'Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes'

Monsieur R Monde

This strange little song has a strange history. It was one of two numbers Procol Harum recorded at Olympic Studios on 20 October 1967, which were evidently scheduled for the Shine on Brightly album. The other was the still officially-unissued Seem to Have the Blues (Most all the Time) which curiously shares with the present number a kitchen setting, an intrusive summons at the door, and some uncertainty as to whether the narrator is living or dead. Both songs are slightly ordinary R&B efforts, and lack the inspiration of most of the material on the first two albums: the quality of performance is unspectacular, and the recordings were probably shelved as In Held 'Twas in I took shape. Both tracks surfaced on the Cube's 1976 Rock Roots album, the first of a long series of studio-cellar-rummagings that has afflicted the band.

If we are to believe the liner note to Rock Roots, the present song was then called Monsieur Armand; when it was resurrected (and re-recorded with the later line-up) in 1974 for Exotic Birds and Fruit the title was punningly spelt Monsieur R Monde, and it has been speculated that this nominal distinction allowed Brooker and Reid's 'Bluebeard ' company to claim publishing royalties, although the song had been composed during the era when they were signed to the Platz organisation. This may be true [it was confirmed by Gary onstage in Croydon, 2002] though it seems not to have applied to Pandora's Box, which has a similar history of rejuvenation – and we shall use the differing spellings, in what follows, to distinguish the 1967 and 1974 versions.

Monsieur Armand was heard in concert in the USA in November 1967. Like the October recording, it started with Brooker's unsupported vocal, and raced along (the recording may have been abandoned because it speeds up so much: it starts at about 128 bpm but ends at a sprightly 132 or so: on record Monsieur R Monde stays at a disco-standard 120 throughout). It sounds a bit lightweight, and doesn't really benefit from the Skip Softly-style off-beat chops that Trower's guitar supplies. At San Francisco in November 1967 the song sprang a bluesy coda, showcasing guitar and organ momentarily (mp3 here). But despite having been apparently consigned to history in 1967, R Monde returned from the dead in 1973 / 74, being, as far as we can tell, the first instance of an old song brought out to fill a later album. It may well have edged out the the problematic The Poet / Without a Doubt, though it's possible that the late appearance of New Lamps for Old may have shared the responsibility for this. Matthew Fisher told Mike Ober (in Then Play On, 1992): 'There were various tracks recorded for the second album that seem to have turned up on some compilations, like Monsieur Armand which was re-recorded in a slightly different way for Procol's Ninth [sic]'. Certainly the texture and feel of the track are different: the rhythm section is greatly beefed up by more vigorous bass and a lot of cowbelling, and screeching vocal noise evokes the supernatural following a landlocked passage of dinning layered guitar, but it's done at the expense of tonal variety: some feel that the Chris Thomas style of overdubbed and repetitive guitar riffs does not really suit the Procol instrumental constitution, and it's certainly ironic that in a very few years he would be using exactly that dynamic to perfect the first Sex Pistols' singles and earn his place in rock history.

R Monde stays close to the architecture of its alter-ego Armand, though it starts with some new, portentous chords (and a piano motif closely related to the start of Butterfly Boys). From a ringing D, and a C, it descends into the home key of G, and stays on that chord a long time in Procol terms, going up to the C and back to G just as one would expect if it were the blues its 'morning' opening leads us to expect. But then, like so many early Brooker songs, it dodges the dominant, riffing its way to an unexpected F chord, and home again to G. It has the same few chords as Alpha, another of the waifs and strays from early Brooker/Reid days, which Gary has announced in concert as 'a five-chord blues'. R Monde faithfully reproduces the little 1967 octave-riffs that link sections, and the curious harmonies under the guitar solo, which starts in C, goes up a fourth into F, then up another into B flat, whence it makes a seamlessly surreptitious return to the home key. However R Monde breaks with the blueprint by pounding out a few empty G bars before the vocal returns, and it returns to the fourth-stepping chord-sequence after the final verse until, after a taxing slog for 18 solid bars of the home chord, Brooker's whistle finally allows it to wind up, hanging on the dominant it has so studiously skipped over since it started the whole song.

Michael Sajecki, in Shakin' Street Gazette review, opined that '… the band still knows how to rock as only they can and they prove it with Monsieur R Monde, a blisteringly-paced little tune which gives the whole band a chance to shine (pay particular notice to Grabham’s guitaring, as he has just won the Robin Trower sound-alike contest).' However many fans find the pounding, heavily-overdubbed arrangement unadventurous, and here, more than anywhere, we must agree with Claes Johansen, who memorably observes that the generous dollops of echo on this album make it sound as though Procol Harum are playing to an ominously empty hall.

