Songfacts®:

• The Zombies, from Hertfordshire, England, recorded "She's Not There" after they won a talent contest that led to a recording session. They were all teenagers at the time.
  
  The group signed to Decca Records, and their keyboard player, Rod Argent, wrote the song for the session. It tells the story of an alluring woman who won't be tied down to one man - the singer wants to let us know all about her, but he can only use words, since she's not there.
• This song has a lot of distinct elements that made it a rock classic and landed The Zombies in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2019. For starters, the lead instrument is Rod Argent's electric piano, which was very unusual at the time - in the UK it was the first hit song with that lead instrument. And then there's the breathy vocals of lead singer Colin Blunstone. The vocal has loads of dynamic range, as Blunstone starts softly to open the story:
  
  Well, no one told me about her
  The way she lied
  
  And then gets increasingly agitated, punctuating the chorus:
  
  Please don't bother trying to find her
  She's not there!
• The Zombies got a big break when the recording engineer for the session passed out on the floor. That's because the assistant, who took over, was Gus Dudgeon, who went on to produce Elton John's seminal albums. Before he passed out, the original engineer was surly to the group and keen to get it over with - not a great environment for a band's first recording session!
  
  With Dudgeon at the controls, The Zombies were able to relax and do a great take of the song. It was a big moment for Dudgeon as well because it was his first session as the main recording engineer.
  
  The session started at 7 p.m. because recording at night was very rock and roll, but the engineer went to a wedding that day showed up drunk.
  
  "We are just going through some songs and I put some headphones on, and this engineer is screaming down in these headphones with the worst language you can possibly think of - very, very aggressive," Colin Blunstone said on the Songfacts Podcast in 2023. "It makes me laugh because having been in the business for over 60 years, in that first half an hour with this guy screaming at me, I was thinking, I don't think this music business is for me. Then we had a bit of luck and he passed out. He passed out cold on the floor. We had to carry him out of the studio, one on each arm and one on each leg. We took him up two flights of stairs and we put him in a London black taxi and waved him goodbye. We never saw him again, ever."
• "She's Not There" was The Zombies' first single. Released in the UK in July 1964, it peaked at #12 in August. It fared better in America, where it was championed on the New York City powerhouse radio station WINS and climbed to #2 in December. America ended up being their stronghold. Their UK follow-up single was "Leave Me Be," rush released to capitalize on their momentum. It stiffed, but the next single, "Tell Her No," was released in the US and went to #6. A series of subsequent singles had little impact, and in 1968 they released an album of fresh material called Odessey And Oracle. It wasn't issued in America, but it flopped hard in the UK and other countries, so the group broke up.
  
  The Zombies got new life in 1969 when Al Kooper of Blood Sweat & Tears fame discovered the album on a trip to England and convinced CBS Records to issue it in America. They did, and the song "Time Of The Season" became a big hit. The Zombies, though, were already scattered to the winds, with Rod Argent and bass player Chris White in the band Argent and Colin Blunstone recording solo. Argent and Blunstone re-formed the group in 2004 and started releasing new material.
• This song was born in bassist/vocalist Chris White's bedroom and only had one verse until Zombies producer Ken Jones heard it," said White. "We were playing in Hatfield, and Ken Jones came up to hear us. And after the gig, Rod said, 'I've got this song that we've been rehearsing' and he played it to Ken on the piano. He did the verse, and then the solo, and there was no second verse, and Ken said, 'Can't we go back to the beginning again?' So Rod had to write another verse, because it only had one originally."
  
