Liner note by Roland from
BtP • April 2018
FRESH
CHAPTER
In contemporary interviews Gary Brooker and Keith Reid, founding mainstays of
Procol Harum, portrayed 1974’s new album, Exotic Birds and Fruit,
as a back-to-basics affair. After 1972’s Live with the Edmonton Symphony
Orchestra album, and the following year’s Grand Hotel with
its choral/orchestral title-track, they were wary of being stereotyped as
‘classical rock’, and presented their Exotic Birds as a fresh
chapter.
Yet
the musical line-up – Gary Brooker (voice/piano), Alan Cartwright (bass), Chris
Copping (Hammond organ), Mick Grabham (guitar) and BJ Wilson (drums) – was
unchanged; likewise the composers and recording studio; and again they presented
nine new songs, their soundscapes every bit as dense. What was different? ‘What
I meant,’ Gary Brooker explains now, ‘is that we were in the studio as a
rock-and-roll five-piece: no other players, apart from BJ Cole [see below].’
The opening track has strings, he admits, ‘but they’re very minimal, done by a
Japanese chap.’ In fact the oriental lettering, printed in the credits, conceals
Chris Thomas, producing his fourth album with the band.
‘I don’t recall back-to-basics being a specific direction,’ says Mick Grabham
now, and he agrees ‘there is a lot of production.’ He rates the Exotic
album ‘… my favourite, of the ones I was involved in. I like the songs.’ These
are indeed robust and musically varied, the first four (or five?) arguably
constituting the finest consecutive run on any Procol album. Keith Reid’s words,
though – by no means as exotic as those on Grand Hotel –
seethe with disenchantment and frustration. This downbeat mood, Grabham
suggests, ‘reflects what was happening in the world, not the mood in the band.’
Procol started work on the Exotic album at London’s AIR Studios –
where they’d recorded Broken Barricades and Grand Hotel
– on 12 December 1973. Next day Prime Minister Heath issued
his ‘Three-Day
Work Order’,
ramping up the energy-saving measures already in place due to wage disputes in
key industries.
Reid’s words were written during the long build-up to this national crisis, not
in response: nonetheless the ensuing ructions impinged closely on the
band (as Brooker details at the close of
CD3-07).
Paper-shortages nixed Reid’s proposed lyric-booklet and, during
government-scheduled power-cuts, AIR had to work with generators, which played
havoc with the Hammond organ. ‘I was travelling up and down [from Surrey],’ says
Gary. ‘When things were up-and-running we really had to make the most of the
time.’
***
OPENING
WORDS
Brooker and Grabham, interviewed separately for this liner note, were amused to
learn how bygone electrical inconvenience had shaped fans’ interpretation of the
Exotic album’s mysterious opening – the whistling feedback,
suggesting a mis-handled microphone, into which someone then blows, asking ‘Is
it on, Tommy?’ Some take this for a question about a generator (though if the
power weren’t ‘on’, the studio would be dark). Others suppose the addressee is
Chris Thomas (‘We never called him “Tommy,”’ says Brooker. ‘He’s much too
posh.’) Still others insist the speaker is Gary … though both men identify the
voice as Grabham’s.
We hear Mick’s voice on
CD3-08,
declaiming poetry, Sunderland vowels to the fore. ‘When I joined Procol,’ he
told me, ‘I gradually became aware of being the Northern boy in a Southern
band.’ He used to entertain with a spiel about ‘coming South on coach wi’
granddad’, which his Southern bandmates wanted on tape. Mick was reluctant
(‘once you’ve done it, it’s not funny’) but gave in: to his relief ‘someone
pressed the wrong button, and nothing recorded.’ Instead he gave them a shorter
routine, his ‘mickey-take of Northern working-men’s clubs’ that booked fading
Sixties’ stars, and were ruled by committee: ‘They were so un-rock’n’roll as to
be untrue,’ he now declares. ‘I actually saw one of these guys pick a mike up,
call out “Is it on, Tommy?”, then press it to his ear for an answer …’
Thus Procol Harum and their non-Japanese producer – never averse to a bit of
mystification – prefaced Exotic Birds with part of the
audible component of an essentially visual gag, recited by Grabham in
someone else’s voice. ‘It wasn’t recorded with the idea of starting the
album,’ Mick adds, ‘more in the spirit of Keith’s poem on Grand Hotel’.
