![]() “We couldn’t get out of the building,” confirms Blunstone, who remembers Grundy riding onstage on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle to signal the start of The Shangri-Las’ Leader Of The Pack. We were imprisoned in the theatre all day because if we stepped outside we risked getting everything, including our hair, ripped off. “We had to do eight shows a day right through to 11pm. Now here we were in the land of Miles and Elvis, Jerry Lee and Ray … It was a magic world to us. “Eight years earlier I’d been listening to Elvis and he was like someone from an alien planet. “We were 19 and scared,” recalls Argent of the hysteria inside and outside. There, the band performed amid screaming and generally frenzied scenes. It made them British Invasion stars in the States, where they were invited to be part of a series of shows at New York’s Brooklyn Fox Theatre during the Christmas of 1964, the sole UK rockers (give or take The Nashville Teens) on a bill alongside such names as The Drifters, The Shirelles, The Shangri‑Las, Patti LaBelle & The Bluebells, and Dionne Warwick. The Zombies were still in their teens when they had a worldwide smash with She’s Not There. It wasn’t until I heard Elvis in 1956 that I liked anything but classical music.” But at St Albans I had a great all-round musical education and fantastic exposure to all sorts of music, from Bach to modern classical. He describes himself as self-taught, adding with a laugh: “Sometimes I feel like a complete charlatan. “I guess I am pretty dextrous,” muses Argent, who sang in the cathedral choir at school in St Albans, which he attended alongside future Zombies guitarist/backing singer Paul Atkinson and drummer Hugh Grundy, as well as Tim Rice and Stephen Hawking. The Zombies, circa 1967 (Image credit: Rex Features)
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