When I saw the Zombies play at El Corazón a few years ago, I was astonished by how well your voice—one of the most instantly recognizable singing voices in the history of rock 'n' roll—has been preserved. You sound almost exactly like you did 40 years ago, which is rare in your field. Do you have a vocal training regimen?

Well, I never did until sort of seven or eight years ago, I went to a wonderful singing coach in London. He works with a lot of the West End shows, so a lot of people who have to sing every night will go to him. He really helped me. He introduced me to a bit of simple technique and also a practice regimen that, certainly when I'm on the road, I follow religiously. Your voice is a muscle, you know. If you don't keep it in shape, you'll run into problems. But I think all musicians and all singers have to find their own path. I find it's best for me to have some technique, because... I know lots of singers who, after three or four nights on the road, they've lost their voice. It's terrible. To walk out onstage as a singer and know you've only got a little bit of voice left, it's a pretty scary situation to be in, really.

When you're onstage, are you consciously in command of your technique or do you lose yourself in the moment of performance?

Both, I think. You have to think of quite a few things at the same time. I am thinking of the lyrics I'm singing, but another thing I've learned later in life is to be aware of the phrasing as well. It could be the most beautiful lyric in the world, but it has to be phrased correctly. A particular favorite line, you can't labor it just because you think it's beautiful. It's got to be sung. So I'm thinking the lyric, I'm thinking about the phrasing, I'm obviously thinking about the tuning, and at the same time, I'm always thinking about the breathwhere the breath's going to come from and how I'm gonna support it in my body. So I'm trying to think of all those things at the same time and look as though I'm not thinking about all those things at the same time.

You started in the Zombies at age 14 as a guitarist, but did you want to be a singer? Did you have the sense that your voice was unique?

I used to sing all the time, but not on a stage. I never in my wildest dreams thought I could be a professional singer. I thought that was something that happened to other people. If I just speak personally, this happened to me. We built up a local following that was quite big, we won a competition, we got offered a recording contract, and we were still very young. When we recorded "She's Not There," most of us were 18, one was 17. Chris White, the bass player, was a bit older, maybe 20. It began to dawn on us: We're beginning to get quite popular; maybe we have a chance. So we bought an old truck and went and played some dates.

Have you kept your range?

Yes, all our songs are in the keys we recorded them in.

Amazing. When I saw you in Seattle, you opened with "I Love You," and when you hit the high note on the line "and I don't know WHAT TO SAY," this wave of awe went through the room. Not just that you sounded great (which you did), but that you got to that heroic high B or whatever the note is.

It's funny, we all got terrible flu just before Christmas this year, and for the first time, we had to cancel some dates. It was serious. But my voice broke in that song, which of course is the first song we play often. But it was because I had the flu! It was a bit of a struggle after that. A lot of these songs were written for me, for my voice, for my range. So, it's probably easier for me than for other people. Rod [Argent] sometimes says he learned to write songs by listening to my voice. And I can counter by saying I learned to sing by singing his songs.

I was surprised to discover that you only do a handful of songs—four in Seattle—from Odessey and Oracle at your shows. I had assumed that, at least in North America, that's the album most people are coming to hear. Is that a misconception?

I think it's true. It's quite difficult for us to gauge. In the U.S. especially, Odessey and Oracle does have quite an important place. People do like to hear it. At the moment, we're playing five or six things from Odessey and Oracle, but we play them in a block. We try to change things a little bit on each tour.

I know the album was made during a fairly grim time for the band, and that you had broken up by the time it was released, but when you were actually tracking it, listening to mixes, waiting for it to be received, were you optimistic? Did it feel like a masterpiece?

I didn't know that people would be talking about it 40 years later, but I thought it was good. A good album. And I thought it was the best we could possibly do. I know that Rod feels we went into that album knowing the band was going to split. But that's the thing about a 40-year gap: Everyone remembers things differently. I don't remember going into Abbey Road believing it would be our last album. We had one or two singles released in the UK that didn't chart, had just split from our agent and our manager, we'd been on the road nonstop for three years, and everybody felt we'd gone about as far as we could. We thought we were very unsuccessful, but in hindsight, we realized that in no time in our career did we not have a hit record somewhere, in one country or another. Sometimes we didn't find out until years later. It's just the way the world was; communications were so antiquated. If we'd known people were listening in France, the Philippines, or wherever else, we might have been able to hold the band together. At the time, it seemed the natural thing to do. It wasn't acrimonious. We just all accepted it was inevitable.

Did the fact that Odessey wasn't fully appreciated until years later haunt you as you pursued your solo career in the '70s? Did you feel that the Zombies project was unfinished?

I think I felt frustrated that it was getting recognition 15 to 20 years—40 years now—after it was finished and didn't get the recognition at the time. I was incredibly disappointed, to the point of just not knowing what to do with my life, really, when Odessey and Oracle wasn't the immediate success that we hoped for. It was incredibly disappointing. I think I felt quite hurt, really, that what I thought was a really great piece of work wasn't appreciated.

And now it is.

Well, now it is. And so, hopefully, there's a sense of vindication, validation, all those kind of words....

All the –ations.

All the –ations, exactly.

The Zombies play Thurs July 24, El Corazón, 9 pm, $25 adv/$30 DOS, 21+.