul McCartney said something very very similar. He said, I always tell people that start to try and play the piano, play everything in the key of C, and if you just move those three notes all the way up, you can you can harmonize.

You know, most things are after a fashion. So that was how I taught myself. But you know, I wasn't alone in that many most people in the world of rock and roll ourself took I have to say, so you don't read music at this point. At that point I read music very simply. But I could read music because I spent so long in this quiet, which was great choir. Um I could I could then site read single lines um almost at any level. But that doesn't mean that I could translate that to the piano, you know,

which is much more um um polytonal obviously UM. So there were two different things. But when I came off that, sorry i'm jumping all over the place here. But when I came off the road, um actually with our after Argent, because I was between the zombies and Argent. I was on the road for twelve years, I think something like that. And then I've just wanted to rest from that for a while, and I thought, I'm going to come off

the road and I'm going to do two things. First of all, I'm not going to write anything myself, and then secondly, if anything interesting is offered to me, I'll do it if I if I think it's interesting. And thirdly, I'm going to learn to sight read. So I took any piece of music, no matter how difficult or how easy, put it on the piano in front of me, and for a couple of hours every day I would play it. I try and play in tempo, but no matter how funear really slow it was, I just try and play it,

and it's only like learning a language, you know. After a year, I was in a completely different place and I could site read pretty much most things. Um So that was when I taught myself that really, and that was when I was oh god, that wasn't about seventy six at that point. Okay, let's go back to what it was like. Tell us more about the austerity and

when it goes from black and white to color. Well, an example is that things were incredibly austere for I would say ten years, but in the UK and certainly in England where I was between nineteen, it was incredibly austere. And they were the first years of my life really. Um I remember everything was rationed. I remember once going into a grocery store with my mother, and I remember her putting her ration thing down and buying some potatoes.

And I thought, she's not getting enough potatoes for the money she's spending on them. And I picked out another one and put it in her basket, and then we took it home and she and then she said to me, you put a potato in the basket, You've got to take it back. And I was completely mortified, you know, and I sort of went back until this potato paper. But that was the sort of rationing that was going on at the time. Um. But then suddenly there was

a little bit more money. Suddenly things started to change. But I remember when I first heard Elvis when I was eleven. Very soon after that, there was a broadcast from America which showed Elvis at one of the very very early live shows, this very grainy, black and white thing. It was probably the ground old opry or something. I don't know, but it was just like magic to me. And I looked at this thing and it was like

a being from another universe. You know. This didn't seem to have any relation to anything that was going on in the UK. All the clothes looked totally different. Um. The way he was seeing was like nothing I'd ever heard. It was the most exciting thing I've ever seen. And I remember thinking, oh God, I've got to have a bit of that in some way or other. And I'm sure the whole of the youth of England was thinking thinking the same thing. Um. You know. It was just

like a huge wave crashing on the on the shore. Um. And and that lasted really for for for some time. UM. And incidentally, the most extraordinary thing was when we finally went over to the Marry the K show. We learned much later in the nineties when I was having an interview with the DJ, that Elvis had three of my songs on his jukebox and this was what what was this, Bob? Eight years well, the beginning of it was eight years after I had first seen this being from another planet.

And it's like when I first went to As a contrast, when I first went to New York, I hated it because it was so full of energy and aggression that that that was my first impression of it. But in fact it became one of my favorite cities because it seemed to have an honesty about it at the same time, and musically it was just brilliant and you could go

and see anything. I mean, I know, Chris White and I um walked into um a jazz club after the show one night, and we saw Roland Kirk and we were the only two people in in in the jazz club apart from a completely dead drunk I and his slightly less drunk um woman and and and he was making loads of noise and everything, and I thought, I can't believe this, you know, even then we were starting to venerate these guys, you know, And and that was

the situation. And it seemed and the cars all seemed like mobile jukeboxes to me, you know, whereas all the English cars look very it's safe, and you know, not all of them was the e type jag which was wonderful. But apart from that, and they were so big, and it was such a such a different world, and and and that caused and together with a little bit more money coming through, young people started to be taken more seriously.

And then with the music what I said before about the older guys in the record companies not understanding what was going on, it gave a great feeling of power to the young people. And then of course the Beatles hit the scene in nineteen sixty two in the u kay a little bit before the US and um, and they were a complete breath of fresh air because their

music had uh grittiness and vitality but huge invention. Um it was it was like England winning the World Cup every week because particularly when they first went to America, suddenly this completely unbelievable thing was happening, whereby they were becoming the most important young rock and roll Act. And they were English, and this was in America where they had all their influences from and where all their idols were as well. You know, there's absolutely no no difference

between them and us in that way. Um and uh. And and it was that explosion out of austerity, and it really was austere. Every everything was. It felt like the world was pretty much in black and white when I when I was ten years old, eleven years old, and then it gradually opened up. And then suddenly the young people, um started to be able to um cause an explosion in in all the arts, in fashion, um,

you know, in in everything really um. And it just felt the most exciting time to be young, and the young people seemed to have some sort of real power for the first time. And I always think that that that was to do also with news starting to come

from you know, Vietnam. That was a little bit later of course as well, um, but but where you could actually see really what was happening in the world for the first time, and the young people were making up their own minds and they were refusing to do some things that the older people wanted them to do. And you know, in in so many ways it was such an exciting time. Okay, so you're in the choir at what point and then you say, ultimately Sunday night, you're

playing rock and raw. Tell me about the decision a former band and what the early adventures in forming bands were like. Well, okay, in those days, um, the amplification

and all the equipment was extremely primitive. And at that meeting, I've already told you about with Jim Rodford when he played me Elvis, he had already formed a skiffle group and he played teaches space with a string um and and and a tea chest, and he up to his death he could still get some great notes out of a teacher space with with string and he would do

occasional nights doing that, which was absolutely fantastic. UM. And of course Lonnie Donegan was the first person to bring um his version of blues over which was um, you know, not not quite the blues of Muddy Waters and Johnny Hooker, but it was it was blues and and and people were becoming enamored with that. Jim had got his band, got who were called the Bluetones, and he got and they got some of the earliest electrical equipment in the whole of the south of England and um he was fifteen.