Monsieur R Monde was played on the 1974 tour with Gary on rhythm guitar (while Copping migrated to the piano, Brooker would stand front centre, counting artless frets to find the opening chord, while other members of the band joshingly dubbed him 'Gary Gold', a quantum upgrade from the then-voguish Gary Glitter (Brooker actually signed himself 'Gary Gold': see here)). And the curious story of the song's survival continued when it made a return on the 1995 tour: Geoff Whitehorn negotiated a bluesy and interesting solo at Clacton 1995 (mp3 here), and Gary continued to emit hollow laughter towards the end.

• 'The bell on my door rang this morning': in Reid songs the front door, its bell, letterbox and so forth are not common themes, but this song shares such domestic territory with the (officially-unpublished) Seem to Have the Blues (Most all of the Time). The emphasis on 'morning' at the top of a song often suggests that what follows will be blues-like, but here the narrator appears not to be waking up (as in the standard blues formula) but to be already sitting in the kitchen. Juicy John Pink starts with the traditional evocation of waking in the morning although, as in Dead Man's Dream, that narrator doesn't seem to be in his bed either. In Salad Days (Are Here Again), however, the ringing of the doorbell is heard from the bed where … interestingly … there is some doubt as to whether the sleepers are alive or not. Another intrusive bell is the incessant ringing from the Prussian blue electric alarm-clock in Shine on Brightly, and 'Six bells struck' in Whaling Stories may also be an alarm of sorts. The only decorative bells in the songs appear to be 'upon your toes' in All Our Dreams Are Sold.
• 'From the kitchen I called "Who's that there?"': in a typical working-class household the kitchen, being warm, is often a social centre; likewise if a building has been converted into 'lets', turning the original front-room or parlour into another bedroom, the kitchen will become the communal meeting point. Reid's kitchen imagery includes 'please get off the kitchen table' (Mabel); 'I'm sitting in the kitchen wondering where the money's spent' (Seem To Have The Blues (Most All The Time)); 'even the kitchen ceiling has collapsed and crumbled' (Glimpses of Nirvana); and 'sitting by the kitchen door' (Poor Mohammed); characteristically none of these songs portrays the kitchen in a reassuring light. When kitchens appear in pop songs it is usually in the context of a man missing an absent female (cp Squeeze's Up the Junction: 'Alone here in the kitchen I feel there's something missing' or The Cure's 10.25 Saturday Night: '10.15 on S Saturday night / and I'm sitting in the kitchen sink / and I'm wondering where she's been')
• 'Through the letter box came a grappling hook': a grappling hook is a large iron multi-tooth device, usually on the end of a rope: it is slung by builders, burglars or boaters to gain purchase on a remote or otherwise-inaccessible point. It is hard to imagine how such a device could possibly come through a British letterbox, which is typically an envelope-sized slot in the front door, let alone reach into the kitchen: and this is only the start of the surreally-alarming scenario that unfolds in the song.
• 'Which grappled me right out of my chair': to 'grapple' is to wrestle with (professional wrestling on 60s UK TV was introduced with "Hello grapple fans" by Kent Walton). A songwriter, on the other hand, would be more interested in the idea of a musical 'hook' or memorable phrase, that would urge people out of their chairs, presumably to dance.
• 'Stretched out on the floor I lay helpless / of my limbs I had lost all command': the incapacity of the narrator is more likely attributable to the terror of the attack, rather than to the actual grappling; note that pain is not mentioned. This may be a case of seizure, or it may prefigure the dissolving identity of the narrator, about which we will find out more below. The matter-of-fact revelation of bodily malfunction may recall 'my legs were deformed, yet I moved quite freely' from Dead Man's Dream. The word-order is somewhat academic, but as we shall show, this is a narrator who keeps his verbal cool.
• 'When into my ear instilling fear said a voice "I am Monsieur R. Monde"': the insertion of 'instilling fear' here seems rather awkward, though some might claim that the awkwardness contributes vividly to the chaotic impression here. Are we to understand that the voice comes from the grappling hook? If it emanates, via the letter-box, from the hook's unseen manipulator, the neither 'said' nor 'into my ear' can be apposite. Later we guess that the voice comes from the narrator himself into his own ear; but the picture is far from clear. The voice claims to be Monsieur R Monde, evidently a name known to the song's narrator, who thinks its owner has been dead exactly a year.
• '"Monsieur R Monde you are not!': the 1967 version appears to have been known as Monsieur Armand, and this may have been an early budding of Reid's apparent Francophilia, which flowers on Grand Hotel with 'these French girls always like to fight' and 'les nuits qu'on passe …'. and on Toujours L'Amour with 'a French girl has offered to give me a chance' and 'I'm thinking of renting a villa in France'. 'Armand' may have been chosen for the song simply because it sounds generically French, though why this alter-ego needs to be foreign remains uncertain; equally it may simply have been a convenient rhyme for 'command'! Seventeenth-century French texts show a demon being conjured up as 'Amand', but some will judge this a tenuous link. Fans determined to relate these songs to the few facts known about Keith Reid's life will suggest that 'Armand' could be a fanciful nickname for the lyricist, who smoked Gauloise cigarettes, which come from France. In any event the French-ness of the name was retained when the band changed the spelling of the title. 'Monde' is French for 'world', and we may be intended to imagine something universal about this shadowy, disembodied speaker. However a French person would pronounce the initial 'R' as 'air', not using the same sound as we hear at he start of 'Armand.' In any event it is a delicious irony that a song apparently about split personality should have come to us under two different names.
