Brian Wilson & The Zombies

Friday, September 27, 2019 at 8:00 PM at Palace Theater in Waterbury, CT

Legendary songwriter and founding member of The Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, teams up with iconic British psychedelic pop legends, The Zombies.

Brian Wilson

Al Jardine & Blondie Chaplin will be joining Brian Wilson on stage.

Legendary songwriter Brian Wilson began his career as a teenaged founding member of The Beach Boys, who signed with Capitol Records in July 1962 and released their first album, Surfin’ Safari, that same year. The band’s initial surf-rock focus was soon broadened to include other themes. Wilson’s innovative vocal and instrumental arrangements for major hits including “I Get Around,” “California Girls,” “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” “God Only Knows,” and the No. 1 smash “Good Vibrations” established The Beach Boys as America’s preeminent band of the 1960s.

In 1965, with The Beach Boys out on tour, Wilson began session work on some of the most deeply personal recordings of his career. Inspired by The Beatles Rubber Soul, he challenged himself to create an immaculate musical masterpiece. A vast departure from the then band’s commercial sound, the resulting Pet Sounds “concept album” achieved great critical success helping usher in a new musical landscape.

Wilson has also achieved great success as a solo artist with 11 of his own albums released to-date, including his acclaimed 2004 completion of an album he first began recording in the ‘60s, Brian Wilson Presents…SMiLE. The album earned Wilson his first GRAMMY for a recording, which was followed by his second GRAMMY win for producing The Beach Boys’ acclaimed 2011 release, The SMiLE Sessions.  With his own band, Wilson has performed major, sold-out tours in recent years, and with The Beach Boys he celebrated the iconic band’s 50th anniversary in 2012 with a major international tour and acclaimed studio album, That’s Why God Made The Radio.

In 2015, Wilson released his latest solo album No Pier Pressure (Capitol) and was the subject of the critically-acclaimed, award-winning biopic Love & Mercy (Roadside Attractions/Lionsgate). Directed by Bill Pohlad and starring John Cusack, Paul Dano, Elizabeth Banks and Paul Giamatti, Love & Mercy presents an unconventional portrait of the music legend. Set against the era-defining catalog of the music, the film intimately examines the personal voyage and ultimate salvation of the iconic performer whose success came at an extraordinary personal cost.  The culmination of these projects produced Wilson’s first Golden Globe nomination for Best Original Song (Motion Picture)for “One Kind Of Love”, which was featured in the film.

Brian Wilson is a Kennedy Center Honors recipient, a Songwriters Hall of Fame inductee, and a U.K. Music Hall of Fame inductee.  As a member of The Beach Boys, Wilson was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1988, and honored with The Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.

The Zombies

Iconic British psychedelic pop legends, The Zombies, have returned to celebrate their long-awaited induction into The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. After receiving their 4th nomination in 5 years, the support for The Zombies’ induction among the public and their peers was undeniable — the band placed 4th in the public online poll with over 330,000 votes, while even fellow nominee John Prine called for their induction before his own in a Billboard interview. On March 29, 2019 at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, The Zombies joined Stevie Nicks, Radiohead, The Cure, Def Leppard, Janet Jackson, and Roxy Music as the 2019 Class of The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Fittingly, the Induction Ceremony (which will be broadcasted on HBO) took place exactly 50 years to-the-day after The Zombies’ classic “Time of the Season” first hit #1 on the charts in
America.

Never content to only look back, The Zombies are also touring in support of their latest Billboard-charting album, Still Got That Hunger, lead by founding and current members, vocalist Colin Blunstone and keyboardist Rod Argent, alongside Steve Rodford on drums, and renowned session guitarist Tom Toomey. New member, Søren Koch, joined the band following the untimely passing of The Zombies' beloved bassist Jim Rodford (formerly of ARGENT and The Kinks) in early 2018.

The band’s live performances, described by Rolling Stone as “absolutely triumphant”, take fans on a journey through time, from their early hits...their 1968 masterpiece Odessey & Oracle…post-Zombies solo favorites…right to today with Still Got That Hunger.

The second U.K. band following the Beatles to score a #1 hit in America, The Zombies infiltrated the airwaves with the sophisticated melodies, breathy vocals, choral back-up harmonies and jazzy keyboard riffs of their 1960’s hit singles “She’s Not There” and “Tell Her No.” Ironically, the group broke-up just prior to achieving their greatest success — the worldwide chart-topping single “Time of the Season,” from their swan-song album Odessey & Oracle, ranked #100 in Rolling Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Albums of All Time.’ To this day, generations of new bands have cited The Zombies’ work as pop touchstones, and the band continues to be embraced by new generations of fans.

Following the break-up of the original band, lead vocalist Colin Blunstone went on to develop an acclaimed solo career (with hits including "Say You Don't Mind," "What Becomes of the Brokenhearted", and “Old & Wise” with Alan Parsons Project ) and keyboardist/songwriter Rod Argent rocked ‘70’s arenas with his eponymous band ARGENT (“Hold Your Head Up,” “God Gave Rock ‘n’ Roll To You”), but the legend of The Zombies continued to take on a life of its own. By the start of the new Millennium, Blunstone and Argent were inspired to resurrect The Zombies.

The explosive release of Still Got That Hunger proved that Zombies fever is stronger than ever, with premieres at Rolling Stone, Mojo, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian Speakeasy, and Spin, alongside special broadcast performances, including Later…With Jools Holland, The Late Show With Stephen Colbert and AOL Sessions. Moreover, it marked a historical moment on the Billboard charts, as The Zombies’ critically acclaimed album Odessey And Oracle re-entered the Billboard 100 forty-eight years later at the same time as Still Got That Hunger!