I was eleven at that time when he was in the skiffle group. UM. I went to see him, maybe when I was twelve or third seen and I was so blown away by this, and I thought, well, I have to in some way or other former band whenever I can. UM. And there was one day, UM, a couple of years later from that, I think I was fifteen when I walked into a form room to see a friend another form to my own, and Paul Atkinson

was in the corner. There was a little folk club going on and he was playing an acoustic guitar and I thought, that guy has got a really good sense of rhythm. Um, I wonder if you'd like to be in a band And I said, Um, I'm thinking of forming a band. Do you want to join? He said yeah, I don't mind. I felt fantastic, right and I thought, okay, where can I go from here? And I thought my friend who lived close to me was building a bass guitar.

He never played a note of anything in his life, but I went round to his house that night and um, and I said to him, how's your basically start coming on and he said, well it's nearly finished. I said, fantastic. I said when will it be finished? He said will it be finished this week? Really? I'm I'm there, really with it. I said, fantastic. Do you want to be in a band and he said, well, yeah, I don't mind. And he said, I've got this mate who sits behind

me at school. His name was Arnold A. And Colin Blanstone was b who sat behind him. And he said he plays, he plays guitar and he sings a bit. I said, bring him along, bring him along, And then I thought, okay, we just need a drummer now. And uh as school had an army cadet force. So on that Friday I went along to their march past and I picked out the guy who on military side drum seemed to have the best sense of real And I called him afterwards and said, oh hi, I'm My name

is rod And who you? He said, I'm Hu and and I said do you want to be in the band? He said yeah, that would be good. So within two weeks we had our first rehearsal. Jim Rodford as always a wonderful, wonderfully helpful guy, fantastic enabler, and as I say, it was always a mental to me. And he drove me.

I couldn't drive, and he drove me to our first rehearsal. Um. I remember that in the in the the playground, if you like, um up break, I was going up to Paul Atkinson and said, we should play an instrumental first. We should do this song called Malaguena. He goes down, la la la la la la la la, you know, and and he went, okay, hang on and he kept forget sing it, and I kept saying it to him at every every break, and he sort of learned that we and we all drove up, and we drove up

and we met outside a pub. On this pub, I mean we were we were too young to go into it, but we met outside and as we pulled out, I said to Jim, oh god, I hope that you know. The one guy I didn't know was was Colin Bloodstone. And there was this guy standing there looking really mean, with a plaster across his nose, two black eyes, um, and he was a rugby player and he broken his nose. I said to Jim, oh, my god, I hope that's not him. And it was, of course and we went

and had our first rehearsal. We thought we were great. I mean we Jim showed Hugh the very first kick drum and backbeat that he had ever played, and something simple on the symbols, which, to be fair, Hugh picked up in absolutely no time at all. And then and then uh uh we had all the blue tones gear. So Paul's bass went through this wonderful fox and um, and there was another Vox thirty white amp as well. I think that we the rest of us went through,

including the vocals. Um. And I was supposed to be the singer, so we we we We tried out an instrumental and Colin kept getting the line wrong, so so um. I then wandered over in a break to an old beaten up old piano and I played. I started playing Nutrocker, the old b Bumbler and the stingers um hit at the time, um um dumb da dad, you know, And he came running over to me and said you sound fantastic.

He said you've got to play piano in the group, and I said, well, not really, no, It's it's not as sort of group as the guitar group, isn't it. I mean, no, i'm i'm, I'm, I'm I'm going to be the singer, you know, so he said okay, And then a few minutes later we had another coffee break. He picked up his guitar, started playing an old Rick Nelson's song and started singing. I thought, my God, is so fantastic. And I went over and said, I had no idea you could sing like that. You've got to

be the singer. And okay, I'll play piano. And then for the next two years I suffered the worst beaten up. Old acoustic piano is usually at least to SENDI tone down from concert pitch, so everyone had to tune down, um and and and my life changed the day when I found a hone a pianet, the electric pianet that we actually used for years, and I did, she's not there on that as well. But that's that's that's how the fact. And Jim Rodford, I mean, we thought we

sounded pretty good at that first rehearsal. Then second rehearsal when we didn't have the bluetoone s gear, we thought we sounded terrible. But on that first rehearsal we thought we sounded pretty good. And Jim many many years later said to us, do you know what at that first rehearsal? And I thought, no chance. Okay, so you have that first rehearsal, how what year is that? And how long after that do you start playing gigs? That was the

nine We started playing gigs after about nine months. And when I say started playing, they were few and far between. The first gig we had was a corner's rugby club and they had a dance band evening and an interval. There were about fifteen people there, um you know, probably

about seven couples and one extra bloke. And in the interval we got up and did a half an hour set and the half an hour set went down a complete storm, even with those few people, and what was going on on the terrible amplification and do you know what? We we then started to build up completely a local scene. We never played outside St Orbans. It was always in St Organs. We played about three church halls always um

and um. This rugby club and this rugby club became After fifteen people on that first gig, we then by the end, but that was in nineteen sixty two. I think when we when we had our first gig, or maybe late sixty one, but sixty sixty two and then

um by nineties sixty three. UM, they had to have a marquee that took four or five hundred people, and we used to get four or five hundred people in, you know, to play our and they only they didn't have any proper electrical outlet, so they had a generator, and we knew that the generator would be brilliant for the first hour. After that it would slowly wind down. Eventually there wasn't enough to power my electric piano by the time I got an electric piano, and I would

have to just bang a tam Marine and standard. So how do you start writing songs? I UM. I always thought that the first song I ever wrote was something called It's all Right with Me, which was on our first album UM. But I later found out that I had written a song for the Bluetones, unbelievably um uh, just about the same time that Please Please Me came out. And it doesn't sound like it's derivative of Please Please Me, but it was really um and it does sound a

bit beatly. But they actually their manager really liked the song and he'd gotten to record it in Olympic Studios, which was you know, a major major studio that's where the Stones used to record, etcetera. UM, and so that was the first song I ever wrote. It was called UM, the Lonely One I think it was called the Lonely One UM and UM. So that was the very first song.

The second song we used to do in our Zombies set UM it was called It's all Right with Me and it was like an early rock and roll song, UM with a bit of rhythm and blues thrown in. Then we won a heart Speat competition and the heart Speat competition was it's because it's Heartfordshire, so it was heart speat play on words UM. And we actually played against Jim's band in in the in the final of this competition UM, along with three other fans as well,

and we actually won the competition. And after the competition, after the after we won the final, UM, there was a knock on our dressing room door and it was Dick Roe, who was the head of Decca Records, and he said, we'd like to make a single with you, uh, and we said fantastic, okay, So UM, we we thought we would record the Gershroing song that we did in

an as set summertime. Um. And we were doing it at this very small studio and we got involved then through a friend of one of Chris's relatives was a musician. I think he was. I can't remember in what way, but he was. He was, it's quite a well known a musician in the business. He said, I've got this great friend who's a really good producer. He said, I think you should have a professional producer produce your records.