But whereas Reid’s spoken-word track, Mr Krupp, was abandoned, then lost,
‘Is it on, Tommy?’ has passed into Procol legend.
***
LIVE ON
AIR
Equally legendary is the BBC session Procol recorded on 22 March 1974 at Golders
Green Hippodrome in London. Having completed the Exotic Birds
album, they’d played six college shows and a session for the renowned John Peel
that March: good, solid UK exposure. Such national broadcasts were eagerly
awaited by fans, but there was no great sense of occasion for the band: ‘It was
a way of promoting your new album,’ Gary told me. ‘You didn’t get overexcited
about it.’
Just
fifteen weeks later, on 5 July – nominally a day off during an eight-date US
tour – the band recorded another live set, at January Sound in Dallas, Texas
(where they’d played the 10,000-seater Memorial Auditorium the night before).
This was broadcast on KZEW-FM, a station specialising, since the previous
autumn, in classic and progressive rock. The KZEW mood is less formal than the
BBC show, the songs generally faster and tighter. But unlike respectful BBC
presenters, the US host occasionally steps on the music.
Both radio shows feature half-a-dozen Exotic selections – tracks
1, 2, 3, 4, 8 and 9 – the very same six that Keith Reid enshrined in his 2000
Charnel House lyric-anthology, My Own Choice (out of print). The
following commentary discusses the whole Exotic Birds and Fruit
album, song by song, adducing notes about the above broadcasts where applicable.
Thereafter the ‘legacy’ songs – BBC and KZEW offerings that pre-date the 1974
album – are briefly considered, chronologically aggregated in their sequence of
vinyl release.
***
NEW SONGS
The intricate, vital opener, Nothing But the Truth (CD1-01) has features
in common with Robert’s Box, which concluded Grand Hotel:
the ensemble’s falling chords, the deep extra vocal, and of course the
elaborately overdubbed soundscape. From the outset the band is playing as one, a
full-tilt boogie. Gary recalls Elton John praising the single release (6 April);
later Jools Holland admired its rolling left-hand piano figure. But despite the
song’s commercially-minded middle-eight, pace and brevity, it didn’t initiate a
chart renaissance for Procol. Reid’s ‘godforsaken emptiness that fills our
hearts with tears’ – to say nothing of insanity, gaping screams, and mouldy
leaves – found no favour in a hit parade ruled by Paper Lace or The
Wombles. Unfortunately ‘Whispering’ Bob Harris, presenting the BBC broadcast,
had told the world that Procol wouldn’t be playing their new single (‘You
couldn’t wish for a nicer host,’ Gary told me. ‘Maybe he had the wrong setlist?’).
Grabham’s guitar-fills, so effective on record, are somewhat swamped here
(CD2-11); the BBC didn’t retain master-tapes, so it’s impossible now to tweak
the original mix. At KZEW (CD3-12), however, the guitar is strong, elaborate and
angry. Copping’s inventive organ elicits ‘Ooh, I like it,’ from Gary Brooker
(who drops a few words in the excitement). It’s worth commenting in detail on
the extraordinary, 25-second opening, which combines sparkling technique with
rhythmical mischief. After a spot of free cowbelling, BJ Wilson’s hi-hat strikes
up a metronomic beat, and his Motownesque snare chats chirpily with a
lightning-fast kick-drum. In cahoots with the hand-clap – which was maybe
initiated by his first cymbal crash – BJ fools us with false barlines, sneaking
in extra beats before Brooker’s piano-glissando, itself a false opening. Two
beats later – in a feat of pure Procol telepathy – the rest of the band piles in
together.
***
Beyond the Pale (CD1-02) seems to refer to A Whiter Shade,
now so far behind in Procol history; yet Brooker is singing ‘veil’, not ‘pale’.
A pale is a boundary, which Reid’s lyric invites us to cross, undertaking
various super-hazardous quests (the previous song used Icarus to exemplify the
consequences of such hubris). Even on Procol’s 1967 début album, wandering
through a fence led to torture and identity-loss: for Reid, a writer of Jewish
heritage, such images of peril and flight may carry ghetto connotations.
