'Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes'

New Lamps for Old

This languorous offering stands apart from most of the high-energy material on Exotic Birds and Fruit, the band's rocking re-emergence from the more studied arrangements heard on Grand Hotel (1973). Its verbal theme of disillusioned resignation has much in common with the rest of the album but musically it is distinct, having a much lighter texture than the rest, sounding, with its high-profile organ, like the set's most deliberate attempt to perpetuate the traditional Procol sound: this may because of its near-live creation. Gary Brooker, in a 1974 UK interview about the album, talked about the relative merits of being prepared and being unprepared when going in to record an album. The band had had 'a pretty busy year' and 'there’s also a lot happens if you prepare one [song] in there. You never tried it before, never seen it in any particular light, it takes on a certain atmosphere … [New Lamps for Old] was the last song we did on the album. I wrote it in one day. Never played it before. It was late at night … we just played it straight through and that was that. We didn’t add anything on, we didn’t do anything. It made a nice ending to the album'. It must be said that this is the approach that great numbers of fans would like if and when Procol Harum make their first record of the new millennium.

Unusually, the song starts without any sort of instrumental prelude, in a slow four with the organ counting out the quavers, and piano nowhere to be heard. Muted drums, and a tinkle of tambourine, maintain the forward pulse; guitar and organ undertake a delicate balancing act with organ providing the high decorations, and guitar (Grabham's typically unobtrusive but crucial ensemble-work) filling in the midtones. The song is in F, and stays in that key despite visiting some unusual chords on the way (F seems to be a favourite Brooker key for shifting out of … A Rum Tale is the classic case). The verse starts with a phrase that falls with a variety of vocal melismas, then rises again; this is repeated for the second phrase, then answered in much more horizontal fashion. Chordally, the opening phrase wanders away into the relative minor, imparting a delicate hopelessness that nicely matches the words; the horizontal melody is matched by a sequence of chords that is in effect a protracted perfect cadence. The chorus is more adventurous, quickly passing through an A minor to E flat (a slightly jarring transition, on first hearing): from here on it's home again by the Drunk Again method, down the fourths. A second iteration of this sequence stops on the B flat, and then a walking scalar bass takes us down to A flat, where the music rests a moment before diving back into F. This is a very bright, shiny harmonic effect, and the long play-out simply alternates these two chords, with varying dynamics and vocal ad libs, while the bassline becomes a very sleepy version of something Little Richard might have come up with.

The speedy writing and minimal gestation of this piece may account for harmonic and structural straightforwardness, and also for the palpably emotional performance that comes though in the recording; Messrs Copping and Cartwright take the opportunity to shine: however, listeners should decide for themselves whether there really are no overdubs, bearing in mind the deft variations in organ registration, and the tambourine and cymbal-work … octopus or no octopus, it's hard to visualise what limb of BJ's is playing what by the end. The BBC 1974 concert version is similar to the record except insofar as the rhythmic pulse at the start is given by piano, not organ, and there are some transpositions of lyrical lines; Mick Grabham's guitar (which contributes some rhythmical chops not found on the record) sounds as though it is going through a Leslie speaker, and Chris Copping appears to be going for a neo-Garth Hudson Lowrey-silver sound at times. BJ eschews the rapid quaver cymballing that he favoured in the play-out on the record. Interviewed for the liner-notes of this CD, Keith Reid told BtP (see here), 'New Lamps was certainly very unusual for us to play live; that's intriguing!' but in fact it was performed quite steadily in promotion of the album. It made its stage début during the eight-date UK university tour that started 28 February 1974); it was heard at Golders Green Hippodrome (22 March 1974) and was also part of the setlist during the one-month US tour (April–May 1974).

It re-emerged in 1995, but sounded rather unfamiliar to the band (Brooker could be heard crooning 'some exotic birds and some exotic fruit' … possibly he had forgotten the words). The song was on the setlist for Redhill 1997, but was either dropped or overlooked. It was revived at Guildford 2000, conceivably as a tie-in with the programme note which concluded with a line from the song, 'Stand by for some truly unique entertainment': this performance, with two guitars, was obviously well- prepared and suitably timed late in the set as darkness overtook the outdoor audience.