And we said, well, okay, great, um. And he said also, he said, taking the dip Row Decker contract and get him to look at it and see if there are things in there that shouldn't be in there. And um. This guy was called Ken Jones. We met with Ken, really liked him. He said, Dick Rose contract is pretty good. Actually, he said, but there are one of two things that I would change in that. And he said, these are

my suggestions. So we did. Role was fine with that, and he changed them and we did our first session. And the first session was in two weeks time and he said, Ken said, you know, if you like, he said, I know, we're recording sometimes, he said, but if you like, you could try and write something yourselves. So I went away, and Chris White went away, and Colin just didn't think

any more about it, neither neither did the other two guys. Um. And then Colin couldn't believe it when when I called him and said, I've got this song, can we rehearse it? And that was She's Not There? Um, and and that you know, and that that really was the third song. But really I've always felt that was the second song I ever wrote, and we recorded that in nineties sixty four, in the summer of nineties four. Tell me what the

inspiration was and how you wrote She's Not There? Well, the inspiration was the session coming up, and and the fact that I was just hugely, hugely enthusiastic about music, I mean about any kind of music, but particularly rock and roll at the time, and particularly the Beatles that had just exploded onto the scene and loved, loved everything that they brought to rock and roll music at that time. UM. So I desperately wanted to be part of that, and

I desperately wanted to write. And with that naivety and arrogance that you always have, maybe only once when you're you know, seventeen or eighteen years old, I thought yeah, I can write something that's as good as the Beatles, and and Colin is going to sound fantastic singing it, and the record is going to sound great. I couldn't

imagine anything else. I you know, years later, my god, the pitfalls you have when you're recording and you know the fact that you get a great sound in a record studio and that everything works is you know, that's that's not a higher chance. But at the time, that's what I thought happened. Um and and really and so I thought, okay, I've got I've got a couple of

weeks to write this. So I went back and I thought, right, I'll play I'll play a couple of records, try and get in the mood, see if anything triggers an idea. And I put an old john Ley Hooker song on on to Johnny Hooker album and the first track on the album was no One Told Me. Now. I rushed to add that the that was the only lyric that had anything to do with anything in the song, just that those opening three words no one. No One told me? Um And I thought, you know that that sort of

trips off the tongue. I like the way that trips all the time, I thought I'm gonna I thought to myself, I'm gonna we've a story around that. And the one the one thing in my mind immediately I have to say, was the structure of the song. And I thought, I want to start it with a um, something that has a really blues melody, a blues scale for the melodic part of it, you know, for the verse um, and

that's based around like a minor blues scale UM. And then the second part of the song, I want to go into three part harmony because we always used to do a lot of harmony right from the beginning actually, and I thought that would be great, you know, to include lots of harmony. And then the third part of this song, which turned out to be We'll let me tell you about the way she looked and all that I wanted to really build and I wanted to change the meter of the words to help that as well.

You know, We'll let me tell you about the way she looked, the way she acted, you know, put the stress in the different things. So it just sort of grew and then ended on a major chord, because the whole thing was in the minor ended on a major chord. And then fell right back down again to a moody verse again with a minor blue scar and minor chords, and that was the inspiration really UM. And so there

were all sorts of indirect things coming through UM. The Beatles were an influence in the sense of wanting to have the harmonies, wanting to include all that UM. And actually Ringo was an influence as well from the Beatles, because not not that we copied a riff of his, but the way he used to break up the verse rhythms quite often, like on Ticket to Ride or UM. You know, he would break up the verse rhythm and then go into a more of a steady group and

bit and build things from there. I loved that, and I thought, oh, it would be great to have a little bit of that involved, which is how the bomb but but Blood you know how that came about at

the very beginning UM and uh. Years and years later, I met Pat Matheney when he was just starting out, and I thought it was a fantastic the thing that I've seen that Joe papsts in New York, UM, and he was only just starting to get known and it there was a jazz musician that introduced us, and this jazz musician didn't know who I was, no reason why he should. And he said, old Pat Metheny, this is that. What's your name? And said Rod rod Argent and patmtheny

said Rod Argent. He said you're the guy. He said, with all that modal stuff you played and she's not there. That made me think I had a way ahead doing what I wanted to do with fuse, you know, fusing different elements, etcetera. And I thanked him very much, and I thought to myself, there's nothing modal about she's not there. And I went back and what I had originally thought was just as simple. I am honored to d chord

that the melody worked around. I'd actually put a really little modal scale without even realizing, because I'd listened to a lot of Miles and Milestones, which was the very first modal thing that Mars ever did. Was one of my first jazz purchases. I could only afford the EP, so I bought the EP, and and and so all those sort of indirect influences were coming through, and I think later on um things from classical music were sort of influencing me, but never in a conscious way. Bob.

It was always I thought we were just doing you know, the equivalent of songs, beatless songs or any other hit that was going on at the time, and yet those other things sort of found their way through, and I think it was I think that was totemic of of a lot of English stuff, actually, because I remember talking to John Steele from The Animals and he said that when he played Lethouse the Rising Sun when they recorded it, he was imagining he was playing the Jimmy Smith record

of Walk on the wild Side. So you know, those very indirect things, um, we we're all around. I think so that. I think they were the inspirations of of of starting to write and if She's not there, okay, the Zombies records had a dark quality and that made them magical. Was that in the song? Or was that Ken? Johns Oh, well, I don't I don't want to sound like I'm boasting, but I think it has to be in the song. Really, Um, I don't think it was

it was Ken. I mean, although you know, I must say the you know, the echoes used on Colin's voice, particularly She's not there, We're really really good, um, but he just really used to master my recordings were done very very quickly. We rehearsed. We rehearsed at home. Uh, in my mom's front room actually with the piano. And the poor guy next door was on night work, so that that was that was pretty hard for him. Um,