Procol ‘worked
hard’, Gary says, to establish the Eastern-European sound-world (maybe it’s
Hungarian, like the album-cover artist?). ‘The mandolins were probably BJ,’ he
reports, ‘though balalaikas would have been nice too.’ At the BBC (CD2-05) Chris
Copping’s rasping banjo is the sole residue of that hard work; listen also for
Grabham’s choice fills (played, on record, with an early three-pickup SG, not
his habitual ’59 Les Paul).
At KZEW (CD3-06)
the pace is faster, Gary’s repositioning of the ‘buried deep’ line now
entrenched. Grabham’s ingenious backing-work justifies
Reid’s pre-show comment to KZEW’s interviewer: ‘We’re capable of doing things
now with Mick on guitar that we never were with Robin [Trower].’ Many amusing
and contradictory Brooker anecdotes about this song’s supposed origins may be
found at the sprawlingly-comprehensive www.procolharum.com, ‘Beyond the Pale’.
They functioned to entertain audiences during protracted banjo-tuning; in the
Texan heat, Gary also speaks of
‘men landing on the surface of Venus’. Many will take his donnish unpacking of
Pop Goes the Weasel for a similar flight of fancy. Predictably enough,
it’s not.
***
BJ’s explosive entry in As Strong as Samson
(CD1-03)
took the band by surprise: ‘It sounds like he hadn’t played for a week,’ says
Gary, ‘and was letting it all rush out.’ Grabham uses a Gretsch Viking on this
track, overdubbing with a Martin D28 acoustic belonging to Ian Duck of Hookfoot.
BJ Cole, Mick’s former bandmate in Cochise, contributes pedal steel guitar, and
skilful production differentiates it from the organ’s similar range and sustain.
Reid wrote without considering trends or markets; even in their fifth decade his
words rarely sound dated. Starting from the imbalances and injustices that fed
into the three-day working week crisis, the Samson lyric universalises
the particular; Brooker finds a stirringly hymnal melody to convey its
strongly-felt message. His pitching of the tricky chorus-end is something magic.
The
words, in that difficult line, are arguably more intelligible at the BBC
(CD2-06),
in a version slower than the album’s. Copping’s organ-playing is superb, as is
BJ’s extended fill at about 2:48. ‘He’s never just keeping time,’ Grabham says.
‘He plays the lyrics of songs as they go by.’ At KZEW
(CD3-08)
the speed is similar to the album’s, but the piano intro, and BJ’s entry, have
developed. Grabham is very active in verse two; Alan Cartwright is strong, as
always, on bass, and Chris’s Hammond-break shines. Mick also handles harmonies,
not a great Procol speciality: ‘I don’t look back on the singing as a problem,’
he told me. ‘I just got on and did it.’ Procol’s wind-up, in the heat, isn’t
perfect: ‘Thank you, my mother,’ says Gary, perhaps imagining that no-one but a
blood relation would have applauded it.
Close listening to
CD1-11,
the Samson ‘D♭
mix’, suggests it’s just a slowed-down version of
CD1-03.
In today’s digital world, pitch and speed can be independently changed; in 1974,
dropping a semitone by varispeeding the tape, you’d reduce the speed by an
identical factor. Here pitch and speed have dropped by different factors,
shading the process, as well as the purpose, with uncertainty. Grabham is
(almost) definitive. ‘Samson was played in D, end of. Or I could have
tuned down, I suppose. But I don’t remember doing that.’
***
Despite the straightforward imagery of The Idol
(CD1-04),
its import remains enigmatic. Who is this tricky, irresolute monster? Who
idolises him? ‘It could be about a lot of people,’ said Reid in 1974, ‘one of
them myself.’ First heard live
(12 November 1973) as a Brooker solo, the song ‘worked
out a lot differently with the group,’ as Gary told another 1974 interviewer.
The Idol shares compositional quirks – minor chords starting the verses,
choruses launching from the subdominant – with Samson. But the songs
‘weigh’ very differently: for The Idol Thomas taxed AIR’s 24-track
facilities, superimposing two stereo acoustic pianos, three electric pianos, and
‘as many more guitars.’
