Fact #125027

Chris White (The Zombies) : We had actually just played a one-nighter down in Cornwall, then drove up to London through the night, arrived at London airport and just slept on the couch before we left for America, got on the plane got to La Guardia, got another flight down to where the tour was – it had already started - got a cab from the airport drove to the stadium and went on stage. Then when the gig finished we got on the bus and drove 400 miles to the hotel and those sort of things were just done in those days.

Colin Blunstone (vocals, The Zombies) : Dick Clark was enormously powerful not just as a deejay but as a promoter. He had three tours out there at the same time – Herman's Hermits were one and Tom Jones was on one and we all met up in Montreal and played together they just took some from each tour and we played together in Montreal.

The whole bus was totally filled with acts. Some of the opening acts weren't being paid very much. We didn't stay in a hotel every night, just alternate nights, and after six weeks everyone was very, very tired, because we drove through the night every second night. Even when we got to the gigs where we were staying in a hotel we'd been sitting on a bus for 24 hours so often we would want to go out, so we probably didn't sleep much that night either.

Rod Argent (keyboards, The Zombies) : There was a bit of a baptism on the tour bus. These black bands were all singing stuff, then they turned to us and said, "OK. Let's hear you do something." So our singer, Colin Blunstone, and I did Hard Day's Night and they loved it and, after that, we were totally accepted.

Chris White : They just wanted us to prove ourselves. I remember that night very clearly because everyone was singing gospel and everyone said let's hear The Zombies do something, so Rod and Colin did an unaccompanied Beatles' thing and it went down a storm and after that we were all right, they were great fun.

All the acts had chaperons, because they were so young. Jimmy Soul, he was great, first time I saw the meaning of funky. Sometimes when we used to get up and have parties in people's houses when we got into their home town and I remember that I was playing the bass and Jimmy came out and said, "Man, you are really funky on that bass," and I thought he meant I was faking it, and I didn't find out til later what he meant! It was a compliment - I didn't realize at the time.

Mel Carter was very smooth, and a girl singer called Dee Dee Sharp and they hated each other, and on the coach she pulled a gun on him, they were bitching at each other because he was gay and they had this bitch thing going between them, and everybody ducked. She got chucked off the bus straight away. And one of the Ad-libs always had to have some sort of money-making scheme, and he would have iced water to sell, and when she pulled the gun he said "Hey man, cool it" -It was a giggle the whole time.

Rod Argent : I think there was a feeling, quite bloody rightly, among the black musicians that a lot of their stuff was being ripped off and becoming successful by people who didn't do it so well. But as long as you seemed honest about it, and you did it well, they were all for you.

The backing band for that tour was what went on to become Chicago. I remember sitting by Jim Guercio on the bus, and him playing Beatles songs all day. Sweet guy. He was madly in love with Mary of The Shangri-Las but it wasn't reciprocated.

We slept one night out of two in a hotel and travelled in the bus alternate nights. If anything, the black acts were getting ripped off even more than we were. They couldn't afford hotels every night.

Very often, in the middle of the night you'd be travelling through Texas or somewhere and everybody would be settled down and then somebody, one of the black guys maybe, would hum a note, and they would build up a vocal chord, and then Mel Carter or Dionne Warwick would start singing a spiritual. And that was … that made the whole tour worth it for me. I heard spirituals on that tour that I've never heard since. I wish I'd written them down. It seemed to me at the time that you never heard black artists singing like that on record. You had the rock'n'roll versions of it, like Martha And The Vandellas, The Ronettes, The Crystals. It was so fantastic. I wondered why nobody recorded them doing that music.

We joined in a bit, but we had to be sensible. There was no way we'd even try to sing a lead. It would be so inappropriate. But we could join in on some of the harmonies. They weren't stand-offish about it, but this was their home ground.

Colin Blunstone : We couldn't stay at a lot of hotels, or go into some restaurants, because the majority of people on our bus were black. I spent a lot of time with The Velvelettes' lead singer, Caroline Gill. I was out walking with her in Texas, when somebody said to our tour manager 'Tell him to keep away from her or someone is going to get shot.' It was very scary.

Chris White (The Zombies) : Dee Dee Sharp didn't get along with another of the acts on the tour, Mel Carter. She hated him because he was gay. Finally, one day on the coach, she pulled a gun on him. One of the Ad-Libs yelled 'Cool it!' and everybody ducked behind their seats. Eventually everybody calmed down, but the upshot of it all was that Dee Dee ended up getting dumped off the tour, left on the roadside with her suitcase.

Colin Blunstone : We made a little bit of money on that but not as much as you would think, and not for the work we put in. We started in St.Louis and then went down to Florida and then right across America to California, up the Californian coast to Canada and then drove across the most of Canada and just got one flight to take us to Montreal.