We skipped the light fandango/Turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor/I was feeling kinda seasick/But the crowd called out for more/The room was humming harder/As the ceiling flew away/When we called out for another drink/The waiter brought a tray…
I had not listened to this Procul Harum classic for several years and caught it by chance on the radio in the car earlier this evening- damn, what a truly magnificent tune! A Whiter Shade of Pale was the British rock band’s debut single that appeared in May 1967. And what an impact it made! Within just a month, the tune climbed to the top of the U.K. Singles Chart where it stayed for six weeks. In the U.S., it reached no. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. And apparently all of it without much promotion.
A Whiter Shade of Pale was co-written by Procul Harum’s pianist and lead vocalist Gary Brooker, together with lyricist Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher, a singer-songwriter who played the beautiful Hammond on the recording. “It’s sort of a film, really, trying to conjure up mood and tell a story,” Reid told Songfacts. “It’s about a relationship. There’s characters and there’s a location, and there’s a journey. You get the sound of the room and the feel of the room and the smell of the room. But certainly there’s a journey going on, it’s not a collection of lines just stuck together. It’s got a thread running through it.”
Songfacts also notes the title came to Reid at a party, which gave him a starting point for the lyrics. Brooker and Reid formed Procul Harum in April 1967, together with Fisher, Ray Royer (guitar) and David Knights (bass). The band’s original manager Guy Stevens came up with the name, inspired by a Burmese cat, Procul Harun.
Between the amazing Hammond organ line that’s derived from a classical piece by German Baroque period composer Johann Sebastian Bach and Brooker’s soulful singing, I loved this tune from the very first time I heard it many moons ago. I still get goosebumps. Interestingly, A Whiter Shade of Pale became Procul Harum’s biggest hit by far. The band broke up in 1977, reformed in 1991 and exists to this day, with 75-year-old Brooker remaining as the only original member.
Sources: Wikipedia; Songfacts; YouTube
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