Yet it’s still marvellous with the basic
five-piece. At the BBC (CD2-08) it’s passionately played and sung, by both
voices, with a tremendous guitar solo. At KZEW (CD3-09) the trimmed structure
and swifter tempo lop ninety seconds off the vinyl timing. Grabham’s prefatory
poem is curious: ‘I made the mistake of doing it one night onstage, then it
became “my joke”,’ he told me. Its relevance to The Idol is unclear, but
oddly ‘the moon shines on her tits’ exactly describes the album-cover of
Cochise’s self-titled début (1970).
***
1973’s Grand Hotel booklet matched each lyric with a charcoal
illustration by Spencer Zahn, who also completed three designs that weren’t
used, among them ‘Picture Story’ – aka The Thin End of the Wedge
(CD1-05).
Reid’s rich lyric therefore isn’t new: yet its paranoid flavour does tally with
much of the Exotic mood. Zahn’s illustration – blank paper, one
corner blazing – rather simplifies Keith’s game of semantic tag, where one
phrase’s connotations catalyse associations in a neighbour, triggering
fascinating interference-patterns in the mind’s ear.
The music (‘off-the-wall weird’, in Gary’s view) is likewise memorable. With
a left-hand contour perhaps seeded by Chopin (Nocturne,
Op 72 No 1, 1827), the verse adapts chord-voicings from
bebop, albeit unswingingly slowed-down.
The chorus is more familiarly diatonic, but the whole sound-world resounds with
menace. The lack of a radio version is regrettable, since Reid had teased KZEW
with the promise of songs
that ‘won’t come across in a 20,000-seater’. But onstage,
with drums (BJ was unwell when the album track was recorded), The Wedge
could be overpowering:
‘I’ve got a cassette, recorded in France,’ says Mick, ‘an absolutely storming
version, magnificent organ too. One of my favourites in the whole repertoire.’
***
In an e-mail, Spencer Zahn evokes his 1972 self, excitedly awaiting each new
Grand Hotel lyric for illustration: ‘What new room of Keith’s
imagination would I awaken in next?’ When M. Armand came through his
letter-box the answer was surely ‘kitchen’ (though Spencer’s drawn response
shows a baleful-eyed horse). Downbeat domestic settings inform several early
Reid pieces, often sharing cartoon-like narratives, literary gleanings, and
gallows humour. ‘We were revisiting old ground here,’ Gary admits –
though Armand’s title was punningly refreshed, to reclaim publishing
rights formerly assigned to Essex Music.
It’s fitting that Procol’s Jekyll’n’Hyde song used two names: but even with its
continental alias, ‘Monsieur
R Monde’
(CD1-06),
it was bumped from Grand Hotel, as it had been from Shine on
Brightly following a tepid Olympic Studios run-through back in October
1967. It worked excitingly enough on the 1974 tour, often with Brooker on rhythm
guitar and Copping on piano; but the album production feels primitive and noisy
(Thomas later produced The Sex Pistols). ‘I’m not sure how R Monde fits
in,’ says Gary now. ‘We should have written one more song: and it would have
been a huge hit!’
***
Fresh Fruit
(CD1-07) may seem a relative throwaway, but given the album’s name and cover
image – by the Hungarian, Jakob Bogdani (1658–1724) – it comes close to
being the title-track. ‘I don’t think we had a title,’ says Gary. ‘Then Keith
saw [Bogdani’s Fruit and Birds] and showed us a picture of it. It seemed
to fit what we’d recorded.’ Certainly the rich, dark colours and busy detail are
a good synæsthetic match for Chris Thomas’s input. ‘Fresh Fruit is a nod
towards the old days,’ Gary adds. Its intensive overdubbing recalls Grand
Hotel, but the tuned percussion (soon to recur in 1975 chart hit
Pandora’s Box) goes right back to Boredom (1969). ‘Marimba, and
whistling, that’s me,’ says Brooker. ‘BJ Wilson – sometimes known as ‘Mad Dog’ –
was always in charge of barking.’
But
dogs don’t naturally eat fruit. Can we take Rover’s tail-wagging at face value,
or is this another Procol novelty with a smutty subtext, like A Souvenir of
London? Reid doesn’t specify any fruit by name, rather emphasising the
sensuous verbs – touch, squeeze, squirm – associated with devouring it.
