Procol Harum ... 'Roman ruins mega-gig'

 A brief article from Xposé • online here

Druring April 2017, when Novum was first announced, there was a flurry of press about Procol ... some of it a tad eccentric

Procol Harum star Gary Brooker planning Roman ruins mega-gig

Procol Harum leader Gary Brooker is dreaming up a concept album for a mega-gig he hopes to play at a Roman ruin.

The rocker has played at some amazing venues over the past five decades and admits he has always envied Pink Floyd for the famous gig they staged at Pompeii.

Now, he has the Colosseum in his sights for a 'gladiatorial rock opera'.

"I'd like to play somewhere Roman and have a good bit of advanced notice, so we could do something new...," he says. "The Colosseum in Rome, that would work. We'll play some gladiatorial music. I see it all now."

But if that gig doesn't come off, Brooker, whose new album, Novum, is Procol Harum's first in fourteen years, has some great memories of some very special gigs:

"We played somewhere in Finland or Lapland at two in the morning and the sun was still bright, and we went to Iceland; we were one of the first groups to go there in the early '70s. We only went because we'd never heard of another group going to Iceland. That was a weird place – looked like the moon."

And there's one early 1970s show that remains a bizarre highlight:

"We played in Mexico City once for 25,000 people and somebody was shot dead and somebody was born too – during the gig. That's life. It was probably about 1973. It was the first time we went."

© WENN Newsdesk 2017
 

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