The Zombies' Colin Blunstone reveals how "desperation" led to the band's unique name

3 October 2025, 15:43

Colin Blunstone reveals Beatles inspiration and the story of The Zombies' band name

First they were The Mustangs, then The Sundowners, but Colin Bluntstone reveals how The Zombies got their name.

The Zombies are one of the greatest bands of the 1960s (and beyond), and they also have one of the coolest names.

We've got nothing against the likes of Small Faces, The Shadows or Freddie and the Dreamers, but – a good few years before George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead, The Zombies was a eye-catching as they come.

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It's been reported over the years that early bass player Paul Arnold who came up with the name. Arnold was in the group in their earliest days in 1962, but certainly left his mark on the band.

Rod Argent loved the name. "I thought this was a name that no one else is going to have," he told PopMatters in 2015. "And I just liked the whole idea of it. Colin was wary, I’m sure, at the beginning, I know, but I always, always really, really liked it."

Speaking to Gold, Colin Bluntstone gave his own thoughts on The Zombies name and how it emerged.

"I always think it came out of desperation, actually," Bluntstone said of how The Zombies name emerged.

"It sounds so trivial, but a band needs a name. We were desperately trying to think of a name. For about a week, we were The Mustangs. We realised there were hundreds of Mustangs.

"Then, to my eternal shame, I came up with the name The Sundowners because it was a film, Robert Mitchum, a film called The Sundowners.

"I knew that The Searchers had taken the name from a John Wayne film. And I thought, Sundown, terrible. That only lasted about a week. I tried to forget that that was my suggestion.

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He added: "And then one guy just suddenly said, The Zombies. And it just stuck. And to this day, I've got to be honest, certainly then, I had no idea what a zombie was.

"And if I might give away a little secret, I don't really know what a zombie is now. But the name stuck. It's very memorable. And so The Zombies it was."

During the interview, Blunstone also spoke about using The Beatles' mellotron on Odessey and Oracle and how the now-acclaimed album was a slow burner that was actually "ignored" on its original release.