Procol Harum
Beyond
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A Whiter Shade of Pale
The masterpiece that
started it all
Words
Reid
for yourself
AWSoP quoted by Kate Bush in a song on which Gary Brooker plays Hammond
organ
On-going discussion: what do they mean?
The envelope
in which the words left the lyricist
Gary Brooker's comment; Matthew Fisher's comment
Big, interesting article from Lives of the Great Songs
AWSoP words in charity auction: a little light on the
"might've been closed" variant
AWSoP in full with all the abandoned verses at
Douglas Adams's house party (The Guardian,
3 June 2000)
The phrase 'whiter shade of pale': examples of its passage into common
parlance
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From |
Music
June 2005: lawsuit
about the authorship of the music of AWSoP
Brooker / Fisher / Reid: Joan May writes on AWSoP and its composers
Brooker / Fisher / Bach: read What Bach piece? and Bach and Fisher
AWSoP helps
Europe celebrate Bach (not)
Britain's foremost contemporary
playwright, on Bach and AWSoP
How
much of AWSoP did Matthew Fisher write?
Gary Brooker talks about writing and arranging the song (BBC Radio 4, March 2002)
Gary Brooker talks about writing the song (BBC Radio 4, October 2004)
Fisher's own account of the organ melody on BBC Radio Merseyside
Matthew Fisher writes to Melody Maker about precisely who did what AWSoP-wise
Gary Brooker's whimsical account of the circumstances of composition
More of the same: letter to Mojo 47, 1997
Play it on the mouth-harp: see here
AWSoP used in an episode of Dr Who not written by Douglas Adams and played
live in a US programme entitled House
A possible Scott Walker influence?
A more-or-less recognizable karaoke MIDI
version on the web
A Brass band in Swindon, UK, who
play AWSoP
This website
can supply two AWSoPs to be your Nokia mobile-'phone ring-tone (look for
Procul [sic] under Classic Rock)
Brooker and Fisher record two television interviews about AWSoP in October 2000
AWSoP used
in a Norwegian TV commercial
Geoff Whitehorn's solo A Whiter Shade of Pale in Guitar
Techniques.
It appears that the
1967 Procol recording (transposed up a tone) forms the intro to Track 3 from
the 2008 Girl Talk album, Feed The Animals:
sample here
and do play 'spot the [sic]' with No 14
on this list
You may be interested to listen to, and read, this page about AWSoP covers
The
Record
YouTube clip of the original 1967 line-up of Procol Harum
playing A Whiter Shade of Pale
This link, should you choose to follow it,
will yield access to a mixable online multitrack of A Whiter Shade of Pale
... albeit not the original!
Acknowledged in the USA's 'Rock and Roll Hall of Fame', 2018: see here
July 1967: in a flawed performance, Gary Brooker sings part of the (missing) third verse of AWSoP on
BBC TV's Top of the Pops
Why was it a hit at
all? Comic article here
The most-played track at the Beatles' Sgt Pepper launch party? See here (thanks, Charlie)
Salutary demographic information
from 2013
'Songfacts' page about the song. Facts? Might be better
entitled AWSoP's Fables ...
Good(ish) AWSoP article in the Sydney Morning
Herald
The drummer's tale: who played drums on A Whiter Shade of Pale?
What's that sound?: a guide to Matthew Fisher's Hammond registration
Gary Brooker on AWSoP in 1967
Very early
(May 1967) English review of AWSoP
Very early
(July 1967) German review of AWSoP
A very early newspaper article plugging A Whiter Shade of Pale
AWSoP gets its first BBC airing
About the first AWSoP film
Front page of Disc and Music Echo, June
1967
A misprint on the US 45 rpm AWSoP
AWSoP offered
on acetate to Love Affair in early 1967
Procol Harum's A Whiter Shade of Pale in the UK singles charts
30 years of '... that song' and a pictorial blunder from Vox magazine
AWSoP featured in a book about Hammond organs
AWSoP as a
life-landmark - a
second-generation AWSoP marriage - AWSoP as a funeral dirge - Gary Brooker as Cupid - AWSoP heard
in the dark, AWSoP through
a Rambler window, AWSoP tops
the 2009 funeral charts
The pop melting-pot from which AWSoP emerged
Résumé in The
Times, November 1998
Fascinating Norwegian literary references: here and here; American literary reference here
French literary reference here; Swedish novel-references here; Dutch novel reference here; German
novel reference here
AWSoP: reassuringly overheard in Java
From Kaleidoscope Eyes: Psychedelic Music From the 1960s to the 1990s by Jim Derogatis, 1996.
