Songfacts®:

• This uptempo pop symphony is 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."
• "Care of Cell 44" 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.
• During the recording of Odessey and Oracle at Abbey Road Studios in June 1967, Rod Argent made use of John Lennon's Mellotron.
  
  Just two months after The Beatles finished Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, the Zombies began their sessions, and Lennon's Mellotron, which he had left behind in the studio, became available to Argent. He specifically cited its use on "Care of Cell 44."
  
  "The quality of it just being sampled on tape, the strange sort of overtones that gave to the sound, were a huge bonus really," he told Sound On Sound. "They made it sound terrific."