but he never complained. But um. We used to rehearse everything and then we would record, I think in a three hour session in those very early days, we might do three songs in it or yeah in three hours. Okay, so she's not there, it's cut. Do you think you have a hit? How does it become a hit and what does that feel like? One of the things we did was she's not there was Um. We we recorded it and we thought it sounded pretty good. I thought

it sounded lovely. We're very excited about it. Um, but we thought it needed just something else a little bit. And so in those days, you recorded on four tracks and then you mix the four down to one tomorrow because there was nothing else. There was just mornow and as you if you wanted an extra track, as you

mixed to monow, you would add that extra track. And we added a drum track, which put a flame on the beginning because originally it was a bomb but but but but this became bomb but but plut and and and then just a little bit extra on the on

the bridge into the chorus. UM, and that for me, that was an important part of the record later on, because we thought records only had a life of two or three months, and then then you never hear it again, so, you know, we we go away, and then two or three years later some student engineer at Decca remixed it in stereo, but of course he didn't have that extra

drum track. So very often now even the mix that you hear on quite successful commercials UM is the stereo version without that extra groove, which makes it sound much more cool to me. But with all that in mind, I thought what we ended up with when Ken, when it had all been mixed, because also the you may have heard this story, Bob, but the engineer UM at the time got very very drunk because he had been at a wedding in the afternoon and we were recording

through the night, UM and UM. He passed out, UM. And when he passed out, we we we all carried him upstairs, put him in the cab, and he went home. And Ken Jones said to the Taypop the assistant engineer, you're going to have to carry on with the session. And that tape hop was Gus Dudgeon and that was his first ever That was his first ever um uh

experience as a first engineer, you know. Um. So anyway to two of the sides that we can't were brought round who um uh one of the one of our houses and Kem played it to us and said, we've got to choose which is the single, And it was between She's Not There and You Made Me Feel Good, which was the Chris White b side, um, and we found it hard to make up my mind. We thought they both sounded really good. Um and I was I secretly preferred She's Not There, But then I would wouldn't

I because I wrote it? But um, Luckily for me, the decision came down to um, She's not there, uh and and I and again with that naivety and arrogance, we just, you know, we just expected it to be a hit. We had a huge break because there was almost no place right at the beginning when the record first came out where you could hear records on the radio. The BBC was the only major station that played records, and they had half an hour a week of records, I think that was it, and and they'd only play

half of them, you know. It was that sort of thing. But there was this TV program called Jukebox Jury, and they would play a minute and a half or something like that of a record or two minutes maximum, and the panel would would either vos a hit or a miss. Um and George Harrison happened to be on the week

that we were lucky enough to get this. She's not there but put on Jukebox Jury, and I was watching it like this because you know, the beech the beetles, to us, like to every other young musician at that time, were God's and I thought, please don't let him say

anything bad about the record, Oh please, you know. But Um and I. As each record came on, he was never nasty, but he was sort of saying, well, no, I don't think so, you know, and that sounds pretty ordinary actually to me, you know, and all that, and then we played ours, and I was looking from behind the sofa, you know, and he said, well done, zombies, and then he actually says something about our cart remember what it was now, something about the piano, so is

it said, you know, if that's the if that's their real Paris, that's great. I thought, what what was that? Did I hear that correctly? You know? And and I'm sure that gave it its first leg up. And then very soon after that, all the Pirates started to broadcast with these young DJs who were full of passion and enthusiasm about the music that they were playing, and they played She's Not There a lot, uh, and you know, it was just such a lucky time. I mean, we

were so lucky with that timing. Okay, so that's a huge hit. How does Torno come about? Well, the net The follow up in in the UK was leave Me Be. And it's not that I don't have the utmost respective Chris for longwriter, but we thought it was a terrible record, a terrible single, and we thought it was very really limp and weak. And that came out and it was a huge flop in the UK, and in the end we only ever had one hit in in the UK um,

and I'm sure that was the reason. Um. And then because of that in the States they decided to miss out Leave Me Be and put tell Her No out Now Tell Her Now as a song came about because we've been on a package tour in the UK with Dion Warwick and the Isley brothers. The Isley brothers were they were just fantastic and they were absolutely they became really good friends. And Ronnie Eilis got the most beautiful voice, you know, and and they were giving us all sorts

of tips and they were really really lovely. Um And but Dion Warwick was having hits in the US and in the UK, although most of her hits in the UK were covered by people like Sylla Black UM and Dion Morritt was getting really annoyed about this, you know, because she said, can't you find some of your own songwriters? And I thought, well, do you know what? I love

some of the back right stuff I've been hearing. And I absolutely loved the way that he was taking things away from just playing chords into more jazz informed cards like um without wanting to get too technical, like major seventh major, ninth major e levenths and and and and things like that. And I thought, I would love to, you know, put some of that into what we're doing. And I wrote this song again fairly quickly called tell Her No, which was using these major chords, but with

some jazz colorations in them as well. Now, you know, tell her no. It sounds like a very simple song, and it is. And I always think that when things really work, they always sound simple. But it me that necessarily, um, there's not something nice going on underneath, or something that's a little bit more inventive going on underneath, you just

shouldn't be aware of it. I guess really, um and um anyway that that that was how how Teleno was written, um and um to you know, she used pleasure to us because when we were recording it, as we were recording it, uh um not al Cope al Gallico, publisher in the States, phoned us up, which was a big deal in those days, phone from the U S to UK while we were recording, and so I just wanted you to know that she's not there is number one

so over here now. Um. So we were knocked out. Um. And and then the next thing we sent him was tell her No, And luckily it became a top five record as well. Okay, how does the being ultimately peter out and break up? And then it is the story t about our Cooper pushing the button and time of the season. True, Um, what happened was that although we love Ken and he was a great musician, really good

pianist himself. Um, he was an old school guy. And whereas we felt that on the very first session that he did with us he was a great producer because he just got the best out of the songs, after that he seemed very intent on trying to analyze wasn't made the first record successful? Excuse me? And in his mind he thought, well, you know, there's a really breathy quality to Colin, so we've got to emphasize that. And uh.