  On "She's Not There" Ken Jones also instigated a recurring trait of many Zombies' recordings: additional overdubs added in the mixdown to mono stage from 4-track. In this case, there were a couple of extra beats superimposed to create a distinctive drum pattern, thereby rendering the original mono single mix of "She's Not There" the only "correct" version of the song. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  DeeTheWriter - Saint Petersburg, Russia Federation
• The song got a big boost when it was judged on the UK TV show Juke Box Jury, where a panel of musical authorities would pass judgment on a song. "She's Not There" got the thumbs up from panelist George Harrison, who declared it a hit.
• This song was inspired by John Lee Hooker's "No One Told Me" from his 1964 LP The Big Soul Of John Lee Hooker. Rod Argent explained: "If you play that John Lee Hooker song you'll hear 'no one told me, it was just a feeling I had inside' but there's nothing in the melody or the chords that's the same. It was just the way that little phrase just tripped off the tongue. I'd always thought of the verse of 'She's Not There' to be mainly Am to D. But what I'd done, quite unconsciously, was write this little modal sequence incorporating those chord changes. There was an additional harmonic influence in that song. In the second section it goes from D to D minor and the bass is on the thirds, F# and F, a little device I'd first heard in 'Sealed With A Kiss' and it really attracted me, that chord change with bass notes not on the roots. And I'm sure I was showing off in the solo as much as I could!"
• When the song reached its US chart peak of #2 on the second week of December 1964, it earned the group an invite to the Murray the K Christmas show on December 29 at the Fox Theater in New York City on a bill with Ben E. King, The Shangri-Las, The Shirelles, and several other popular acts. It was the first time the band came to the city, and it was a seminal moment for them, as they got to meet many of their idols and soak up some American culture. They spent a lot of time with Patti LaBelle & the Bluebells, who introduced them to the music of Aretha Franklin. On their 2015 album Still Got That Hunger, The Zombies recorded a song about this experience called "New York."
• Colin Blunstone's breathy vocals on this track became a signature sound for the group, but their producer, Ken Jones, had him use the technique throughout their first album, which blunted the effect. That album was released in 1965, and was their last until 1968, when they issued Odessey And Oracle, which the band produced themselves.
• The Zombies also recorded a cover of Gershwin's "Summertime" at the sessions, which was considered for their first single, but "She's Not There" got the nod.
• Some of the chord changes Rod Argent used were inspired by Brian Hyland's 1962 song "Sealed With A Kiss."
• Rod Argent on the marriage of lyrics and melodies: "Words have to sit, they have to sort of combine seamlessly with the way the melody is being sung. I know I was very concerned with the lyrics on 'She's Not There' but in the sense that they had to really complement the melody. They had to stand on their own, and had to have their own rhythm and, in that last section I was using the words with different stresses at different times to propel it along towards the final chord. So lyrics have always been very important to me in that way, but not necessarily in a sense of having to explain something concrete. They're an important part of the jigsaw, because I think bad lyrics can screw up a song."
• Lead singer Colin Blunstone released a new version of "She's Not There" in 1969 under the name Neil MacArthur. His version went to #34 in the UK.
• Santana covered "She's Not There" on their 1977 album Moonflower. Their version hit #27 in the US and #11 in the UK; it was the only non-live song from the otherwise live album. It was also the last Santana cover song to chart. From then on, the band experimented with more jazz-sounding material. Moonflower was also the last Santana album before Supernatural (1999) to sell more than a million copies in America. >>

  Suggestion credit:
  Jim - Oxnard, CA
• "She's Not There" has been used in a number of movies, including:
  
  Titane (2021)
  Wolves at the Door (2016)
  The Debt (2010)
  The Life Before Her Eyes (2007)
  The Shaft (2001)
  Backdoor (2000)
  The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996)
  Boys (1996)
  The Crossing (1990)
  The Krays (1990)
  
  It also appears in these TV shows:
  
  The Crown ("Cri de Coeur" - 2019)
  True Blood ("She's Not There" - 2011)
  Glee ("The Sue Sylvester Shuffle" - 2011)
  Crossing Jordan ("Strangled" - 2003)
• This song provides the soundtrack for a 2016 Kohler commercial that follows a faucet thief known as "The Jackal" who changes her appearance to evade the police.
• In 2004, Malcolm McLaren mashed up "She's Not There" with the Bessie Smith version of "St. Louis Blues" to create "About Her" for the Quentin Tarantino movie Kill Bill Vol. 2. It plays near the end of the film.
  
  "That's a great female blues singer who he has duetting with me," Colin Blunstone told Songfacts. "I thought that was really impressive that track, I really liked it."