'Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes'

All Our Dreams are Sold

This medium-paced rocker (in the Trower-friendly key of G minor) was performed regularly on the promotional tours of 1991–92 for the Prodigal Stranger. Apart from an appearance at Southend in 1993 it seemed then to vanish from the repertoire, though Keith Reid fancied the words enough to include them in his book, My Own Choice. When Frans Steensma asked Gary Brooker in 1992 why Zoo chose such a guitar-dominated, un-Procolian song for the first promo single from The Prodigal Stranger, GB claimed that Zoo thought (after long consideration – they asked a lot of other people) this to be the track that best tallied with chart sounds at the time (late 1991). As early as 10 August 1991 All Our Dreams Are Sold made its entrance in Billboard Album Rock Tracks (# 47). It climbed to '#34 the next week, then 29, fell to 34 and disappeared after the final listing on September 7 (#. 33): this was disappointing, since it had been heavily promoted on the radio stations by Zoo. Billboard reviewed the album the day All Our Dreams Are Sold had its final showing in the Album Rock Tracks, contradicting Zoo's opinion absolutely: ‘The Truth Won’t Fade Away, One More Time and A Dream In Ev'ry Home sound like best radio starters.’ After this Zoo quickly released The Truth Won’t Fade Away (with its expensive video) for the public … but the damage had been done.

The introduction, bearing a passing resemblance to the 1981 hit by Talking Heads, Once in a Lifetime, is spare and echoey, with overtones of Strangers in Space, albeit with much more sophisticated synthesiser work; at Boston in 1992, as at Southend 1993, Brooker teasingly offered a glimpse of Nirvana, uttering 'In the darkness of the night …' during the preliminaries. At Boston it was used as first encore; at some 1991 shows the band used it as an opening number, moody and enigmatic as perhaps befitted an unknown quantity, eschewing their more revered 'belter' opening songs. Nonetheless it requires terrific vocal fitness to bring it off, sitting at the piano. Geoff Whitehorn always had a lot of fun playing this song, throwing his very best efforts into the introduction.

The verse is extremely unusual in Procoldom for the number of bars it spends on one chord. The song rides on Bronze's bass (which grew sprightly on the road, evolving from the studio's four-square pattern), and apart from the guitar solos and a brief flurry of piano near the end there are few striking instrumental moments on the original record, though Fisher's organ elaborations contribute a lot on the live version, recorded at Utrecht and produced by Matthew himself. The jerky rhythm to which the title-phrase is set is unusual in the Brooker canon. Trower admitted in 1991: ‘It’s the first song I’ve written in many, many years that wasn’t for one of my own things. In other words it was for somebody else really. Although it’s me that’s playing it I knew I had to come up with not a Robin Trower song, a Procol Harum song. That made it a kind of fascinating thing to work on.’ The only other song with this combination of authors is Too Much Between Us, also apparently tracking a British aspiration in an American world: they could scarcely be more different!

• 'Rings upon your fingers': two tracks on the Prodigal album start with the word 'ring', and two have 'dream' in the titles. 'Upon' here is non-idiomatic: one would ordinarily say 'on your fingers'. Either the extra syllable is supplied simply to correspond with the melody, or the intention is to draw our attention to that part of a ring that does lie 'upon' the finger, namely a stone or other perhaps ostentatious decoration.
• 'Fingers' is a word Reid likes to use: 'Clutching fingers break the puzzle' in Kaleidoscope; 'Not a man who had a finger' in Whaling Stories; 'The waiters dance on fingertips' in Grand Hotel; 'They put their fingers in their ears' in Butterfly Boys; and 'You wear down your fingers' in Typewriter Torment.
• 'Rings on her fingers, bells on her toes' is the third line of the nursery-rhyme, Ride a Cock Horse to Banbury Cross (the following one is 'She shall have music wherever she goes'): one interpretation identifies the lady with the rings and the bells as the otherwise naked horse-rider, Godgifu ('Lady Godiva'). [Her story has a few parallels in Procol imagery: her husband was an 11th century ruler in Coventry, who was overtaxing and tyrannising the citizens, and she pleaded on their behalf; he said he would relent if she rode naked, and her long hair preserved her modesty; in another version all the locals stayed indoors and didn't peek except for Tom the Tailor, the original Peeping Tom, who got struck by a bolt from heaven for his pains. This scenario was re-enacted at Corpus Christi, in the Coventry Fair, taking the place of the older Passion Plays or Mystery Plays, at which Godiva was accompanied by a 'Fool' in traditional attire.] Other bells in Procol songs include 'At quarter past the doorbell rings' (Salad Days (Are Here Again)); 'My Prussian blue electric clock's alarm bell rings' (Shine on Brightly); 'Six bells struck' (Whaling Stories) and 'The bell on my door rang this morning' (Monsieur R. Monde)
• 'Stardust in your hair' conflates two images germane to the hippie-bell Woodstock generation … Joni Mitchell's 'We are stardust, we are golden' and Scott McKenzie's 'Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair'. 'Stardust' is a pregnant oxymoron, combining the glittering unobtainable with the cluttering inescapable. It first came into popular music with Hoagy Carmichael and Mitchell Parrish's 'In my heart it will remain my stardust melody, the memory of love's refrain' where stardust symbolises the end of an affair; it first combines with 'hair' in the Carpenters' ubiquitous ballad, Close to You, where they 'sprinkled stardust in your hair'. Joni Mitchell (and David 'Ziggy Stardust' Bowie) apply the term in its post-Big Bang theory sense, in which new matter, including ourselves, is constantly being brought into being from the decay of older systems: in this sense it relates closely to 'make us live again' in this song, albeit also a plea for a second innings for Procol Harum, this time infused with American money and powered by an American establishment.
• 'Stardust': curiously, half of Reid's references to 'dust' on Procol Harum records occur on this record: see Man with a Mission and The Pursuit of Happiness: so do half his references to 'star': see Man with a Mission and Perpetual Motion.
• 'The mighty dollar' is surely intended to be heard ironically, though it was otherwise when Washington Irving, US journalist (1783-1859), referred to 'The almighty dollar, that great object of devotion throughout our land ...' in Wolfert's Roost: The Creole Village. The dollar does occur elsewhere in Reid's work: 'lying in my bed hatching million-dollar schemes' (Seem to Have the Blues (Most all the of time)) first identifies it with pie-in-the-sky aspirations, while Memorial Drive's 'Sold for a silver dollar, shipped across the sea' associates it with the power to exploit and control. In this respect the song exhibits kinship with The Pursuit of Happiness which also explores a world of ambition and desire regulated by market forces.

