Rod Argent

The Hohner Pianet was an essential part of the Zombies' sound. Argent played a Hohner Pianet on some of the band's biggest hits such as "She's Not There," "Tell Her No," "Summertime," and "It's Alright With Me."

In the early years of The Zombies, Rod Argent can almost always be seen with a Hohner Pianet (usually placed on top of a Vox Continental organ). This photo shows Argent playing a Pianet on the British television program Ready Steady Go!. (Interestingly, a second Pianet can be seen behind Argent placed on top of a Vox Continental.)

Other sources are as follows:

Beat Instrumental, January 1972, “The Zombies Are Dead… Long Live Argent” by Anonymous, pg. 33

Rod plays a Hammond C3 and a Hohner Piannette through a Leslie cabinet. This has three mikes on it of which two are set each side of the rotating horn. (The sound of a Leslie horn is reproduced from one side only). Each mike is fed to separate Laney stacks, set up at each side of the stage. The effect, Rod explained, is like a ‘giant’ Leslie.

The Zombies: Hung Up on a Dream : a Biography - 1962-1967 (2001) by Claes Johansen

pgs. 59-60

One thing that separated The Zombies from most other beat groups at the time was that they included a keyboard in their line-up. Previously, Rod Argent had found himself forced to make do with any old upright piano that came his way, stick some kind of microphone inside it and hope for a bit of amplification. To put it in another way, he hadn’t really been audible apart from when he did the obligatory Jerry Lee Lewis runs up and down the keys. Now, working as a clerk at the Ballito’s factory, he had managed to scrape enough money together to buy an electric piano, a Hohner Pianette Mk I.

The Pianette immediately became the group’s main instrumental voice, since Paul Atkinson was mainly a rhythm guitarist who could throw in the occasional riff or solo. In fact, it wouldn’t be far wrong to describe The Zombies as a guitar combo with the lead guitar substituted by a keyboard instrument. That was what gave them their unique sound, but possibly also what distanced them from some audiences in an era dominated by guitar groups.

Rod Argent became the master of the Hohner Pianette. In fact, he is probably the only person ever to make any sense of this peculiar little instrument. In his hands the otherwise very limited Pianette somehow came to life and to a large extent led the group through the main part of their three years with Decca Records. The instrument therefore seems worth spending a few words on.

“To play the Hohner Pianette you had to approach it in a slightly jazz sort-of-way,” Rod Argent divulged to me. “It had a real bite to it. It was a brilliant sound. When I was in Argent I still used it. I loved it. They only made that particular model for a while, and then it became Mark II. The Mark I was the first electronic keyboard and it was just a revelation. Suddenly, there was this thing where you could actually hear what I was playing. It was wonderful.”

Les Lambert, who had to struggle with keeping that very same Pianette alive some ten years later, recalled it less fondly:

“It’s kind of akin to the Wurlizer electric pianos, but it’s got no attack. They’re both using metal reeds with little electric pick-ups, but in the Wurlizer the reeds are struck by a little hammer, sort of like a real piano. In the Pianette there’s a piece of double-sided sticky tape at the end of each key, and when they are at rest the tape has a chance to stick to the reeds. Then when you strike the key it lifts the reed until the tape lets go of it and the reed goes back and says ‘pling’. If you try and play it fast the tape doesn’t have a chance to stick, and when the temperature changes the stickiness changes too, so under stage light they’re useless. If you ever leave it in a dusty environment and something falls on to one of the keys and leaves it down so that the tape doesn’t touch, then it’s that note gone. The sticky tape gets dust on it and that’s it, it’s finished. You can put another piece of tape on, but it’s special stuff and they don’t sound the same if you try to do it with any other kind of tape. It’s a nightmare! And of course like all Hohner stuff it’s built like a German radiogram from the 1940s. They’re terribly made.”

pg. 96

“I have mixed feelings about the Vox organ,” Argent reckons today. “I enjoyed having it at the time. It was great on stage, ‘live’. Looking back on it, I think the sound of the Vox organ dates a lot more, generally speaking, than the Pianette. The Pianette still sounds great to me in its period fashion, whereas against the Hammond C3 or B3 the Vox sounds very weedy, although I must say you can still listen to The Animals’ ‘House Of The Rising Sun’ — it still sounds great on that.”

[…] but during the “Leave Me Be” session he still seems a bit in the dark about how to use the instrument and it would probably have been a better option at the time if he had just stayed with the Pianette (on stage, he would from now on use both keyboards, piling the Pianette on top of the organ).

In the early years of The Zombies, Rod Argent's keyboard rig usually consisted of a Hohner Pianet placed on top of a Vox Continental organ. On a few occasions, such as this 1965 appearance on Shindig, Argent appeared with just a Vox Continental.

Argent also played a Vox Continental in the studio; the organ can be heard on Zombies' songs such as "Woman," "Sticks and Stones," "What More Can I Do," and "Just Out of Reach."

In the YouTube video "The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle Revisited 40th Anniversary Concert," Rod Argent is seen performing with a Hammond XK-3c organ.

John Lennon's was used on Odyssey & Oracle, as mentioned in this February 2016 Sound on Sound article.

Another revelation to Rod Argent during the recording of Odessey & Oracle was that, for the first time, he managed to try out a Mellotron Mark II, which ended up being used on various tracks, not least the strident pop of the album’s opener, ‘Care Of Cell 44’.

“John Lennon had left his Mellotron in the studio and I used it,” he laughs. “I thought it was great. The thing is, I initially thought, Well what a great way of being able to put an orchestra onto something. But of course it’s very different to that and much more in a way because its own signature sound made it much less middle-of-the-road. The quality of it just being sampled on tape, the strange sort of overtones that gave to the sound, were a huge bonus really. They made it sound terrific.”

Used on "Time of the Season", as mentioned in this February 2016 Sound on Sound article.

Rod Argent, meanwhile, played a Hammond L100, which produced the first keyboard stab heard in the opening verse of ‘Time Of The Season’. Later in the song, given the freedom of extra tracks, he overdubbed a second Hammond solo over his initial one.

Argent can be seen playing a Mellotron M400 in this studio photo.

(Quote from the text in the article)"As a result, the RS202 was soon adopted by luminaries such as Tony Banks, Rod Argent, Tomita and Nick Magnus, as well as by the keyboard players in Jethro Tull and Magnum. "