'Taking Notes and Stealing Quotes'

T V Ceasar

TV Ceasar, according to Keith Reid, was written 'in the last period' before the Grabham-version of Procol Harum started working on the Grand Hotel album: in other words, late autumn of 1972 probably saw the music composed for words that were very likely complete by August. The bitty arrangement does not quite sound like a fully-realised creation, and the 'cross-talk' by which one musical idea also crops up in For Liquorice John (which shares its 'late-developing' status) possibly suggests a hasty conception.

Many rock songs mention television but this (along with Lot of Wind by the Fall) is one of the few that are apparently exclusively about it. It should be borne in mind that TV, in the UK, was not the wide and pervasive phenomenon it now is. Colour television sets were not sold until 1970 and were still not dominant by 1973; only three terrestrial channels were on offer and many people could still not receive one of those (BBC2). For compulsive viewers there was less chance of escaping the domination of the personalities of the day. Though the personalities mentioned in the song are mostly British ones, contemporary interviews suggest that Keith Reid was motivated to write about television because of viewing experiences on American tours.

'They have these talk shows,' Reid told Zigzag (April 1973). 'Particularly a couple of years ago when David Frost was really popular there and Johnny Carson and Joey Bishop and all those shows, and the idea of the song was like they are all TV Ceasars – Caesars of the television; they are running everything.' Is the curious spelling 'Ceasar', which is found in all official references to the song, a deliberate mistake? Is it intended to fall midway between the 'Caesar' of Julius and the 'César' which is the Oscar-equivalent Award of the French Film Academy (which includes categories for TV)? Caesar owes something to a central image in George Orwell's once-futuristic satire 1984, in which omnipresent television sets gather information for 'Big Brother'. Big Brother has of course been adopted as the name of the new millennium's biggest 'fly-on-the-wall' television show, consisting of candid 'revelations' from a house with a plethora of hidden TV cameras: TV Ceasar would have been an apt theme tune for this entertainment.

Like all the songs on side one of Grand Hotel, this long number begins with a solo piano stating the fundamental motif of the piece, a typical Brooker compositional 'cell' – a last-inversion chord collapsing back on to a root-position triad on the same bass note. Though the song is in four-four time the first bar appears to be in three, or else it starts on a second beat of the bar, which is very unusual. The voice joins in soon, with drums and a prominently-recorded bass, and within thirty seconds the guitar and the orchestral strings are in full flight. They remain there for over five more minutes … though, as tape-operator Chris 'The Grouts' Michie commented to BtP, there is 'obviously a danger in throwing in the extra ear-candy too early – anything added after the second verse would have to remain in the mix until the end of the song, which would still be another five minutes away.' There's a lot crammed into this track (including the tail-end of an 'unclean' vocal erasure at 2:57). However Gary's orchestration is all interesting, with wide-flung string fills and some Handelian touches; only the drop-ins (heard at 2:13 for example), which may have been done by Chris Thomas, sound like spice-me-up afterthoughts: are these the acoustic basses with which Alan Cartwright is credited on the sleeve? Later in the song the organ becomes prominent; its solo starts with an unusually treated note, as does the ripping guitar, which brings a welcome vibrancy to the piece. Elsewhere the ensemble guitar has a Beatly flavour, echoing Here Comes the Sun as it conspires with the orchestra to decorate some of the song's empty spaces: there are quite a lot of these, passing-chords required to bring in the next section in a singable key; Brooker here lacks the boldness he uses in Bringing Home the Bacon, which juxtaposes fragments without the artifice of modulating gradients. He sings it with warmth and character, however, and the 'David Frost' vocal (see below) is a nice touch. Gary's bluesy voice is the antithesis of the stiffly-mannered choir, whose like we do not hear again until the orchestrated Butterfly Boys in 1995.

The song starts in B flat, working pleasant changes on the poppy I, IV, V, I formula. The orchestra's mildly syncopated intervention establishes F major, then the mood darkens with 'creeping in' in B flat minor, though successive minors brighten to majors as the tonal centre shifts upward: a 'spare' phrase brings us into E flat for the chorus. Here there is a resemblance to the middle section of For Liquorice John: the melody of 'his fall from grace was swift and sure' fits neatly over the chords of 'TV Ceasar, mighty mouse'. The chorus restlessly transposes itself downwards under the falling, saw-tooth melody, and ends in D, whence it takes a colourful dive into a transitional passage that ends with two bursts of a whimsical three-note pattern, rhythmically recalling the nursery-rhyme Three Blind (Mighty?) Mice. The chords have to wrangle seismically through B flat minor to G major, A flat, G flat and F, in order to be ready to begin again. The guitar takes its solo over the 'creeping in' chords, and the choir's cycling ending – reiterating the verses' mutating tag-lines – involves an adaptation of the chorus whereby the last chords tip upward again, the bass taking two semitonal steps back to where it started from. All in all, it could be said that the song finds ingenious harmonic solutions to the puzzle it sets itself.

A 'live' substitute for the fading ostinato on record has been found by repeating the falling 'three blind mice' chords and adding a final cadence; but another solution has involved a short coda in the form of a verse from the patriotic song Rule Britannia. 'Britannia' was the Romans' name for England and Wales and, long after Julius Caesar had left these islands, the English adopted it to represent the spirit of Britain, mingling ideas of empire, economics and military might; the poem Rule Britannia (words here) by James Thomson (1700–48) was set to music by Thomas Augustine Arne in about 1740 and is favoured by some as an unofficial national anthem. It's a particular favourite of the young revelers known as 'Promenaders', whose lusty participation on the last night of the BBC 'Prom concerts' from the Royal Albert Hall is an annual institution on British TV. If TV Ceasar has to grow a coda, this is the right song, with its Roman name, its dreams of imperial omnipresence, and its TV connection.

Doubtless the prospect of live orchestral gigs put the Rule Britannia coda into the band's minds, and it was heard in symphonic splendour at the very end of the Hollywood Bowl gig in September 1973; but TV Ceasar has also been played band-only with coda (Paris 10 August 1973, Gothenburg 29 October 1973 ) and without coda (Edinburgh Empire Theatre, 25 August 1973). Its gigging history appears to be limited to 1973 (it was broadcast from Biba's in London on the Midnight Special show in October) and – though it has a certain charm – it is probably not high on many fans' wish-lists for resuscitation.

• 'TV Ceasar Mighty Mouse': 'Caesar' was the cognomen of Caius Julius Caesar, the empire-builder, and became a title conferred on the heir presumptive to the Emperor's throne (cp Too Much Between Us) so the TV here is being likened to a conquering force in waiting. German Emperors turned the word into 'Kaiser', Russians into 'Tsar'. Syd Caesar, US comic, was at one time a major force on television. 'Caesar' is also a name given to a particular salad, another link to a common Grand Hotel theme. It's also a pun here, inasmuch as we hear 'TV sees … '. 'TV' is of course television, and it also stands for 'transvestite' or sometimes trans-sexual, perhaps tallying with the song's voyeuristic theme. The Grand Hotel lyric booklet punctuates the line oddly as "T.V.s' Ceasar" presumably meaning 'