The British band the Zombies had a great run of mid- to late-’60s hits with singles like “She’s Not There,” “Tell Her No,” and “Time of the Season.” Although they were overshadowed by bigger British Invasion bands like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and the Who, the group finally got its due when it was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2019, alongside The Cure, Radiohead, Janet Jackson, and Stevie Nicks.
Now they are getting more flowers in the form of Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary, which follows the band’s formation, ascent, split, reunions and eventual reformation and features interviews with the surviving members of the classic ’60s lineup: Colin Blunstone, Rod Argent, Hugh Grundy and Chris White. The film, helmed by director, actor and musician Robert Schwartzman, will open in select theaters on May 12.
PEOPLE has an exclusive clip in which the surviving members discuss the Zombies’ humble beginnings.
The film also includes a personal three-minute section where Blunstone, 79, opens up about his own complicated origin story. “Somebody thought I was depressed,” he begins. “I had a wonderful six-week session with a psychiatrist. One of the first things she said to me was that I’m a people pleaser. I want, I want people to like me, and I think one of the reasons was that it was a slightly strange family background. I don’t think they knew how to react to me, really.”
His story began on June 24, 1945 in Hertfordshire, England. “I was adopted, and my mother was the sister of my birth mother,” he recalls. “In the 40s, it was a very difficult time to have a child and not be married, so we had to kind of patch things up at home.”
“My grandfather was very strict, and so it was a big family secret, but I think it gradually seeped out,” he says, adding, “He was very cold. I don’t remember him ever speaking to me, and I spent a lot of time in his house. So it was probably a bit confusing for a young boy so sort of desperate to be liked.”
After his birth mother became pregnant, she went to live with her sister, who would become the baby’s adoptive mother, “for six or seven months,” so that the family wouldn’t know about the pregnancy. “And then as soon as I was born, she put on a baggy jumper, got on the bus and went back to see her parents, and didn’t say anything,” he says.
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Rod Argent (left) and Colin Blunstone in ‘Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary’
Although he knew he was adopted from an early age, he didn’t know the identity of his birth mother until “probably I was about 28 or 30,” he explains.
Later in life, he and his birth mother would finally have a revelatory conversation about how he came to be conceived. “She phoned me as she was getting older, and said, ‘Look, I want you to come down and have a talk,’ ” he recalls, adding, “She told me about how everything happened…. She met a very charming American serviceman, and they had an affair just before he went into France. He got injured, and he eventually went back, and he just drifted out of everyone’s life after that.”
“So we had this talk,” he continues, “but what she didn’t tell me was that she was dying, and a few weeks later she died.”
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‘Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary’
The Zombies broke up in 1967, two years before “Time of the Season” went to No. 3 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 and became the band’s signature song. They reunited briefly several times before Blunstone and Argent reformed in 2004 with three new members.
“It’s a legacy left behind, and it’s a legacy that will go on,” they say in the documentary.
Hung Up on a Dream: The Zombies Documentary will open May 12 in select theaters.
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