There are so many stories behind some of the hits that it would take forever to tell them all, but, from time to time, I like to share some of those stories with you. I find them interesting and I hope you do too.

One of my favorite groups of the British Invasion was The Zombies. While the songs were really good, the thing that really caught my ear about the Zombies was the smokey, mysterious voice of their lead singer, Colin Blunstone. His almost whispered vocals on their hits like "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No" really made their records stand out of the pack.

By the way, Blunstone went on to have a very successful solo career in England and he and the Zombies founder, Rod Argent, tour as the Zombies from time to time.

At any rate, to get to the story about "Time of the Season"...Back in 1967, the group had just finished work on what would be their last album. It was called Odyssey and Oracle." As a side note, they misspelled the word "odyssey" on the album cover as "odessey", but we can forgive them for that despite the fact that they had a reputation as one of the best educated groups in England.

Getting back to the point of the story: When the group finished recording the album all of the members were not on the best of terms and they decided to call it quits. Colin Blunstone went to work for the British Postal Service and Rod Argent formed a new group called, quite simply, Argent. The album was released in 1967 and didn't really draw a lot of attention at the time since the band was not around to tour and support the record.

Then, in the early weeks of 1969, a full two years after the album was released and the band had split, someone discovered a cut on that album and the record company decided to release that song as a single despite the fact that, by that time, there was no group called The Zombies.

The song took off and got up to #3 on the Billboard charts and the darn ting sold a million copies much to the surprise of Rod Argent and Colin Blunstone. The group didn't decide to get back together, but they had their only million seller anyway.

If you enjoy stories like this one, join us this weekend for more such stories as we feature a Million Sellers Weekend on 92-9 The Lake.

Here's the song

 

 

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