And rather than taking whatever song was Chris or I had written and then getting the best out of them, he was trying to fashion them in a certain sort of way. We did. We did a a song, I think our third single in the States was called She's Coming Home, and he tried to fashion it just like the Righteous Brothers of You. You lost that loving feeling. He was putting the same sort of echo on it and throwing it that way, you know, And we thought

this was so wrong. We thought it should just be good production is just getting the very best out of what what you were doing. Anyway, To cut the long story short, we had lots of singles, and none of them were hits in the UK. Um and although we later found out that around the world many of these have been hits actually. Um. But but in those days

you didn't get news all that quickly. You know, you you can have a hit now in our to Mongolia and no within an hour or two, but but in those days, you know, it probably took you might never find out. Um. So it had the result that Chris and I, because we had very honest publishers, um, we got all the money that we would do from writing, so we were doing pretty well and we didn't have money problems. The rest of the band were completely broke.

And because we were based very much in the UK, and I have to say, there was a little little bit of exportation going on, and we'd be on tour in America and we'd be on tour with big hit records and and and and playing with on massive shows to twenty people and just breaking even by the time we got back, and somebody else was making a huge amount of money and it wasn't us. So that was their situation. And one day, um, well, there were two things. Okay.

So first of all, we were looking back on the singles that we recorded, and Chris and I were thinking what happened to that song? We did a demo on the demos a lot better than the final record you know where Where's we recorded? Um? One of my sons called is this a Dream? And it was really rocking in the studio and we were never allowed into the mixes. Um. Ken Jones would always insist on mixing it by himself.

And we came back from the pub after he had mixed it, and Colin said, is that the song we recorded? I mean he thought it was almost a different song. Um. And we've had enough of this, you know. And I said to Chris, look if we're going to break up because some of the guys have got no money and Paul Atkinson was getting married to Molly Molly malloy and he said, I've got no money and I want to get married. I've got to get another job. I'm sorry, guys,

but I'm going to leave. And we were all still friends. There was no antipathy in the band. We were just we were all friends. Um. But things were breaking down and I said to Chris, look, we've got we've got to do at least one album where we can write some material and have it realized in the way at least that we hear it, and if nobody likes it, there's nothing we can do. But at least, you know, we feel satisfied that we've actually got it down on record.

And so and I had to say that Ken was great about this, and he said, okay, if you want to produce something yourself, he said, I'll support you. I'll go to UM. I'll go to E M I and see if I can get you a deal. And I asked, you said you should try and record an abbey Road And we said, well, surely you have to be signed to E M I to record Abbey Road. And I said, you know, the Beetles are uh the biggest act there. So anyway, he got it somehow he used his influence.

We've got a thousand pounds, which even then wasn't a huge amount of money to do an album. And we walked into Abbey Road just as the Beatles a week before had walked out having recorded Sergeant Pepper and they had left quite a lot of stuff around the studio. Thank god that John Lennon left his meloton there and without asking him, Sorry, John, UM, I just used it

and and used it all over. Obviously an oracle, but it was great because we because we had no money, we really rehearsed and rehearsed, and we rehearsed, and we put the back into acts down and and and the lead vocal as we heard it and the harmon is actually But then because the Beatles have worked out technically how to get slightly more than four tracks, they managed

to get seven tracks. Um. They didn't have an eight track machine in the country like Brian Wilson had had, but they managed to get the boffins at Abbey Road to work out a way of having seven tracks. And so what we would do is we would record exactly as we heard things, and it would be recorded in a way that we'd heard it. And we were over the moon about this. And then even though it was really prepared, we had a bit of spontaneous chance of

improvisation or just a last minute thought. And even on on the time of the season. I remember we recorded that and another track, the backing track of it, in three hours time the season as something else. At the same time. Um, and as we were playing through we all thought it sounded pretty good. Um and um, But I said to Hugh where it had been doom doom doom, sorry, doom doom doom check, doom doom doom chap like that.

I said, sounds great, But I said, you know what, I can hear a bit of percussion either side of the backbeat. I can hear doo doo doo ah like that. And honestly, he said, well, if you hear that, he said, you know, we've still got a few minutes going there

and bang it through. And we had Jeff Emrick as um engineer on that particular track, and I had to say, right from the beginning, the sound was brilliant, and there was something about even when we recorded before those those bits um, there was something magical about the way he'd recorded the tom tom's with the bass. It just sounded. It sounded so right, and we were really excited. But we put this improvisation thing um and that that's the

one I really remember on that that particular track. It was done so quickly, but when it finished, we thought, that's the best we can do for an album. We were all all really happy with all the tracks. We thought it was great, but we thought, if no one likes it, what can we do? You know. So anyway, it came out in the UK because everything was very based locally at that time. It was it was much

more hard. It was even hard from a business point of view to go to the States because I mean we at one point we had to um swap on the Musicians Union with a Duke Ellington orchestra, you know, so all these things were going on. Um. But it finished and then we thought, we put one single out. If the single was a hit, fantastic. If it's not, then okay, at least we've got something that we really like and it's there. So we have one DJ in the hole of the country who liked it, Kenny Everett.

This guy called Kenny Everett who was a really cool DJ, and we had one meeting with him and he said, I hear you're broken up, and we said, yeah, yeah, but well we've had you know, we've put the first single out. Nobody's playing it, he said, I play it, he said, And he played it once a week on his program or something like that. But it just died of death and we broke up and that was the reason.

But we were really happy from how it sounded um, but we were unhappy from the fact that it wasn't a hit, of course, and then if anyone has said to us that in fifty five years time it would be selling far more every year, and it ever did when it first came out, we we did. We have thought he was absolutely crazy. But you know, that's the weird thing about life. So after me the record is a gigantic smash. The band has already broken up. What

is that experience? Like, how do you decide to form Argent? Well, as soon as the Zombies broke up, I stayed together professionally with Chris White, and we decided to form a production company and then we start. Then we thought, okay, we're going to have to try and get someone to finance this production partnership. And I didn't think how we

were going to do that. But then suddenly we'd already well formed by by Argent at the time that that UM the Time of the Season started to be a hit in the States, because it came it was a hit eighteen months after UM. Obviously an Oracle came out, and I mean that was in sixty seven where we actually finished it, and it was sixty nine before it finally like like crawling up the up the top hundred until it finally ended up right at the top, which

was just wonderful. UM. And we only found that out actually two or three months before it reached number one, because we've got a call from our Gallico, the publisher in America, saying, this is starting to be a hit. He said, One guy in Idaho in Boise, Idaho are starting to play this, just one guy, he said, and unbelievably in a very very slow pattern, like a like a stone in the pond. The ripples are starting to cause UM success and and those ripples are causing people

UM to start spreading the news. And then of course it absolutely caught fire at a certain point, and then it and then then with complete wonder we were looking at the you know, the top twenties, seeing some of their heroes, uh beneath us, you know, and there there we were, and it was wonderful and actually it felt it felt glorious because already Chris and I were able to go over to UM Clive Davis and we're able to say we've got a number one single that Chris

and I have produced UM and we've already planned a solo album for Colin Bloodstone, which was one year, um, which I still think is a great album. UM and UM. And we formed another band called Argent and we played two or three tracks that we've already got and he loved it and he and and he said, yeah, okay, we'll we'll, we'll, we'll released that. UM. I mean Clive was was one of the guys that I'm sorry, I'm going back to your previous question now. Uh. He was.

