Months ago, I was playing what little I know of the Hohner Pianet solo at the end of the Zombies' "Indication," vaguely remembered some connection between it and "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen,"* and came up with a Zombie-influenced arrangement of the latter. The Pianet with tremolo effect and Vox Continental accompaniment are directly from "Indication," but I also included an A minor to F major modulation, like in "I Love You," and some of the other chord changes are a bit like those in "Nothing's Changed."
While thinking about the lyrics, I realized that, to some degree, the lines "For Jesus Christ our Savior was born on Christmas day / To save us all from Satan's pow'r while we were gone astray" echo part of Romans 5:8: "while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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*In Claes Johansen's Hung up on a Dream (page 149), Rod Argent explains that the Zombies used to do a version of Jimmy Reed's "Baby What You Want Me To Do," ending with an improvisation based on "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" to which he sang along and that "Indication" was an attempt at doing this same sort of thing. In the version of "Indication" on Live at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London (from many years later), Argent quotes "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen" in his solo.
