Please don’t bother trying to find her

Rod Argent borrowed the opening of “She’s Not There” from a John Lee Hooker title — “No One Told Me” — not the melody or the chords, just the way the phrase tripped off the tongue. From that scrap he built the strangest hit of 1964: minor-key electric piano, a bassline that stalks more than it swings, and Colin Blunstone singing like he’s telling you a secret he’d rather keep.

The Zombies were schoolboys from St Albans who had started out calling themselves the Mustangs until they discovered everyone else had too. “She’s Not There” was their first single, and while it stopped at number 12 at home, it went all the way to number two in America — moodier, more harmonically restless than nearly anything else the British Invasion was shipping over that year.

And the woman herself never appears. All we get is the inventory of what’s gone: “her voice was soft and cool, her eyes were clear and bright — but she’s not there.”