Intriguingly, given the many carnal themes in Grand Hotel, this is
the closest the follow-up album gets to bodily symbolism suggestive of the
‘exotic birds’ in its title.
Was this lightweight number positioned tactically, a sweetener to offset the
bitter pill following? ‘Song order is determined after everything’s finished,’
Brooker explains. ‘Words go with music, and music with words, and hopefully
together they imply some kind of mood. We could have made Fresh Fruit a
sombre ballad … but then you’d be talking about the dog dying …’
***
The Exotic Birds songbook includes numerous characters,
named (like Icarus, Samson, Scrooge, Rover) or unnamed (psychiatrists,
preachers, Arabs, doctors, etc). Yet, in marked contrast to the Grand
Hotel songs, few Exotic numbers portray, or even imply,
interpersonal relationships. Butterfly Boys (CD1-08) is a major
exception, a surprisingly forthright, specific critique of Chris Wright and
Terry Ellis, the band’s management, and owners of the label they were signed to
(‘Chris’ and ‘Ellis’ made ‘Chrys-alis’: its emblem, a butterfly).
‘Procol Harum is the “sinking ship” here,’
Gary told me. Wright and Ellis are ‘… the ones that “get the cake”. They were
very upset about the song, and wanted us to change the words and title to
Government Boys. We said “Bollocks’’’.
When Gary arranged the song for 1995’s The Long Goodbye album,
delicate orchestral detail brought Reid’s itching fleas and stinging bees
playfully to life. But back in 1974 it’s a supercharged rocker, driven by the
mighty Cartwright and Wilson in consort with commanding piano (it’s easy to hear
why the Stones wanted Brooker on their records). Mick’s Les Paul alternates
between intricate back-up work and funky, eloquent soloing.
At the BBC (CD2-10) the vocal harmonies are strong, the guitar level good. In
both radio performances Grabham closely follows his album solo: it has quite
rightly become a set-piece. At
KZEW
(CD3-10) the tempo
is faster; listen for
Alan Cartwright’s precise and
propulsive bass. Quizzed about his Beatle-like triplets, Mick declares he ‘never
thought, “I’ll try and sound like George Harrison.” That kind of thing just
became part of guitar language.’ The momentary fluff at 3:12 is a real rarity,
but as Reid told me, ‘... if somebody screwed up, it just got broadcast that
way.’
***
The prominent organ, transparent texture, and languid pace of the original
Exotic album-closer have encouraged some diehards to view it as a
deliberate homage to the supposed glory-days of A Whiter Shade of Pale.
The truth is that New Lamps for Old (CD1-09) sounds simple because it
was recorded in one magical evening, and additional adornment would have been
superfluous. ‘I remember vividly,’ Chris Copping noted in 2009, ‘Gary
came straight in with a new song. We put Rhodes piano through the Leslie, late
at night. Everything about this session was mellow, just fell into place.’
Disillusionment reigns in Reid’s brief lyric: but far from ‘unable to cope’,
he’s at the top of his thought-provoking game with ‘the eye of the needle, the
loss of the thread’. Likewise Brooker’s melody and harmonies – surprising, yet
somehow inevitable – epitomise ‘unique entertainment’. Finally the
ensemble-playing, and the yearning vocal, are nowhere near the ‘end of the
show’: Procol Harum, five albums and forty-four years later, still shine on
brightly.
Brooker’s piano opens the BBC New Lamps
(CD2-04)
which, slower than the original, presents a definitively moving performance.
Reid
confirms this song was ‘very unusual for us to play live.’ Yet it also closes
KZEW
(CD3-13),
having developed a strong organ counter-melody, and some delicate rubato
between verses. Grabham’s guitar (a Gretsch on the record, but here his Les
Paul) ruminates effectively in the background. Gary’s vocal is again passionate,
though ‘falsehood’ sounds, as ever, like ‘false head’. In both radio shows BJ
demonstrates that those coda sextuplets, on his ride cymbal’s bell, really can
be played with one hand while the other maintains its snare dialogue with the
kick-drum.