From a 1983 Encyclopedia of Rock
A radio interview about an astonishing AWSoP collection
A more or less
accurate snippet from a widely-read Sunday paper
Gibbs Magazine: an article relating US political life in 1968
to the words of A Whiter Shade of Pale
The famous single re-released, August 2007, with amended authorship credit
No 84 (!) in a 2008 poll of the PopDose 'favorite singles of the
last 50 years':
read the list here
A sixty-minute AWSoP radio broadcast on London's Resonance FM, 26
April 2009
Versions of the record recreated in stereo
' ... one of the most overrated songs the world has ever heard ...'
Procol Harum's Japanese single of AWSoP, recorded at Abbey Road
in 2012
Are
Procol Harum one-hit wonders?
Brooker and Reid comment on the song in a 2014 mini-documentary
The 'Record Store Day' fiftieth anniversary album of tracks recorded in 1967,
including something previous unheard.
Recognition
Superstar esteem: Lindsay
Buckingham, Cher, Joe Cocker, Deep Purple, Dave Gilmour, Ian Hunter, John Lennon,
Paul McCartney, Willie Nelson, Ozzy Osbourne, Jimmy Page, Mick Ronson, Martin Scorsese, Ringo Starr, Bernie Taupin, Brian
Wilson ... (see
many others here)
Brooker / Reid's partnership opens the door for the likes of John /
Taupin
Fifty Years of Rock Music: Brooker and Fisher play AWSoP in Germany
Missing Markers in the Rock and Roll of Honour
Number
22 in Mojo Poll: still hugely popular thirty years later (1997)
Number 21 in The Mojo 100 Epic Rock Tracks (2004)
Industry awards for the song
A snippet from Entertainment Weekly
Brief assessment in The Times, November 1998
from Disc and Music Echo, 1967
Song
of the Year
BBC Radio 2: hundred best tunes of the century (see also here)
August 1997: fourth in a Daily Mail poll
May 1998: Top of a Netherlands Radio poll
Tunes Music Network on AWSoP
Q magazine's 1999 'Best singles of all time' chart: No 92, indeed!
Music of the Millennium charts: at No 76 here,
indeed!
Top single ever in a Norwegian Radio poll … + Gary's response
Record Collector July 1999 - AWSoP named the key
song of 1967
AWSoP taken to No 1 by a top Danish artist
AWSoP performed as a Brooker / Fisher duet
for London Weekend Television, February 2000
AWSoP at a funeral, and parallels between Procol Harum /
Abba antecedent-groups
Top single ever in a Norwegian Radio
poll … + Gary's response
Record Collector July 1999 - AWSoP named the key
song of 1967
AWSoP taken to No 1 by a top Danish artist
AWSoP performed as a Brooker / Fisher duet
for London Weekend Television, February 2000
AWSoP at a funeral, and parallels between Procol Harum /
Abba antecedent-groups'A website dedicated to A Whiter
Shade of Pale
AWSoP in
heavy rotation, 2004, on Norwegian TV show, Svish
AWSoP performed by Brooker and Fisher to celebrate
fifty years of rock,
April 2004
AWSoP most-played record of last seventy years in UK, 1934–2004; and five years on, most
played of last seventy-five years
AWSoP tops the pops in every house:
winner, 'Sold on Song', Radio 2, 31 May 2004
AWSoP at 50
Greatest psychedelic singles' in Record Collector, July 2004
Top 500 singles in Rolling Stone: a poor piece of writing
Henry Scott-Irvine's documentary on the song; plea for fans to contribute to it
Channel 5 Poll programme from 2005,
commemorating the 1,000th No 1 hit single
2006: favourite song of The
Taoiseach
Other
Versions
Try it in a karaoke version with a bouncing ball, wrong words
and wrong chords
Richard Nixon, once a president of America, busks the song here
Cacophonously broadcast (!) from a London public house with the composer
at the piano
A Whiter Shade of Pale in the movies (especially in The
Commitments)
Italian
words, bearing scant relation to the original
Tum ho mere dil ki dhadkan, the Asian AWSoP from the film Manzil
Cover versions by a great variety of artists
Parodies: supposedly the sincerest form of
flattery ...
Sixty special virgins: the Pat Kelly word-variants
AWSoP covered by a top Danish artist
Jonas Söderström alerts us to a version very few have heard before ... follow this link ... More about the artist can be found at these links.
Cambodian version: article and music here
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Peculiar
AWSoP tangents ... |
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Creative AWSoP musical notation: the
cake and the signature A huge cake for a huge hit: Redhill, Photograph contributed anonymously
'by a long-time fan who happened to be fortunate enough to attend perhaps the
last Procol Harum concert': Luckily, not so! |
For a limited time
you could buy a numbered and signed copy of the AWSoP CD single
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PH on stage | PH on record | PH in print | BtP features | What's new | Interact with BtP | For sale | Site search | Home |