The Zombies recently posted a link to this article from The Harvard Crimson that argues that "DIY music [of which Odessey and Oracle is an example] can be just as refined as high-budget, professionally produced music." The English major in me sees this as a weak thesis, but what really bothered me about the article was the factual errors. Over the years, I've read many articles about the Zombies that contain errors that could easily have been avoided with even a modicum of research. I don't know if I'm going to make a habit of this, but the errors in this article bothered me enough that I'm going to fix them.
The article states that "Not a single note on 'Odessey' is played by a non-band-member. Instead of string and horn overdubs, many of its songs feature string- and horn-simulating sounds played on a Mellotron, a forerunner of early synthesizers." This is only partly true. As the article goes on to state, Rod Argent did indeed use John Lennon's mellotron to play some parts on Odessey and Oracle, but as he explains in this video (at about 3:56) "I only used the basic settings that are on there, basically flutes and strings." According to the liner notes of Zombie Heaven and of three different re-issues of Odessey and Oracle, the brass instruments on "This Will Be Our Year" are real and were arranged by the band's former producer Ken Jones (and yet the article says that the "horn parts often sound lo-fi and obviously fake"!). The Zombie Heaven liner notes also explain that a session musician played a cello part for "A Rose for Emily," although this wasn't included in the final mix.
The article goes on to say that "there are relatively few overdubs on the album; most of the arrangements simply feature each band member on his typical vocal and instrumental parts." This isn't elaborated on, so it's not exactly clear what "relatively few" entails, but I would say there are a fair amount of overdubs (which is why the usual five-person band was augmented with additional musicians for the Odessey and Oracle anniversary shows). Off-hand, here are the overdubs I can think of: Rod Argent plays both piano and mellotron in "Care of Cell 44," "Hung up on a Dream," and "Changes." In "Maybe after He's Gone," Paul Atkinson plays both acoustic and electric guitars; Argent plays acoustic and (according to Andrew Sandoval in the liner notes to the fiftieth anniversary edition of the album) electric piano; and I believe there are also additional, overdubbed vocal tracks. The vocals in each verse in "Brief Candles" and the guitar solo in "Friends of Mine" are both double-tracked. There are also overdubs on "Changes" (Argent added an extra vocal part) and "Time of the Season" (the well-known hand claps and exhales and an extra organ part).
There are also a few notable exceptions to "each band member on his typical vocal and instrumental parts." Paul Atkinson and Hugh Grundy sing the bottom vocal line in "Changes," and Chris White sings lead in "Butcher's Tale" (and one verse of "Brief Candles").
The article "guess[es]" that "today's DIY musicians tend not to emulate 'Odessey and Oracle'" because "Rod Argent's many years of classical music training likely helped significantly to hone his playing, writing, and arranging." According to the Zombie Heaven liner notes, however, Argent had only two years of piano lessons (starting when he was about nine years old), and he says that "as soon as I started to learn I got bored with the whole process, and I probably played the piano less in those two years of lessons than I have ever since." In the liner notes to Classically Speaking, he explains that he's a "self taught player." There's no doubt that he has a great degree of musical skill in a variety of areas, but this is not the result of classical training.
Although not exactly an error, the notion that "Someone seeking musical success today should probably write a three-chord singalong rather than imitating 'Changes' or 'Butcher's Tale'" is completely contrary to the Zombies' own outlook, which values musical honesty over immediate success. In an interview at SXSW in 2013, Rod Argent said, "When we wrote and recorded music, we never tried to play what was the current fashion in the day. We never thought, 'Wow, we've got to make sure we get to the hook in 30 seconds otherwise radio won't play it.' We just took a musical idea and tried to make it work for us."
It's at this point that the article completely collapses. Because it describes the Odessey and Oracle songs as "full of harmonic and melodic surprises" and calls the album "a Template for DIY Sophistication," it seems to praise the Zombies' striving for something original, and yet at the end, it reverses its opinion and contradicts this, saying, "Not many of the songs on 'Odessey' are commercially oriented, so it is no wonder that the album has not been a relied-upon template for subsequent bands" (which I find a dubious claim; more than a few well-known musicians have listed the Zombies [and Odessey and Oracle specifically] as an influence). Is the article raving about the uniqueness of Odessey and Oracle or panning it for not being commercially successful? Is the album a template to follow or isn't it?
I also think it's unfair to compare the Odessey and Oracle songs to the Beach Boys' "Girls on the Beach." "Girls on the Beach" is from 1964, and the Odessey and Oracle songs were recorded in 1967. While only three years apart, at the rate that music was developing and changing in the 1960s, that's a big difference (the Beach Boys themselves went through major stylistic changes in those three years). The criticism about the key changes also strikes me as too subjective. The article says "Girls on the Beach" "abuses the upward chromatic key change" and "hits the listener over the head with key changes," but the liner notes to my edition of All Summer Long (while hardly unbiased) praise "Girls on the Beach" as "one of Brian [Wilson]'s most astonishing compositions" and claim that "it's almost impossible to find another rock song that changes keys as often and as smoothly as 'Girls on the Beach'" (my emphasis).