• 'For I personally attended his funeral which was twelve months to this very day"': it's very common for the anniversary of a distressing event to re-awaken feelings of sadness. The indignant narrator uses the otherwise-redundant intensifier, 'personally', to intimate the strength of his emotion here.
• 'A rat flew down from the ceiling': clearly rats cannot fly, nor have they any business to be on the ceiling. We might conceivably imagine a bat behaving in this way though such a creature would not ordinarily alight on a human ear. 'Alight' certainly suggests that the animal is flying: maybe the terror (or some other cause) is inducing a hallucination: we might note that ceilings seem quite unstable in early Reid: 'the ceiling flew away' (A Whiter Shade of Pale); 'the ceiling was too tall' (Homburg); 'even the kitchen ceiling has collapsed' (Glimpses of Nirvana); 'the ceiling flew away' (the unpublished Last Train to Niagara). It is possibly that 'rat' was substituted for 'bat' to enhance the mysteriousness of the scene, perhaps by analogy with the German word for bat, Fledermaus or 'flying mouse'. 'Rat' has numerous slang meanings [in the 17^th and 18^th centuries it meant a clergyman, which might tally with the whispering of protective words in the ear; it has meant a wig, or a low prostitute (from Balzac); 'to smell a rat' is to be suspicious, and 'to rat on' is to betray] but none seems specially applicable here. Whimsically we might expect a rat to surface a few tracks away from the sinking ship in Butterfly Boys; but the likeliest reason for its presence in the kitchen is mundane 60s kitchen-sink naturalism … as the film Withnail and I would like to remind us. Rats are about assail the victim in Poor Mohammed, which shares a kitchen setting with the present song.
• 'Upon my right ear': magical convention identifies the right with good and the left (Latin 'sinister') with evil; in a drama an evil character will make an entrance from stage-left. The good and bad angels who grapple for the soul of Dr Faustus in Marlowe's play, for example, would often be presented either side of him and the good angel, like the rat in the present text, would address the right ear. If Reid's song acknowledges this convention, we might expect the right-choosing rodent's voice to speak the truth. Talking animals are a staple of children's fiction, but the present song has little in common with the world of the nursery. Its nightmarish feel owes more to dream literature, which from Chaucer onwards [see The Book of the Duchess, for example] has a long tradition of using animal voices, often to impart truths that decorum would prevent a human being from uttering. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland would be the likeliest immediate dream-precedent for a writer brought up in Britain, and Reid's many overlaps with Lewis Carroll are mentioned passim in these notes and queries.
• 'If Monsieur R. Monde is safe and under sod': the word 'safe' here must mean 'at rest'; 'under sod' means under the earth, though the word has other applications: in 'my old man's a silly old sod' we see the jocular, patronising meaning. As an abbreviation for sodomite, 'sod' means 'homosexual'; and the word is also used for a demanding task ['writing this series every night is a bit of a sod'] and there are many other variants such as 'sod off', 'sod all', 'sod's law', 'sodding rain' and so on.
• 'Why are you shaking with fear!': the rat's point seems to be that our narrator knows that Armand, or R Monde, is not really dead and buried at all, and that the involuntary shaking of his body (over which he has lost all command) betrays a belief that the voice 'instilling fear' is speaking the truth.
• 'My name is not Scrooge': Scrooge is the central figure in Charles Dickens's novel A Christmas Carol (published 1843); visited on Christmas Eve by ghosts representing his past, present and future, Ebenezer Scrooge sees the error of his misanthropic ways, and is transformed into a genial figure by the time Christmas dawns. Scrooge was a miser, exhibiting characteristics attributed to Jewish people in caricature.
• 'From ghosts I have nothing to fear!': the narrator's defence is quite spirited, considering the terror that has set him quaking. His suggestion is that only the guilty need fear a ghost. The terrible intrusion of the grappling hook would seem to suggest he has every reason to fear, but this is not mentioned again in the song. Likewise the flying rat passes out of our consideration. Reid's uses of the word 'nothing' are legion, in such songs as Quite Rightly So, Glimpses of Nirvana, In the Autumn of My Madness, Look to Your Soul, Boredom, The Wreck Of The Hesperus, Nothing that I Didn't Know, Whaling Stories, Nothing But the Truth, The Idol, Man with a Mission, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, and the officially-unpublished Seem To Have The Blues (Most All The Time).
• 'If you are R Monde returned from the dead then what are you wanting here?': the bureaucratic formula, 'R Monde', would be very unusual in conversation, especially in such very upsetting circumstances. The narrator retains a great deal of poise, and questions the 'fear-instilling' voice in logical, rational fashion. Gary's elaborately rolled 'r' sound on 'returned' is without precedent, and defies interpretation.
• 'From nowhere I heard a mad cackle': The song requires 'cackle' to be pronounced oddly, in order that it should rhyme with Jekyll immediately following; however it sounds like 'Caykel' is most live performances and on the 1967 cut. On the Exotic Birds recording it sounds oddly as though Gary is singing 'dago', and this must remain a puzzle, alongside his unexpected vowel-sound in the second syllable of 'falsehood for truth' on New Lamps for Old.
• 'From nowhere a voice to me cried': this voice is presumably the 'fear-instilling' one, which was previously speaking in the narrator's ear, but now seems to have no origin. The swift development of this voice, and the jettisoning of other sensational elements in the story such as the rat and the hook, are symptomatic of a galloping breakdown.