• 'The end of the evening, unable to cope': the song was evidently recorded at the time of day it describes; however 'evening' could be taken as implying a late stage in the 'heyday' of the band', just as 'autumn' was the penultimate stage in the 'year' of the earlier narrator's madness.
• 'Unique entertainment no longer a joke': certainly Procol Harum music is a unique entertainment; the meaning of the rest of the line is not 'not funny any more' but rather 'now terribly serious' … to the extent that the narrator is not able to deal with it. Elsewhere in Reid we see 'joke' used in this ironic way: 'though the crowd clapped desperately they could not see the joke' ('Twas Tea-time at the Circus); 'Got the joker' (The Thin End of the (Wedge); 'from the proceeds of the joke' (Butterfly Boys); and 'It [the band's career] had all become a joke' (the Brooker solo piece (No More) Fear of Flying).
• 'The close of the picture, the end of the show': this line recalls 'let down the curtain and exit the play' from Fires )Which Burnt Brightly and it certainly seems to refer to the closure not only of the album but potentially also of the band. Keith Reid, on the other hand, implied in the Robbie Vincent interview on BBC Radio 1 ( November 1973) that it was to be seen in a personal light: 'It’s about somebody going over the edge. The close of the picture, The end of the show.) 'Over the edge' of course seems to have seeped into this sentence from The Thin End of the Wedge, or from Fool's Gold on the next album. Reid uses 'picture' in a variety of ways, as this selection shows: 'Our local picture house' (Rambling On); 'Picture ... rush (and so forth)' (The Thin End Of The Wedge); 'Painting the picture' (Skating On Thin Ice); 'that's the way the picture reads' (Into The Flood); 'I've still got your picture' (One More Time); 'Wonder where the picture went?'; (The Pursuit Of Happiness); 'a picture through the glass'; (the unpublished Last Train to Niagara) and 'her picture's in Vogue' (the unpublished A Real Attitude)
• 'Merciless torment, torturous blow': torment and torture occur together in Typewriter Torment ('Typewriter torment it tortures me still'); however this highly-concise line really does pack a punch with each of the four words powerfully reflecting cruel pain and suffering. Other torture references in the songs seem almost mild by comparison: 'strapped me to her torture rack' (She Wandered Through The Garden Fence); 'A twisted path, our tortured course' (A Salty Dog); 'eats it with poison and tortures its soul' (The Worm and The Tree). 'Blow' is of course a bodily buffetting, not the passage of air, in which connection it is interesting that 'lamp' can also be used as verb meaning to hit, hard.
• 'New lamps for old': alludes to the deceitful slogan used in Aladdin (which is probably of Arabic origin) by which the wicked Uncle Abenazar hopes to wheedle the magic lamp out of the young hero in exchange for an ordinary, new one. In the History of Aladdin we read 'who will change old lamps for new....new lamps for old', which contains Reid's exact title. Conceivably the song's real concern, however, is passing off old musical or lyrical ideas in the guise of new songs, 'the fire which burnt brightly' being some time in the past. The lamp was a technological advance on the candle, requiring oil to fuel it: hence the Christian song Give Me Oil in My Lamp (Oh Jesus) (which was recorded by the Byrds). In the post-electric world 'lamp' carries an archaic flavour, taking us back into the world of poetry, but lamps are much-considered by poets not because they are picturesque but because they required frequent attention, and because the alternative was a pervasive darkness (in the Biblical parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, the lamp carefully-charged with oil is a symbol of vigilance and readiness). Marvell writes 'he hangs in shades the orange bright / like golden lamps in a green night'; and Shelley has 'when the lamp is shattered / the light in the dust lies dead / when the cloud is scattered / the rainbow's glory is dead'; Milton calls the stars 'lamps' (the 'Lamp of Phoebus' is the Sun); the 'Lady of the Lamp' was the charitable Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). Udo Becker, in the Continuum Encyclopedia of Symbols, notes that the lighting and extinguishing of a lamp can signify the birth and death of a person, and, placed on graves, lamps signify the divine light of the hereafter. Jimi Hendrix had an August 1967 hit with The Burning of the Midnight Lamp; the Shadows had been in the charts in December 1964 with Genie with the Light Brown Lamp following a stint in Aladdin at the London Palladium with Cliff Richard.
• 'Bright shiny gold': we will encounter 'bright and shiny' again in Fool's Gold, and both songs point the Procol listener back to the imagery and title of Shine on Brightly. The word bright also occurs, in various forms, in In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence, All This And More, About to Die, Broken Barricades, Fires (Which Burnt Brightly), Fool's Gold, Something Magic, Holding OnThe lamps in this song are presumably golden in appearance though in realty they would be made from brass or copper (the earliest lamps were clay).
