Music Blog

Tell It To Me Slowly

Nancy's Notes 🖊️🎶

This is Glyn’s Mixed Music Bag – Week 52 and we are
asked to choose a song by a group or solo artist whose
name begins with the letters X, Y or Z. This is my choice.

Artwork from the album Odessey & Oracle

This is week 52 and the penultimate challenge for Glyn’s Mixed Music Bag for 2024. This week I have once again chosen a group from the letter Z category …. a band I have liked since their first hit in 1964. My group is the Zombies.

The second UK band following the Beatles to score a #1 hit in the US, the Zombies infiltrated the airwaves with the sophisticated melodies, breathy vocals, choral back-up harmonies and jazzy keyboard riffs of their 1960s hit singles “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No”. Ironically, the group broke-up just prior to achieving their greatest success – the worldwide chart-topping single “Time of the Season”, from their swan-song album Odessey & Oracle, ranked #100 in Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

Following the break-up of the original band, lead vocalist Colin Blunstone went on to develop an acclaimed solo career (including the hit “What Becomes of the Brokenhearted”) and keyboardist/songwriter Rod Argent rocked ‘70’s arenas with his eponymous band ARGENT (“Hold Your Head Up”, “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You”), but the legend of the Zombies continued to take on a life of its own. By the start of the new millennium, Blunstone and Argent were inspired to resurrect the Zombies.

The explosive 2015 release of Still Got That Hunger, their 6th studio album, proved that Zombies fever was stronger than ever and their 2019 Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction marked a major triumph in their 5-decade career. After receiving their 4th nomination in five years, the support for the Zombies’ induction among the public and their peers was undeniable; the band placed 4th in the public online poll with over 330,000 votes. On March 29, 2019 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, the Zombies joined Stevie Nicks, Radiohead, The Cure, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, and Roxy Music as the 2019 Class of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Fittingly, the induction ceremony took place exactly 50 years to the day after the Zombies’ classic “Time of the Season” first hit #1 on the charts in the US.

To this day, generations of new bands have cited the Zombies’ work as pop touchstones and the band continues to be embraced by new generations of fans. Now, as we approach a new year, the Zombies’ story continues with tour dates scheduled for Spring 2025.

“She’s Not There” is the debut single by the Zombies, written by keyboardist Rod Argent. The song was recorded after the group won a talent contest that led to a recording session; they were all teenagers at the time. “She’s Not There” reached #12 on the UK Singles Chart in September 1964 and #1 on the US Billboard Hot 100. Rod Argent built on the lyrics from a John Lee Hooker song called “No One Told Me”, which became a part of the opening phrase of “She’s Not There”.

From 1964, this is a very campy version of “She’s Not There” by the Zombies.

“Tell Her No” was another hit single from the Zombies’ debut album. It peaked at #6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in March 1965 but was only a minor hit for the Zombies in the UK where it peaked at #42. According to Rod Argent, “Tell Her No” was influenced by the music of Burt Bacharach and Hal David; with its slowed-down tempos, the song proved to be a good follow-up to “She’s Not There”.

From 1965, this is “Tell Her No”

“Time Of The Season” from the album Odessey & Oracle was recorded at EMI (now known as Abbey Road Studios). More than a year after it’s release, the track became a surprise hit in the US, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Cashbox chart.  The song did not chart in the UK (despite being re-released twice), but it later found fame with Rod Argent saying that it became “a classic in the UK, but it was never a hit”. I wonder if, all those years ago, the band could have dreamed the phrase “Who’s your daddy” would become a bit of a phenom!

This is “Time Of The Season” by the Zombies

Mixed Music Bag 2024 – week 52 – Yeah, it’s Christmas.

Big thanks to Glyn Wilton for hosting Mixed Music Bag every week. Please be sure to follow the link and check out Glyn’s site.

Thanks for joining me today and spinning some tunes.

See you on the flip side. 😎

NAR©2025

All text, graphics and videos are copyright for Nancy ~ The Sicilian Storyteller, Nancy (The Sicilian Storyteller), The Sicilian Storyteller, The Elephant’s Trunk, and The Rhythm Section and are not to be used without permission. NAR©2017-present.

33 thoughts on “Tell It To Me Slowly”

  4. As a teen at that time, and a musician, I dug the Zombies. My band of juvenile delinquents with guitars, tried to learn Tell Her No and She’s Not There. They were not talented enough to pull it off, so we stuck with Gloria and Satisfaction. I saw Argent at the Dunes Danceland in Port Aransas in 1970, and they were fantastic. Great pick. Ahhh..those were the days.

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    1. A couple of years after the Zombies came on the scene, I was the singer in a Lutheran high school band. We loved these songs and practiced them for a talent show but when one of the teachers got wind of the songs, we weren’t allowed to perform them. We never did find out exactly why they banned us; maybe it was the Zombies name or perhaps the uptight teachers were bothered by a female singer singing about girls. Whatever the reason, we got the rep as the band that got banned and for us, that was pretty cool!

      We loved Argent, too. Hold Your Head Up came out the year we were married and we played that album till we wore away the grooves. The next year they came out with the anthem, God Gave Rock & Roll To You. Great stuff!

      Thanks, Phil.

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  6. ‘She’s Not There’ took off when the Zombies played it on a British music show, Juke Box Jury, which was a British version of American Bandstand and, as it happened, George Harrison of The Beatles was on the panel that week and he loved the song.  This song is about an alluring woman who won’t be tied down to one man, and the singer wants to tell us all about her, but he can only use words, since she’s not there.

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  9. Wonderful choice! Probably one of the most underrated bands of their time, but as you showed they made some great music. Fun weird fact: despite never making our charts, Time Of The Season has a silver disc for over 200k sales. Richly deserved, in my view.

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      1. Good for you! I had no musical ability whatsoever!

        Rod was right. We had a series of sampler albums here, in which companies sold a record at around a third of the price of a full album. Selected tracks from their catalogue in the hope we’d buy the real things. I had Time Of The Season on one of those, which I think shows the label’s lack of confidence in it!

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