• '"Stop calling me Monsieur R Monde you fool!': the fear-instilling voice commands the supine narrator to drop this use of 'Armand' as a name, and acknowledge the true nature of his interlocutor, himself. This idea surfaces again at the far end of Old-Testament Procol's career, when a 1977 advertisement for Something Magic (possibly not drafted by the band) advises that their newest album 'brings you face to face with a stranger … yourself'. The voice uses 'you fool' vituperatively, but it is treated in various ways throughout Reid: 'both themselves and also any fool' (Homburg); 'And like a fool I believed myself' (She Wandered Through The Garden Fence); 'some say that I 'm a wise man, some think that I 'm a fool' (Look to Your Soul); 'It doesn't matter either way: I'll be a wise man's fool' (Look to Your Soul); 'Fool's gold fooled me too' (Fool's Gold); 'Fool's gold broke my heart' (Fool's Gold); 'Fools gold bitter sting' (Fool's Gold); 'Fool's gold cast the die' (Fool's Gold); 'I was trying to act the hero's part not fooling anyone' (Taking The Time); 'and I played the fool' and 'King of the fools' (Skating on Thin Ice); 'We were fools to believe' ((You Can 't) Turn Back the Page); Keith even referred to himself as 'a songwriting fool' in an unusually expansive 1997 interview.
• 'My name's Jekyll and you're Mr. Hyde!" The Strange Case Of Dr Jekyll And Mr Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson was published in 1886: allegedly the 60,000 word first draft was written in four days and nights, on cocaine, and it has also been suggested that the novel was an attack on the increasing use of cocaine among doctors: it may in fact have its roots in an allegorical presentation of the attempt to give up drugs. In the novella Jekyll, aware of good and evil in his own nature, compounds a drug which allows him to develop a separate, repulsive persona which absorbs all his base instincts: Mr Hyde. Hyde commits murder; the drug loses its reversibility; Jekyll finds himself turning into Hyde unprompted, and kills himself on the point of being arrested. Since Jekyll and Hyde occupy the same body, they cannot actually meet or converse (though David Edgar's leaden stage adaptations experiment with just that possibility). If the 'fear-instilling' voice in this song actually emanates from the narrator, who has been sitting in the kitchen on the anniversary of the death of Armand, perhaps we are to imagine that 'Armand' is a sub-personality of his own that he thought was dead and buried, but which has surfaced to torment him, perhaps in the process unsettling the highly logical and composed thoughts that his conversation reflects, to the extent that he now hallucinates grappling hooks and abnormal rats, and loses bodily control. It's very unsettling, however, that the 'mad cackle' claims to be Jekyll, since Dr Jekyll is the morally upright personality in Stevenson's story: yet Reid's song does seem to acknowledge, to an extent, the conventional id/ego model of the human mind. We may note a possible consonance with Dead Man's Dream, however, where the dead man may be the narrator's other side, and where there's a shadowy third agent ('somebody like me'); and another with The Worm and the Tree where the eponymous deuteragonists may represent two sides of the narrator, and where the third, 'young man', figure resolves their conflict – not with a grappling hook, but with a sword.

Thanks to Frans Steensma for additional information about this song