Procol HarumBeyond
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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
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
PH on stage | PH on record | PH in print | BtP features | What's new | Interact with BtP | For sale | Site search | Home |