Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
Stereophonic sound was all the rage in the second half of the ’60s, but nobody really knew if it would be the future of the music industry or a brief fad. Even the Beatles, who worked for three weeks on the mono mixes for 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, only spent three days on the stereo mixes for the album at Abbey Road. Soon after, the Zombies entered the same studio for their second album, Odessey & Oracle. When they delivered the album to CBS Records mixed in mono, however, they learned that the label expected a stereo mix as well.
The Zombies had to pay out of pocket for a rushed stereo mix of Odessey & Oracle, having already spent CBS’s recording budget. “This Will Be Our Year,” penned by bassist Chris White and sung by frontman Colin Blunstone, presented the biggest challenge, as the song’s trumpet part had been overdubbed directly to the mono mix, so a version of the album was released with the horns missing. That debacle was just one in a series of setbacks for the Zombies since their initial wave of chart success in 1964, and the dispirited band broke up by the time Odessey & Oracle was released in 1968. The album was eventually reappraised as an avant-pop masterpiece, and the closing track “Time of the Season” belatedly became a hit in 1969.
In September, the Zombies’ label Beechwood Parks Records issued Odessey & Oracle Mono Remastered, sourced from the original 1967 tapes as the band had always intended, and “This Will Be Our Year” sounds better than ever, with horns intact. The song was never issued as a single, appearing on the B-side of a far less accessible track, the protest song “Butcher’s Tale (Western Front 1914).”
In the decades since Odessey & Oracle’s release, “This Will Be Our Year” has become a fan favorite. It’s appeared in TV series like Mad Men and Schitt’s Creek, and has been covered by everyone from the Foo Fighters to Susanna Hoffs. The Zombies eventually reunited and recorded more albums, performing “This Will Be Our Year” at the band’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2019.
Three more essential Zombies deep cuts:
“Sometimes”
After the massive success of their 1964 debut single “She’s Not There,” the Zombies released a self-titled four song EP. The highlight “Sometimes,” penned by keyboardist Rod Argent, opens like a ballad with dreamy a cappella harmonies before turning into a charged-up rocker.
“The Way I Feel Inside”
There’s probably no director more adept at using British Invasion album tracks memorably in their films than Wes Anderson. His 2004 feature The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou brought renewed attention to “The Way I Feel Inside,” the contemplative 88-second track from the Zombies’ 1965 debut Begin Here.
“I Love You”
The Zombies’ two ’60s albums were released three years apart, at a time when many of their contemporaries were cranking out multiple albums each year. The band remained prolific, releasing around 16 songs as A-sides or B-sides in that period, but Decca Records dropped the band as they began to miss the pop charts. One of those unsuccessful singles, 1965’s “Whenever You’re Ready,” had a striking B-side, “I Love You,” that became a hit in America for the California band People! and in Japan for the Carnabeats.