He was the guy that said, um, when our Cooper came over in sixty seven, UM, he just signed with Clive Davis as the top A n R man in CBS. UM, and he came over to the UK and he wrote this thing which said, um, I bring back two hundred albums. And you know the the rows amongst Thorns were were obviously an oracle. And he went back at a meeting with Clive Davis and said, there's only one album that I think that wherever that is, whoever is, he's got it.

UM in the whole world. You've got to buy it is. It doesn't matter how much it costs, You've got to buy that album and release it. And Clive said, well, we've we've we've bought it, but we decided to to to to not not not release it, you know, we passed and and Alan said, well, you you've got you've got to you've got to release it, and he was on um. It was it was completely to al that that it was down to him that it was released.

It would not have released otherwise. And then Clive, who didn't really see it at that time, released um Bush's Tail, which is one of my favorite albums on the album but never a single in a million years. I loved his song. I thought it was great, an anti war song um and of course it was a it was a stiff and then he released Caraself forty four which

also did nothing. And then finally, as a last gasp, you put Time in the Season out and of course it was then that it was a hit, and so he was then really really up for doing a production contract and and and releasing Oja. So for Chris and I it was like a dream. We were going over with the number one record and it felt really easy to to form a form an album and we were off. Okay, so you have a production company, how do you hook up with Russ Ballard and decide you're going to be

back in a group. And then the first two records have great tracks, but there's not really any financial success commercial success. We went into a uh Russ and Bob Henrick. Russ ball and Bob Henrick, we're playing in Unit four plus two at the time, and Jim Rodford again. I formed argent with Jim and he said, you know, he said, there's a great drama that's playing in Unit four plus two at the moment. He wasn't the Roulettes with Russ Ballard.

They were in the Roulettes together, and they're they're two really really good people. I've never seen him play, and he said, you should really try and catch them, see what you think. And Chris and I found out they were playing a little church hall, and I said, I'll tell you what, Chris. We'll pretend that we were just passing and we saw the sign outside that it was Unit four plus two and we're wandering and and and just to say hello and um, just as an accident.

We'll be passing and we're walking and we we sought out this little church hall in the back of beyond and we went past this um this church hall, and we went in until our horror, we couldn't lose ourselves at the back of the hall because there are only about ten people in the hall. So so we we sat at the back of the hall or were still at the back of the hall feeling and they looked and saw us and sort of went, you know, because they fainally knew it. They sort of had messas I think,

or at least they knew Chris or something I can't remember. Um, but anyway, or we knew Lem Lubin. I think we knew Lem Lubin who was in the in the in the band. Anyway, we went back we we thought they were great. I thought I thought Russ was fantastic when he when he was singing bits and pieces, because I think it was Tommy Moyler that was mainly the lead singer. Um. And we went backstage afterwards and they had a new manager and we felt really embarrassed because we were sitting

at the back of the hall, back of the changing room. Uh. And the the manager went crashing in his new manager and said, um, I can tell you in three words what's wrong with this band. And we sort of looked at him and thought, of God, we shouldn't be there really, and he said stop drinking, and were completely apart because those three songs were stopped drinking those three words so well stopped drinking anyway. We thought they were great and

we asked them. We we we met up with him in London and said, look, we're starting this this thing. I've got a couple of songs I've written, like honey at the time, um, and I can't remember a couple of things. And they said, yeah, I think we play some demos that we had and they really liked it and said yeah, yeah, we should, we should, we should. And we said and I said, well, we've got to have a name. Um. And but we were going to call them because of Argent meaning silver, we were going

to call them something like silver, Surfa or something. We said, well, no, we can't call it that that that's that's not right, um. And in the end Bob Henry said we should call it Argent. I said no, no, no, because it was one of those things like when you're in the back of the classroom. I was always really embarrassed when when my name came out Argent, you know, I thought, you know, reminded me of school sort of thing. But in the end, against my against what I wanted to do, he made

it UM. He decided to that that we'd had the name as Argent, and so that became the name of the of the record of the group and then the first record UM and we and we formed the band and we did the first album in a very small studio that had just started and it was a great little studio called Sound Techniques. And we loved the album. We really were very very proud of our first album, Argent.

In some ways, it's still my favorite album, but it was it sounded like very much UM, a natural UM, a natural follow on from what what we've been doing with the zombies UM. And they loved it as well. They loved obviously Oracle and everything UM and we recorded this thing. Now. The one thing that was bad about that and and Ring of Hands, which was the second band, was that we felt the actual sound quality in Sound Techniques. We thought it was great, but we thought it was

a bit small as a sound. And then if you heard it against UM another hit record that will come out. Their records always sounded a bit more powerful and strangely enough, not that long ago, a few years ago, maybe ten years ago, they had they made Sony made a five a five CD box set, UM of CDs that they they remastered it, and they remastered with the sort of marvelous things that you can do these days with remastering

with multi band compression. So suddenly it felt that the part that the parts that we put on the album was suddenly able to um compete with the sort of albums from whatever was around. It would be the right level, it would have the right impact of everything that was

going on. Unfortunately they deleted from the five CD box set and I can't get it anymore now, but that that really it was a great thing for me to get to get that and and I really think that if we'd have managed to get a bigger our sound from the album, we just stood a much more chance of having a hit record with the with the with the first album, and and that was the main reason why we went to abbey Road again for for the

album which became hold your Head Up in It. Um. It was because of that, because we wanted a bigger sound out of what we were doing. But I still think that we were most at one with those first two albums, and I still absolutely love those first two albums, and I think that Russ's voice was really really special. Um In the way that he could be really powerful at the same time when he was singing um more tenderly if you like, he had this wonderful high lyrical

quality as well when he was singing Listen. Liar is one of my favorite tracks of all time. Literally, I will say I didn't buy the album when Napster Hit was one of the first songs I downloaded. To this day, I played incessantly the sound of the record. Mean three Dark Knight cover is good, but it's nowhere close to the original. Oh bless you mate, Yeah, well, thank you. Well. We loved it, and our idea was that the actual chorus of b that I should have really smashed out.