• 'Make us live again': the text compiles numerous common-parlances in a tale of a disillusioned repeat-attack on the record business. The paymasters will 'wave the mighty dollar', and take over the band's destiny. 'Lead us by the collar' portrays the victims as dogs, or possibly as recalcitrant schoolboys. See notes on Butterfly Boys for an earlier song referring to the band / label relationship. 
• 'Faithful to the end' could well be read as a translation of the Latin 'Semper Fidelis', which, next to Stars and Stripes Forever, is Sousa's most popular march, and as such is closely identifiable with 'Uncle Sam'; it's also a motto loosely associated with the US Marines, earning its shadowy place in this song alongside other images of high establishment power. 'Faithful to the end' chimes with 'to the very end' in The Pursuit of Happiness ... another song about being told what to do.
• 'Pave the streets with gold': in English folklore the streets of London were 'paved with gold' in the sense that the capital seemed to be the home of wealth in comparison with the poverty of the provinces.
• 'Pave the streets with gold / lead us by the collar': there is a pun here, not for the ear but for the eye, which sees two elements, gold / lead, cunningly juxtaposed.
• 'In the king's apartment / heavy lies the crown' : 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,' reflects the king in Act III scene I of Shakespeare's Henry IV pt 2' in soliloquy in his nightgown in the palace, presumably in his 'apartment'. [the same play contains the phrase, 'scoured to nothing with perpetual motion']. 'Crown' is also of course an archaic unit of British currency, relating in a sense to our next item. 'The King was in his counting house, counting out his money' runs another nursery rhyme, also familiar from the Beatles' treatment. The king appears here in his domestic setting (an odd transAtlantic mix of 'king' (UK) and 'apartment' (US)). Further mixture ensues when the archaic 'castle' is contrasted with 'market share', a very 80s/90s Stock Exchange term. Some fans have noted that Castle was the label that brought out so many of the early Procol CD re-issues. Other Kings in Procol Harum songs are relatively sparse, but include 'gifts for me the three kings bring' (Shine on Brightly); 'King Jimi, he was there' ('Twas Tea-time at the Circus); 'save the world and be the king' (Fool's Gold); 'I'll be king of the stage' (Without A Doubt); 'King of the fools' (Skating on Thin Ice); 'I played the King of Hearts' and 'King of the Broken-hearted' (The King of Hearts).
• 'Try to find a different way': there is a lot of 'trying' in the Procol world: think of 'trying to find some kinda romance' (Lime Street Blues); 'I tried to stretch out in it' (Something Following Me); 'Phallus Phil tries peddling' (Cerdes (Outside The Gates Of) ); 'to try to throw some light' (Salad Days (Are Here Again)); 'trying to intercept my dreams' and 'I tried to rob a bank' (Seem To Have The Blues Most All The Time); 'what I'm trying to say' (Rambling On); 'I tried to hide inside myself' (Magdalene (My Regal Zonophone)); 'trying to swivel right out of there' (Long Gone Geek); 'trying to sell you cheese' (The Devil Came From Kansas); 'on its tide I tried to hide' (Crucifiction Lane); 'trying to find the words' (Pilgrims Progress); 'trying not to fall' (Barnyard Story); 'try to gauge' (Luskus Delph); 'Tried to keep it confidential' (A Souvenir of London); 'They tried in vain to bring him round' (For Liquorice John); 'trying hard to win', and 'trying hard to force the pace' (Fool's Gold); 'trying to act the hero's part', 'trying to make a name', 'trying not to freeze' (Taking The Time); 'try and get you off my mind' and 'Trying to relive ev'ry moment' ((You can't) turn back the page); 'Tried to understand her' (The King of Hearts); 'eagles only dare to try' (Learn to fly)
• 'Jumping through that wall of fire': again conflates two showman's feats, to jump through the hoop of fire, and to ride the wall of death. Here the choice of 'wall', given the financial imagery surrounding it, perhaps carries the listener's imagination towards Wall Street. 'Wall of fire' sounds like a re-jigging of 'firewall', the security feature intended to prevent hackers gaining access to computer systems, and perhaps getting 'that market share' in the case of a financial institution.
• 'Our dreams are sold' ... are they being marketed, as a band might hope, or are they being 'sold down the river'? This paradox lies at the core of the song, the more poignantly since it’s the one number co-written with Robin Trower, part of the studio dream-team, destined never to make a live re-appearance with the band. Did he already know this when he recorded his 'Station Liner' on the Return of Procol Harum interview CD: 'Hi, this is Robin Trower from Procol Harum, where All Our Dreams are Sold.'? (mp3 here). The word 'where' is an unusual, yet meaningful choice. 'Another way of looking at that song is that all our dreams are sold to us. The way I look at it is a feeling of, you know, being manipulated' said Keith Reid, here.

Thanks to Frans Steensma for additional information about this song