Care Of Cell 44 Butchers Tale The Zombies

Care of Cell 44 Album: Odessey And Oracle (1968)
Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) Album: Odessey And Oracle (1968)

by The Zombies

Paul Ashley Warren Atkinson (19 March 1946 – 1 April 2004) was a British guitarist and record company executive, best known as a founding member of the pop/rock band The Zombies. Atkinson was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2019.

At St Albans, Atkinson met Rod Argent and Hugh Grundy, and the three formed a band initially called the Mustangs, later changed to The Zombies. Colin Blunstone and Paul Arnold joined the new band in mid 1958, but Arnold soon left and was replaced by Chris White. After the group won a local contest, they recorded a demo as their prize. Argent's song "She's Not There" got them a deal with Decca Records and was a hit in the UK and US.

An album, Begin Here (renamed to The Zombies when released in the US) would follow. They would appear on American television for the first time on January 12 1965, when they appeared on the first episode of Hullabaloo.

The Zombies would have another chart-topper in 1964 with Tell Her No. The group continued to record successfully through the 1960s, but disbanded in December 1967, reportedly over management disagreements.

Care of Cell 44 is an uptempo pop symphony about a guy writing to his girlfriend, who is in prison. The group's main songwriter Rod Argent recalled in Mojo Magazine February 2008: "It just appealed to me. That twist on a common scenario, I just can't wait for you to come home to me again."

This was released as the first single from the Odessey And Oracle album in the UK, but it didn't make the charts, which surprised vocalist Colin Blunstone. He said in his Songfacts interview, "It's a wonderfully crafted song. I think it's got an incredible lyric, wonderful chord sequences and a great melody - it's just got everything."

Blunstone was shocked by the song's lack of popular appeal, as he thought it was a very commercial track. Soon after it stiffed, the band split up and Blunstone took a job in the Burglary Department of a London insurance office. Bassist Chris White admitted: "We tried to promote 'Care Of Cell 44,' but there was no positive reaction. It was downhill from then on." However the band did have a surprise hit in America a year after their breakup when "Time Of The Season" peaked at #3.

Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914) is written by Zombies bassist Chris White, who recalled in Mojo magazine February 2008 how this dark and chilling war protest number came about: "I'd been reading AJP Taylor on the First World War and my uncle had died at Passchendaele. I was driving to St. Albans and working out that in the first morning there were 60,000 casualties in the Battle of The Somme. The enormity hit me and I had to pull over to the side of the road because I was shaking. That's where that (lyric) came from. 'I just can't stop shaking.' In the flat I had an old American pedal organ with the knee swells. I wrote it on that, but Rod played it so much better in the studio."

Despite being the album's least commercial track, this was released as its first US single. White admitted in the same interview: "I was surprised. I think it was the resonance of the Vietnam War." Unsurprisingly the single flopped.
There was a printer's error with the title. It was actually called "Butcher's Tale Somme 1916" but they printed it as "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)." This was on top of another error on the album as the designer of the LP cover misspelt the word "Odyssey" as '"Odessey."

In our interview with Zombies lead singer Colin Blunstone, he explained why he didn't sing on this track. "I don't know if you've ever listened to the lyric, but it's pretty dark stuff," he said. "People thought it was about Vietnam but really it's about the First World War, and I just couldn't see how it could fit on the album. But I was wrong. Everybody plays the album through, and I've never heard the running order questioned ever.

So, originally I was going to sing that, but I thought it was too dark for me, especially at 19. I could handle it now, but at 19 I just thought it was a bit dark."