But of course it had the effect because the actual sound as it was at the time was that a little bit quieter, So it made a lot of the verses sounded very quiet, and then the liar sort of came out at the sort of normal level in a sense, it wasn't. It didn't end out when it was on the radio sounding us as dramatic, dramatic as it should have been. Um, But I I thought it was beautifully put together, and I loved how we were all playing.

I thought Jim Rodford as well. I thought the best bass playing at that time was really fantastic UM and Bob's drumming was really solid, you know, and exciting. It was. It was those first two or three years were really really great fun and we had some very bad experiences. We did. We did a one of the first venues that we did was in the It was either the Whiskey of Go Go or The troubad Or, I can't remember.

And to our amazement when everybody turned out, Frank's Apple was there, Jimi Hendrix, Um, Eric Burden, just just everybody was there and we zoomed into the first record. I had two Leslie's and they were amplified from UM UH a changing room that the UM support band had on the support band, and I can quite understand this. We're drowned out by this Leslie speaker in their changing room UM and that was so that we could amplify the

Leslie speakers without it being having feedback. So the actual effect was that after the first two minutes of the first song, you suddenly couldn't hear the organ for the rest of the whole the whole set and the organ was a really big part of what we were doing, and I was. It just sounded like disaster to me,

and people were very sort of kind about it. But you know, it was a really it was the opposite of Elton John doing the was it the whiskey Truber or I can't remember, you know when he came from nowhere? But I had this suddenly, this shuge, huge explosion of success, you know, But we had the complete opposite because what had been great gigs for us just turned out to be, you know, no real impact. So that that was really

a great sense. You know a lot of things went wrong in a in a okay, So ultimately you cut all together, now hold your head up as a gigantic kit. You followed up with God gave rock and roll to you on the In Deep album, which really was as stiff at the era and has become classic because of covers thereafter, even though I think your version is the best. Um, so walk us through the creation of that, the disappointment and the ultimate leaving of Russ from margin. Well, I

mean there were there were several reasons. Really, Um, I think that um, God gave rock and roll to you when it started, Um, it was actually it was a rock and roll tempo. It was. God gave rock and roll to you know. It was like a double time almost rock and roll thing. Um but as we always did. I mean, Russ was a great songwriter, but um, as always we were, all four of us, would would would take an original idea and we would mess around with

the arrangement hugely. And and I have to say, I don't know if Russia remembers at this, but I said, do you know what we could do? We could make it halftime. God gave rock and roll to, you know. I said, we could have quite heavy, almost like an industrial field to it. And I changed one of the chords. Um, DoD DoD DoD do that bit there, um and uh. And we worked on it, and then we worked on really having cascading vocals and everything at the end. And

we weren't thinking of it. We weren't thinking of it as a single at the time. We were thinking it purely as an album track and starting and having many layers and then really building at the very end to a this cascading harmonies, you know, which which we really loved when it When it came out, um and uh, it was it was used um as as a single after it came out and people, I love the song basically, and you know, first of all, we weren't thinking of it as a as a single, and in fact, we

weren't thinking of Hold Your Head Up as a single either. Um. In fact, no one was having singles at that particular time. But it became a hit when they when they cut out three and a half minutes of organ solo, which is fair enough, you know, um, But you know, it was all it was all really good at the time, but then it's like everything else. It's like with the Beatles. I mean, I always sort of the Beatles as the

first progressive UM group ever, right from the beginning. I mean, whether it was Revolution number nine, or whether it was trying their ideas on helter skelter or whatever it was, or using music concrete or or whatever. There was so much of that going on, and we were always trying to go to the edge of boundaries, and we were always trying to push things and they didn't always work in in in a way that they should have done, but we were trying all the time to do it.

And in the end Russ wanted to do much more straightforward songs, and I quite understand that and we remained really good friends. But in the end, it's that I'm gonna, you know, I'm going to leave and just go for a solo career and just do some more straightforward songs, and that that seemed fair enough to me at the time. And and and then and then we broke up. You know, that was it really tell me. The story of the

creation recording of Hold Your Head Up. Hold Your Head Up was done Chris White and I shared UM an apartment we had We had a bedroom each, and there was a third guy who did the um the artwork for obviously an oracle as well, so that that was the three of us and we had a room each at the time we were just doing that. At the beginning, UM, Hold your Head Up was a song that Chris came

into me and said, I've got this song. And I had to say that if you're talking about a song that comes from lyrically and UM from the guitar motif, then that was absolutely Chris White. UM. But then again, like with everything, Chris and I used to work on things together, change some of the chords and and do one thing and another. And I did as I always did. I did lots of the arranging side of what was going on and how we were going to structure the

whole thing together. Um, but that original motif, you know, and and that lovely guitar motif was was Chris White's. Um. So he did the song. We went into Abbey Road to to record it. We didn't even record, we didn't even rehearse it. We went in to record it and we played it through to Bob Henry and we we

did the unbelievably. I mean, we did thirty two takes on it, but we took tape one and um, it was six and a half minutes, and we just went on and built, you know, just improvised the middle part and just built, built it and built it until at

the end we were happy with what we got. And my god, we stayed there for another four or five hours, doing about thirty two takes, but we went back to one because the great thing was that everyone was really really listening, and Barbara Henry was listening so acutely to too where the song was going. And unbelievably we got through the whole thing without making mistakes. But it felt fresh and fresh and improvised, and we thought immediately we

could do much better. But we never never achieved anything better. It was just that fresh, early um, early response to the original idea, um and and and and that's how it turned out. And unbelievably, um we all sang on the chorus um and it was actually which nobody got until absolutely recently. It was the words will holding it

