Song of the Day 9/30: The Zombies, “Time of the Season”

Guest post by Nathan Arizona

You could say the Zombies saved their best song for the end. Actually, past the end.

The British band had already broken up when “Time of the Season” came out in 1969. Nobody had paid much attention to the song or the few other tunes that been been released from the album “Odessey and Ecstasy,” which now languished in the Columbia vaults.

Then the Zelig of rock music came to the rescue: Al Kooper. Who else? Kooper, working as an A&R man for Columbia at the time, urged the label to release the song and the album. It reached No. 3 on the Hot 100

A few singles from the newly released “Odessey and Oracle” went nowhere before “Time of the Season” clicked. Then people started to notice the album itself. It would go down as one of the best examples of 1960s psychedelic rock. The best, some say. The spacey keyboard sounds may or may not have come from a mellotron John Lennon left behind after the “Sgt. Pepper” sessions at the Abbey Road Studios, where “Odessey and Oracle” was recorded. But it’s a mellotron for sure.

The album also features one of rock’s great misspellings. “Odyssey” is spelled wrong, as you astute readers have already noticed. For a while the guys claimed to have done that on purpose but later admitted they simply hadn’t paid enough attention to the niceties. Spellcheck still doesn’t want me to spell it like they did.

The band had previously hit the charts with the snappy pop tunes “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No.” Like “Time of the Season,” they did better in the U.S. than in Britain, which might explain why the Zombies are in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame when so many other great British groups are not.

“Time of the Season” seems to have introduced the phrase “who’s your daddy?” to rock music. It went on to become a cultural catch-phrase. Then there’s the oddly suggestive phrase “with pleasured hand.”

The group did, uh, rise from the dead briefly for some half-hearted concerts behind “Time of the Season,” but basically the Zombies were already finished. Keyboardist Rod Argent, who wrote the song, had some success with his eponymous band, as did singer Colin Blunstone as a solo artist.

Warning: Far out. You might want to burn some incense.

Bassist Chris White wrote seven of the tracks on the LP. This one flopped as a single in the UK before resurfacing as the B-side of “Time of the Season” in the U.S.