***
Bonus track Drunk Again (CD1-10) is a belter, destined only for the
B-side to Nothing But the Truth. Seemingly a stronger album-contender
than the retread, Monsieur R Monde, it was actually passed over twice: it
had existed at Grand Hotel time, giving its title to the
third unused Spencer Zahn illustration. A companion-piece to A Rum Tale¸
it shows an ice-cube, a stubby wineglass, and a female hand … more refined
drinking than the present text seems to depict. Reid’s topsy-turvy word-order –
‘fly can’t bird’ etc – is a literary trope to convey the narrator’s mental
state, a reinforcement for the song’s plainspoken title. Among the fevered
expostulations from that befuddled brain, ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ and ‘my mother’s
name’ are the only explicitly-female references on the extended Exotic
album.
Brooker’s
verses are chordally straightforward, and his comrades attack them with raucous
fervour. Cartwright’s fluent bass dominates; Gary’s vocal and piano are superb
(he also plays a
National guitar inherited from his late musician father, Harry Brooker).
Copping’s skirling organ changes gear into the second musical element, a rising,
academically-harmonised motif signifying the repeated, momentary urge to
abstain from drink. Its inevitable collapse, back into rock’n’roll mode,
provides the perfect playground for BJ Wilson’s bewildering percussive
decorations.
***
LEGACY
SONGS
Homburg
(CD3-04) numbers among several obscurities resurrected for the KZEW broadcast:
to Americans it’s not ‘Procol’s Other Big 1967 Hit’, as it is back home. In a
pre-show interview
Reid explains that Homburgs were ‘made famous by [Fifties’ Prime Minister]
Anthony Eden.’ Asked what distinguishes a Homburg from other hats, he quips,
‘About thirty bob a week.’
Some critics
dubbed this great song ‘son of Pale’, but Brooker’s chord-inversions
still sound fresh and distinctive. The original single faded: live, two
contiguous key-changes make for a convincing finale.
Conquistador
charted for Procol (August 1972) in the live Edmonton arrangement;
the five-piece band deftly replicates the single’s Hispanic flavour, keyboards
covering the symphonic parts. The BBC version (CD2-01) features a fine vocal,
Baroque organ elaborations, and exciting drumming. Grabham is hard to hear.
‘Come on Mick!’ Gary calls: perhaps the guitar was low in the stage monitors
too. At KZEW (CD3-01) Brooker and his ‘little droogies’ establish an instant
groove, and Grabham’s super-tight ensemble-playing is a revelation. This time,
sadly, it’s BJ’s drum sound that lacks substance.
The high rarity-quotient
on KZEW may suggest Procol wanted the tape for a possible live album; instead,
the set was bootlegged as Homburgs and Stetsons. 1967’s
seldom-heard Mabel
(CD3-11)
has
a chorus
suggestive of British music-hall, but the Lovin’ Spoonful’s 1966 Daydream
is a stronger influence (Brooker has combined the two songs occasionally at
soundchecks). Originally recorded with twinkling celesta throughout, Mabel
was revisited when BJ Wilson joined Procol (in the first ‘Harum shuffle’);
overdubs included party-noises and a vestigial, Daydream-influenced
violin. KZEW’s rhythm guitar, Hammond, and keyboard-break are further
innovations, bringing the song closer to the Procol mainstream. It’s missing a
verse, but it’s still an amusing novelty, foreshadowing Fresh Fruit,
which revisits Mabel’s dietary images, if not its homicidal glee.
Cerdes (Outside the Gates of)
(CD3-05)
is an
energetically-executed, bluesy favourite from Procol’s self-titled début album.
Reid’s early homage to Dylan is clear in the catalogue of fanciful characters,
the magpie appropriation of mythologies, then the angry rejection of received
value-systems. Brooker’s vocal is occasionally reminiscent of Dylan too. This
versio n closely follows the 1967 original, until a surprise ending replaces the
vinyl fade-out.
Neither radio
show, BBC nor KZEW, featured anything from 1969’s uneven Salty Dog
album. The neglected Long Gone Geek (CD3-03) comes closest: it was issued
only as the Salty B-side, its hectic energy a provocative foil for
Brooker and Reid’s majestic masterpiece. Live at KZEW the song is half as long
again, the lyric – Reid’s speeded-up cartoon of feline misrule in a turbulent
penitentiary – more clearly intelligible. Grabham modifies Trower’s original
riff, Brooker’s piano-break usurps 1969’s Hammond solo (from co-composer,
Matthew Fisher); and BJ’s unpredictable drumming contributes immensely to the
excitement.
