Procol Harum's first year in the NME

Cancellations and spin-off projects: 24 June 1967

These excerpts from New Musical Express, kindly selected for 'Beyond the Pale' by Yan Friis, show the pressure of their sudden fame taking its toll on Procol health, leading to the cancellations of live dates that must have contributed to the band's UK invisibility. 

Front page, full page advertisement for Scott McKenzie's San Francisco.

Top 3 in the NME charts:

1 (1) A Whiter Shade Of Pale, Procol Harum
2 (2) There Goes My Everything, Engelbert Humperdinck
3 (6) Carrie Anne, The Hollies

Tipped for charts by John Wells (Derek Johnson was on holiday that week):

Moanin', Chris Farlowe
Let's Pretend, Lulu
Created By Clive, The Syn

From the news-pages:

Procol film score, all ill, dates off

Procol Harum organist Mathew Fisher has been signed to write the entire score for Separation - an off-beat production to be submitted to the famed Venice film festival in August. All British dates for the group, whose Whiter Shade Of Pale hit is No 1 in the NME Chart for the third consecutive week, were scrapped abruptly on Tuesday because its members were said to be 'mentally and physically exhausted'. Procol co-manager Jonathan Weston was flying to America this week to finalise details for the group to visit the US in the near future, plus an extended tour there in October.

Mathew Fisher, who is a former pupil of the Guildhall School of Music, will co-write the score of Separation with noted film composer Stanley Myers. It must be completed by July 10. Procol Harum may then wax the music for inclusion in the film.

If details are finalised, the group will go to America on a promotion trip for three weeks next month. Because of the organ sound on its hit, a Press reception is being planned to take place in a church.

In October Procol would tour US and Canadian universities.

On July 20, the group goes to Barcelona for four days' holiday, apart from an appearance in a jazz show for Spanish TV.

Depending on doctor's orders, the group appears in the 'Angry Arts' festival with actor Peter O'Toole at London's Chalk Farm Roundhouse tomorrow (Saturday).

Procol Harum this week cancelled dates at Malvern on Tuesday night, Birmingham Handsworth on Wednesday, and a five-day tour of Ireland due to begin yesterday (Thursday). A spokesman said that they had all been examined by a doctor, and he had advised 'immediate rest'.

Tailpieces by the Alley Cat:

... It seems Procol Harum likely to prevent Engelbert Humperdinck's second No 1 ...

Read more from the first year of Procol press