Chris why it wrote it? And he had his wife in mind, and it was because she was going to a difficult time and it was hold your head up woman basically not not whole as everyone thought it was you, but I would go ah at the top and that sort of covered the woman really. Um. So, so that that was the story of the of the single. Really, But what was it like when it all of a sudden became it was everywhere in the summer of seventy two, I mean it became absolutely gigantic, bigger than anything you'd

experienced previously. What was that experience from your viewpoint? Well, it was fantastic again. But um, when we when we toured, we never had this sort of we never had the sort of manager the I mean it wasn't that the managers were We're bad or cheating or anything like that. They just weren't really quite the right quality UM. And it really strange enough, it's only in the you know, to delete Mars forward, and I only do that for

a set. UM. In the last six or seven years, we've suddenly had um management that I've got everything right and I've understood everything they should be doing, which means that that it's enabled us to grow in this incarnation of the Zombies Pristance. But the but at that time there were always things wrong from the management side of a point of view, UM and and I'm sure that's what actually went wrong with it. But we had some

great shows. You know, we had some really great shows UM, but we we had some disastrous, very very important gigs. There was one gig in New York that we did and we've just done the previous day. In Canada, We've done a gig with Richie Blackmore for Rainbow, UH and I have to you know, I don't know if if Rischie would agree, but we we really went down very

much better than than the Rainbow went down. And then our next gig was in New York and we have this big gig there and by halfway through our show, everyone's response are completely tailed off because someone had really UM it was a real tragedy. They'd really, uh, what's what's the what's the word they I can't think the word. But they become a disaster because someone had We had

a disaster with the organ. They they they pulled some plugs out or something, and it was like playing a very small light sound on the organ instead of the roaring sound that we should have had. And so for instance, in in in hold your head up when it should have been um completely blowing things away. It was it was really disaster and we were absolutely yeah, it was disasters for us. And I remember going um to Maxis Karasas City afterwards and I just I just wanted to

commit suicide. I happened to meet Brian May there and said, we just had the most awful gig in the world, you know. He said, oh, I'm sure it wasn't that bad, but it but it was. We had some uh, some people, you know, um making a mess of things. Okay, So Argent breaks up, You become a producer. You have a gigantic hit with Tanita ticker hum, twisting my sobriety, and then she completely disappears. How did you find her? How did you create? The hit? Was the video was all

over MTV and why did she disappear? My My, my colleague, my co production colleague was Pete Peter van Hook, who for years was Van Morrison's drummer UM and his tour manager at the time with someone called Paul Charles who became the head of a really big agency UM. And he found Tanita tick around at the age of seventeen, just playing with a single guitar in a small club and that's the only thing that she's done. And and

Paul asked us to produce an album for her. So he said, I want I want to get a deal with UM. I can't remember who the deal was now, but anyway, he wanted just he wanted to get a deal, uh, and I think the Universal I can't remember, but UM he said, will you do three demos? So we did three demos and one of those demos was Twist Twisting my Sobriety. But Pete had the inspired idea that that she should sound really comfortable, she should feel really at

home when she recorded. So he said, I'm going to put down a little drum machine that gives a very simple um metronomes sort of effect. UM, and then she's going to play an acoustic guitar and on the acoustic guitar, UM is, this is going to be something that she's totally at home with, and it's just gonna be voice and guitar. And so she she did this. It was just a very simple UM demos sort of drum track

on a drum machine. She laid down the guitar and then she did what became the master vocal and then Pete and I started building up on much more UM uh complicated UM surround for her musically, UM and I put people a drum, a proper drum track on, I put a keyboard based on it, I put some uh an oboe line, and I put one or two other things on as well. UM and it sounded absolutely beautiful.

And we did we did the whole album like that, and on one or two of the tracks we we which exactly the same thing, and on one or two things we changed the the chords completely and and and put some very um, very sophisticated chords around what she was doing. But it worked beautifully because she felt totally at home doing it. UM and I think that could only ever happen once when she was seventeen, because it was a huge hit. It sold something like four million

albums worldwide, uh, in particularly in Europe. UM. And after that, quite understandably, she wanted to use her own touring band instead of US, just UM building up a surround for her UM. And she did that and and it was

I think it was a more ordinary result. And then after that she wanted to co produce it, and for me it became again even more ordinary, even though some of the stuff was nice on it, and and and the sales just went from four million I think the second second album did a million and a half, which was still yeah, good. But then after that it was almost nothing until it just faded away. And it's a great shame. But um, I thought it was very special.

The first album absolutely most of the world agreed. Okay, at this late date, who owns your songs? And do you get appropriately paid? The earlier stuff? Is that reverted in the UK? You talked about our Galago Calico. In the US, copyright seems to be forever we have reversion rates. What's the status of all you're publishing? Um it it was owned. The deal was done in the sixties, so it was a fifty fifty deal as everything was then

UM and it remained a fifty fifties deal. UM. Uh So all the early stuff UM, including the ours A stuff as as well, was with a company called Marquis Music and Verily Music, which was owned by Carol Broughton, and it was totally UM. That has now transferred but still on a similar basis to UM wise music who seem really good. I mean that's only happened recently, but all that early stuff is I'm afraid. But then most things in the sixties were and in the early seventies

were that UM and UM. And that's just how things are at the moment. Okay. It's so at this point, if you didn't want to have any other forms of income, does enough come in from your songs that you could live a comfortable life. Yes, And that's what's been wonderful, because the thing is it it means that we can we can do what we want through enthusiasm and energy UM.

And we can still do the absolutely rejuvenating thing of continuing to make music in the way that we've always aid music and and and get excited about how we're recording, and and and and through making a musical idea of work and and seeing that start to come together. Um and and and the thing is those early things from she's not there time of the season and tell her no,

hold your head up, and one or two other things. Um, they that they've really provided a fantastic income which has given the freedom to be able to do what we want to do. Um. You know, because this is a

very short life really that everybody has. As you get older, it feels shorter and shorter, and it just means that that you know, you can actually you can actually um continue to do what you want to do and to build things, and to continue to write and and then have that wonderful, rejuvenating feeling of being able to go on the road um and and see people who a completely different generation often respond to what we're doing, um

and getting that energy back from from people sometimes. I mean, obviously we've got people of our our own age who listened to us, but also we have some very young people as well. We always have a young component in the audience. UM. And and the thought of still being able to still be able to connect with people of a present generation is it's really unlooked for and quite extraordinary and and and that's something that I would never have dreamed of. Actually, so I think we feel very

lucky to be at that point. Well, right, this has been brilliant. You're a great storyteller. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to me. Oh, thanks so much. Thank you. Till next time. This is Barberth Sex