Whaling Stories
(CD2-02) stays true to the epic ambitions of 1970’s original recording,
sustaining an extravagant range of moods and images over almost nine minutes,
with a gravity that fussier ‘prog’ rivals could merely dream of. The declamatory
episodes, from 4:32 onwards, truly push the envelope of rock-band composition.
Copping borrows the ‘daybreak’ music from Brooker’s 1971 Edmonton
orchestration; his evocative organ prelude continues the number’s evolution.
Brooker’s sparkling piano and voice epitomise this masterpiece’s perfect fusion
of music and words.
Grabham has reservations about the 1971 album that Simple Sister (CD2-07)
originally kick-started: ‘I had all the [Procol] records,’ he told me, ‘and
loved them all, until Broken Barricades … not keen on the sound of
that one.’ But he does baleful justice to the opening riff, his tone every bit
as threatening as Reid’s ensuing strategies for
suppressing sibling discord. Like Whaling Stories, the original recording
builds an extended instrumental over a repeated bass motif. Often omitted from
stage shows, it works well here, over more than two minutes: without the
record’s chattering piano collage, the percussion-section becomes the main
ear-grabber.
Perhaps it was natural for Procol, sweltering hot and far from home, to air
Power Failure (CD3-07), their skilfully-worded 1971 account of rock-band
touring privations. The composed music – and the harmony singing – are less
distinctive than the compelling, if unfathomable, 140-second rhythm-narrative
from Procol’s one-man big-band. It’s not just the Buddy Rich-like dexterity and
invention that amazes: BJ’s instruments have an inimitable sound.
The
ambitious Grand Hotel (CD2-09),
title-track from Procol’s 1973 album, is warmly received by the BBC audience. It
soon finds its stately tempo, and Brooker delivers Reid’s rich libretto –
cataloguing the decorous excesses of an imagined high-life – with soulful
dignity. Alan Cartwright’s inventive, muscular bass animates the early verses,
before the cantering circus-theme and the reflective piano solo. If this
haunting air – which the ensemble transforms into a gentle tango – really echoes
a Russian song, Gary didn’t knowingly borrow it. ‘But of course,’ he told me,
‘one’s ears are unconsciously open to everything.’
Bringing Home the Bacon is a red-blooded rocker
that presents the antithesis of Grand Hotel’s measured evocation of
elegant dining. Brooker’s piano keeps time, liberating Wilson for rhythmical
adventures. At the BBC (CD2-03), Copping’s vibrato Hammond line dominates the
guitar, and the ensemble-playing doesn’t always gel: this performance wasn’t
broadcast. But at KZEW (CD3-02) Grabham’s guitar shines out, his second solo a
reckless joy. Bacon was an audition-piece, at AIR London, before Mick
joined Procol in September 1972. A Salty Dog followed (a Brooker
wild-card, having no guitar part!) and Mick’s stellar showing clinched his
invitation to join. In fact he’d worked out the changes at London’s Roundhouse.
‘Backstage with Cochise, I was plonking around on a rickety upright,’ he
confides now. ‘Once you find that flattened fifth at the start, it’s fairly
straightforward. I’ve got no classical background, but I was always into
chords.’ A Salty Dog remains the most surprising omission from these
eclectic, and otherwise delightful, Procol radio concerts.
***
CLOSING
WORDS
This 3CD
liner-note ends with an authoritative verdict from Procol Harum’s Hammond
organist, Chris Copping: ‘Exotic Birds and Fruit represents the
best of the band,’ he told me. ‘I love every note, every word and above all the
mighty production. Chris Thomas was at the absolute height of his powers when he
recorded us. It’s my favourite album.’
© Roland
Clare, Sydney NSW, April 2018
Many thanks to Gary Brooker MBE and Mick Grabham for new
assistance with these notes, and to Chris Copping and Keith Reid for past help;
also to Jacob Cunningham and Spencer Zahn, and particularly to Prof.
Sam Cameron, my collaborator in the ongoing
‘Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes’ pages at
www.procolharum.com, to which readers are referred for more detailed
consideration of the songs discussed above.