“Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies”

The movie opens in a church, where Zombies’ vocalist Colin Blunstone is found singing to Rod Argent’s organ playing. The camera follows the two men walking around the church, which was fitting because Argent’s childhood was spent performing with church choirs. Argent and Blunstone chuckle over the memory that the former was initially the lead singer, and the latter was happy to play rhythm guitar.

Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary cleverly enters the 21st century by incorporating a number of YouTube clips with young influencers critiquing the record in their particular vernacular.

Director Robert Schwartzman (son of Rocky/The Godfather mainstay Talia Shire) was born long after the band’s heyday, but in one way that’s fitting because Odessey and Oracle didn’t earn its title as a chamber-pop masterpiece until the 21st century when people like Paul Weller championed it. In some ways, their music was meant to be enjoyed by younger, more discerning audiences: groove and soul inflections weren’t the flavors proffered by The Beatles or The Rolling Stones in 1968.

Blunstone makes for a self-effacing interviewee. “To my complete shame, I came up with the name The Sundowners!” He had a sharp falsetto, which served ballads including “Time of the Season” and “This Will Be Our Year” well. Argent recalls the riff for “She’s Not There”, which he considered to be a “relationship story.” It won over George Harrison, who praised the chord sequence on a live television interview. Decades after that happened, Blunstone looks perplexed.

Pressure was put on the band to record a debut, Begin Again, completed in “two evenings.” Blunstone was drained and mumbled throughout “Tell Her No”, a single that hit the top 10.

These “skinny little kids” found themselves in the States, worried that they wouldn’t do their R&B covers justice. How different they look in the present day: White, Argent, and Blunstone walk around Abbey Road studios, amazed at how much has changed since recording their sophomore work. Still sprightly, the septuagenarian Argent races over to a piano to produce a bouncy lick, engaging with the memories gone by.

The Zombies prided themselves on harmonies, even devoting an entire track in Abbey Road to backing vocals. The Zombies paid very close attention to the little details within the nuances. Some of the archive footage, particularly snaps of The Beatles, isn’t new, but where Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary succeeds is in the talking heads. Blunstone is particularly emotional when he discusses the dissolution of the first iteration: “I would have been really interested to know what we would have done next.”

Blunstone candidly discusses his family background. Born out of wedlock, he had a difficult relationship with his “cold grandfather.” “I don’t remember him ever speaking to me,” he explains, “and I spent a lot of time in his house.” His aunt was, in fact, his birth mother, a secret he didn’t discover until well into adulthood. This might explain his desire to entertain the masses: a determination to please others.

White and Argent are more guarded, preferring to speak about their music. White wrote the boisterous “Hold Your Head Up”, which Argent’s band covered.

Blunstone, meanwhile, found a job in a “crazy, busy office” that kept him busy before re-recording “She’s Not There” under the pseudonym “Neil MacArthur.” This documentary is a little light on R.I.P. – The Lost Album, a shelved project that was eventually issued in 2000.

Novices will take to Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary like a duck to water, as there is much to learn. Longtime fans of the group will be more impressed by Blunstone’s perspectives on the industry. That, and the songs are great, which can’t be said of a documentary about NSYNC or Milli Vanilli.

-Eoghan Lyng

Photo: The Zombies, 2017 (Raph_PH via Wikimedia Commons)