Fact #111705

Colin Blunstone (singer and songwriter, The Zombies) : With Friends of Mine I thought it was a little bit sweet, so right at the end of the song there's a little 'Aaah', which lent a little bit of irony to it. All those couples are genuine couples, and most of the ones I knew split up shortly afterwards. Liz Evans and Brian Baldwin, I was best man at their wedding. Brian was another guy I went to school with, and he's now in the foreign office.
(Source : interview with Alec Palao for 1997 re-issue box set Zombie Heaven)

Chris White (bassist and songwriter, The Zombies) : The names on Friends Of Mine - all divorced or dead now, except for Jim and Jean Rodford. Colin 'Duffy' Coke and Terry Quirk I was at art school with, and I was sharing a flat with them in North Finchley. David Jones is now a lawyer and screenwriter.
(Source : interview with Alec Palao for 1997 re-issue box set Zombie Heaven)

Rod Argent (keyboards and composer, The Zombies) : I remember the day that (A Rose For Emily) was written, actually. I was still living at home and I was going through one of my periodic things of thinking, 'Right, I've got to get down to work, got to get down to some writing. I'm going to get up at eight o'clock tomorrow morning and I'm gonna start writing and not let anything distract me.' I'd been reading a William Faulkner short story called A Rose For Emily and, while the song's got nothing to do with that, I liked the way the title sounded. So I got up really early and I just started to write the song from that. It was one of those songs where I think I almost just plucked it out of the air and let the lines follow themselves, let the story build up from nothing. There's a particularly nice change that I liked, as it came out of the chorus and went into the verse again. There's a little modulation where you held over the notes to the end of the chorus and went into the next verse.
(Source : interview with Alec Palao for 1997 re-issue box set Zombie Heaven)