• 'Innocent youth': this may refer to the abstract quality, youthfulness, or there may be an individual, the 'innocent youth' himself … someone like Keith Reid, who portrays his own naivete in Pilgrim's Progress where he failed to find the hidden truths, the bright and shiny pirates' gold. However the Aladdin legend also tells of an innocent youth, duped by the wily magician masquerading as his uncle. The 'Lamp' in the Byrds recording mentioned above is the faith which needs to shine brightly; taking that alongside the present Procol song one might see New Lamps for Old as a Blake-like commentary on faiths in transition; 'innocent youth' refers to Jesus himself, and 'falsehood for truth' presents the way Bible teachings have been bowdlerized, harnessed to particular ideologies, or simply misunderstood: in this reading, Judas ('Judas, the blow') trades him in for some bright shining gold, instead of pieces of silver.
• 'Falsehood for truth': the 'for' here means 'in exchange for' or conceivably 'by mistake for'. Though Gary Brooker's diction is not very clear at this point (on the album and the BBC live concert it sounds more like 'false haven truth') this line is a key one, since it unveils the concepts underlying the symbolism of the old and the new lamps: it's the old lamps that are the true version, those with the magic power. This concern with 'truth' pervades Keith Reid's work: from the very beginning 'the truth is plain to see' 'in truth we were at sea ''dirt in truth is clean' from A Whiter Shade of Pale;' still sees truth quite easily' from A Christmas Camel; 'I know in truth they envy me' from Shine on Brightly; 'He only speaks the truth' from Rambling On; 'the truth was writ quite clear' from Look to Your Soul; 'tell the truth ... in truth it's just as well' from Crucifiction Lane; 'the truth is leaking out' from A Souvenir of London; 'Nothing but the truth ... harder than the truth' from Nothing But the Truth; 'the truth and the word' from As Strong as Samson; 'the truth of this story,' from The Worm and The Tree; 'the truth won't fade away' from The Truth Won't Fade Away.
• 'The eye of the needle, the loss of the thread': a needle seldom appears in a rock song without drugs being somewhere on the agenda [cp Neil Young, Bert Jansch]. Yet the presence of 'thread' here obliges us to construe the line in terms of sewing, though of course a real lost thread cannot be put through the eye of a needle. However the 'eye of the needle' reference derives from Mark 10:25: 'It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.' Though the 'thread' idea follows on the from the needle here, the idiom 'lost the thread' implies that one has missed one's way in an argument (it may derive from legends about people escaping labyrinths by trying to follow a string): thus Reid's compendious line, as profound as it is witty, deftly encompasses searching notions about straying from the spiritual path, and anxieties about the impossibility of getting into heaven or achieving enlightenment. Once more we sense the shade of William Blake (see here his rage against the annexing of the true path by 'villains'). New Lamps has a preoccupation with 'shiny gold', and it may be partly this gaudy prospect of wealth that distracts the narrator from his spiritual quest.
• 'Triumphant victor, glorious dead': many of the remaining phrases of the song have a Biblical tone. 'Triumphant' is offered in a hollow spirit, being followed by 'dead'. Some have heard this phrase as 'glory is dead', but 'glorious dead' is apposite: often written on national war-memorials, it refers to the heroes who fought to overcome a rival faith or nation. ['Sons of the glorious dead, have ye lain bound / In darkness and in ruin!' writes Shelley in The Revolt of Islam (1817); Wordsworth's The Prelude (1805) has 'The thirst of living praise, Fit reverence for the glorious dead'.
• 'Cause becomes duty': the sense of 'cause' here is the crusading one, 'the principle in which one believes'. This fossilising of a passionate belief into a burdensome habit must be the reason for being 'unable to cope' at the start of the song.
• 'Duty's the blow': we've heard 'blow' already in the song. This time some hear 'Jude is the blow'; Jude was Trower's shortlived post-Procol trio, but it expired three albums before this song.
• 'Which kills the picture: death of the show': the 'picture' is the scenario in which the narrator feels he is an actor, even a stooge; of the cinematically inspired songs in Procoldom Thin End of the Wedge is perhaps the most obvious, but this is certainly another. The 'show' could well refer to the travelling circus of a rock band … as referred to in Wizard Man … in which case the final idea of the song is that what kills off a rock band is the 'duty', the rigour and routine of having to write, record, perform. While it must be said that many bands considerably outdid Procol Harum in terms of the apparent energy they devoted to this duty, few set themselves such standards of originality in music and words, and very few indeed had such a startling début to live up to. It’s typically ironic that this lament for their jading spontaneity should evidently have been recorded in such a spontaneous fashion.

Thanks to Frans Steensma for additional information about this song