Here's the set list:
- "Moving On"
- "I Want You Back Again"
- "Edge of the Rainbow"
- "I Love You"
- "Say You Don't Mind"
- "Different Game" (with Mellotron and string quartet)
- [new song for which no title was given] (with string quartet)
- "I Want to Fly" (new arrangement by Chris Gunning, with string quintet)
- "Tell Her No"
- "Care of Cell 44"
- "This Will Be Our Year"
- "I Want Her She Wants Me"
- "Time of the Season"
- "Merry-Go-Round"
- "Run Away" (possibly to be re-titled "For All My Life")
- "Hold Your Head Up"
- "She's Not There"
- "The Way I Feel Inside"
This was the first performance by the Zombies that I'd seen for some
time. I think the last new performances I saw were from the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony in 2019. While I was familiar with all of
the old songs, I noticed some ways in which they were played
differently. For example, after the organ solo in "I Love You," there
are usually just a couple bars of silence before the song resumes, but in
this performance, Rod Argent played an electric piano trill just before the
drums came back in. Touches like that made the songs seem fresh.
I was a bit surprised that "Say You Don't Mind" wasn't played with the string
section, like it is on One Year and even Odessey and Oracle {Revisited}. I believe this is only the second time I've heard it in the "rock and
roll" version (the first was on Live at Metropolis Studios).
Before the concert, the Zombies had posted a picture of the Mellotron at Abbey
Road:
I did
some research
and discovered that this is an M300 model. I'm pretty sure that the Mellotron
that Argent used on Odessey and Oracle was a MKII. This is often
said to have been John Lennon's Mellotron, but over the years, I've become more and more
skeptical of this claim. (But that's a topic for a different post.)
In the concert, the Mellotron was also used on "Care of Cell 44," but it seems to have been
added later since the Mellotron is clearly seen sitting in a corner
while the band is playing the song.
Usually, Argent uses his Kurzweil keyboard only for acoustic piano and Hohner Pianet sounds (I think that on rare occasions, he also layers the acoustic piano with a string sound, but off-hand the only instance of this that I can think of is "Care of Cell 44" on Extended Versions), but it sounded like he was using a Rhodes sound for "Run Away." I think this may have been done to match the still unreleased studio recording. Back in August, Tom Toomey posted some pictures from a rehearsal at Argent's studio, and a Rhodes Mark V is in a few of them:
During the organ solo in "Hold Your Head Up," Argent included not only a quotation from Bach's Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147 (which I first saw in this performance from a number of years ago) but also - if I'm not mistaken - a quotation of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565.
In "She's Not There," the instrumental players each got solo features. In one of his spots, Søren Koch played the riff from the Beatles' "Daytripper." The main motivation was probably a nod to the fact that the concert was in one of the studios that the Beatles often used, but on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London, the Zombies' former guitarist Keith Airey included the same riff in his solo in the same song. Argent played the riff from the Spencer Davis Group's "Gimme Some Lovin'," which I think I first saw during the performance of "She's Not There" at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
It seems like "The Way I Feel Inside" was done on the spur of the moment. I don't know how frequently the Zombies perform this, but it was the first time I'd heard a live version of it.
