Ball joined the vocalist-pianist Gary Brooker, the lyricist Keith Reid –
a non-performing mainstay since the group's inception in 1967 – the
drummer BJ Wilson and the organist Chris Copping at the same time as the
bassist Alan Cartwright was added to the line-up. In November 1971, they
recorded the landmark album
Procol Harum Live: In Concert with the
Edmonton Symphony Orchestra in Alberta, Canada.
Issued the
following year, the ambitious concert recording successfully merged
progressive rock and classical music and became the band's best-selling
album. As well as an inspired rendition of A Salty Dog and the
suite In Held 'Twas in I – featuring some sterling work by Ball –
it contained a superlative version of Conquistador, which charted
internationally and reinvigorated the career of the group forever
synonymous with the epochal Summer of Love single A Whiter Shade of
Pale.
Ball enjoyed himself on tour with Procol, particularly in the US, but
quit in September 1972 as they neared completion on their next studio
album, Grand Hotel. "I left Procol because I was bored with it,"
he told Melody Maker at the time. "There were only so many ideas
I could put into that style."
Mick Grabham came in his stead and overdubbed guitar solos over the
material already recorded by Ball, who didn't insist on any credit on
the release of Grand Hotel. "I was still young," he admitted
recently. "I managed to get credited on the last reissue. But I can
state categorically that I am playing guitar and spoons on A Souvenir
of London, and that it is my body on the cover photographs, with
Mick Grabham's head pasted on top – which elevated him at least a foot
higher than he was before!" said the 6ft 4in Ball.
Born in 1950, he was the last of three sons from a musical Birmingham
family. "We were born show-offs and broke into a routine at the
slightest excuse," he said of his adolescence strumming a guitar
alongside Pete and Denny. All three brothers played in various groups in
Germany before teaming up with the drummer Cozy Powell to back Ace
Kefford, formerly of The Move, and then forming Big Bertha in 1969.
In 1973, the Ball brothers reunited with Powell and added the
vocalist Frank Aiello to become the hotly tipped, hard-rocking Bedlam,
whose debut album was produced by Felix Pappalardi of Cream and Mountain
fame. However, Powell's solo success with the single Dance with the
Devil derailed their career.
Ball enrolled in the Army for five years and ended up stationed on St
Kilda. He later took up computer programming.
In 2012, he released a solo album, Don't Forget Your Alligator,
the year he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. He chronicled his battle
with the disease in the second part of his autobiography, Half Hippie
Half Man (available as an ebook from Amazon).
