Michigan’s Biggest Rock & Roll Scandal: The Fake Zombies
The Zombies were/was one of the most popular bands of the 1960s British Invasion that was inaugurated by The Beatles in 1964.
The Zombies had two monster U.S. hits in 1964 with She’s Not There and Tell Her No. Other singles failed to make the American Top 40 until 1969, when they hit the top once again with Time of the Season.
With Time of the Season bringing back The Zombies to the American frame of mind after five years, promotion was needed. The problem was, the group had already been disbanded after they recorded the track in 1967.
So what was the solution? How can you take promotional monetary advantage of a group that is no longer together? Create a fake group, call them “The Zombies”, and send them out on the road. This is where Bay City promoter Bill Kehoe came in.
His plan was to take members of different rock bands and send them out on the road as “The Zombies”, pretending to be the original British band. However, the members of Kehoe’s fake group were far from being British. Two members were from Texas, Frank Beard and Dusty Hill, who would find later fame as two-thirds of ZZ Top. The two others were from a local group from Marquette.
The whole scam began to fall apart when the fake band members were arrested on drug and firearm charges in Bay City. Plus, fans were noticing that they didn’t have British accents; critics and rock historians took note that other songs in the band’s concert setlist were never performed by the real Zombies.
Then the whole thing was revealed to the public thanks to a front-page story in a 1970 issue of Rolling Stone.
While Frank and Dusty went on to become part of one of rock’s most legendary and respected bands, the other two fake Zombies, Richard Harris and Mark Ramsey, faded into obscurity as rock history footnotes.