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Sun 20 September 2026 10:00, UK
Success isn’t always instant, and some of music’s biggest icons – from The Kinks to David Bowie – had to experience their fair share of flopped releases and disappointments before striking upon a hit. By 1968, The Zombies were reaching the end of their tether, until one “last gasp” track dragged them into the mainstream at long last.
Emerging from the unlikely rock and roll haven of St Albans in 1962, The Zombies were perfectly positioned to take advantage of the blossoming British invasion period, ushered in by The Beatles’ inaugural trip across the Atlantic Ocean. Despite fostering hits like ‘She’s Not There’ in 1964, though, the band couldn’t quite garner the same longevity or continued success as, say, The Rolling Stones, despite their best efforts.
In the grand scheme of things, that ‘British Invasion’ period was rather short-lived, quickly subsiding in favour of the psychedelic sounds of ‘peace and love’ hippiedom and the anti-war movement. As such, a multitude of the English groups that found star-spangled success during the invasion quickly switched tack, with The Stones recording era-defining anthems like ‘Street Fighting Man’. The Zombies, however, perhaps went a little too high-brow with their countercultural efforts, ‘Butcher’s Tale’ being the archetypal example.
An anti-war track centred around the First World War, albeit made to relate to the movement against the Vietnam War, ‘Butcher’s Tale’ was an ambitious effort from the band, but one that, as keyboardist Rod Argent declared, was “never a single in a million years.”
Speaking to Sound on Sound, he added, “Al Kooper couldn’t believe that they’d released that as a single.”
The Zombies had already been without a mainstream hit for a number of years and were beginning to reach the end of their tether. According to Argent, the band believed 1968’s Odessey and Oracle would be their final farewell, admitting defeat after years of falling ever further into obscurity. “As a last gasp,” Argent recalled, “they put out ‘Time Of The Season’.”
Released in September 1968, at the end of the so-called ‘Summer of Love’, that single wasn’t an immediate success on either side of the Atlantic. As the months marched on, though, the stylish, seductive single started to gain more and more traction.
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“That was like a stone being thrown into a pond,” the keyboardist said. “The ripples started to go out and affect the surrounding areas, and it grew. It grew in a very slow way, in the way that things could in those days, and it took six months for it to climb the charts in America.”
When it finally became a hit, though, it managed to break into the top three of the US singles charts, re-establishing The Zombies on the mainstream stage and effectively saving the previously failing band from the brink of oblivion.
As far as ‘last gasps’ go, creating one of the greatest songs of the 1960s is pretty unbeatable, but it wasn’t quite enough to keep the band together. By the time the song peaked at number three, The Zombies had already split up in the face of declining relevancy, and it wouldn’t be until the late 1980s that they finally regrouped.
