Procol Harum

Beyond
the Pale

Robin Trower

And a possible Syd Barrett connection ?

Unless quickly deflated by some credible inside source, then this Barrett / Trower rumour should give fellow Procoholics, especially Trower fans, something to gnaw on for a good while.

The following is from Barrett's Opel, a retrospective collection of outtakes and rarities. I have it in vinyl format, although I know it has easily been available on CD for a few years now. I picked this up in 1988, I believe. The LP is on the EMI / Harvest label, and my copy is an import (from England).

The Trower reference is in the last paragraph of the liner note: for contextual reasons, I'm quoting well above the relevant passage:

There's still more left 'in the can,' takes hampered by false starts, or which fall apart quickly, there's the rambling Rhamadan, the infamous motorbike noises and somewhere there's the lost Bob Dylan Blues. Wherever that now resides, it's not at Abbey Road, and neither is its paperwork. Indeed there's no record of any further sessions there after July 1970, and if the stories which surfaced in 1975 are true; of an altruistic benefactor bringing Syd into EMI's studios, of Robin Trower's support (etc etc), then those responsible removed every shred of evidence: tapes, logs, everything.

Brian Hogg, Lizard Sound Archives, August 1988

So ... was Robin Trower the (possibly secret?) sponsor of some (lost, or hidden?) Syd Barrett sessions? Among the 3,000* weekly visitors to 'Beyond the Pale' there must be someone who can give us more information!

* BtP webmaster adds (January 2007): 3,000 weekly visitors was of course in former times. Now BtP has 5,000 visitors on an average day.

Arthur Freakley writes to BtP from the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago (January 2007):

There is a book I have called Random Precision by David Parker that details all Barrett recordings, based on the paper documents at Abbey Road and other studios that he and the Pink Floyd Sound are known to have recorded at. There is no mention of Robin Trower, not even in the book's index. Sorry. That doesn't mean to say RT was not involved in some way, but he apparently never paid for anything.

Buy Random Precision from Amazon in the UK or in the USA ... just click the links

Robin Trower's page at 'Beyond the Pale'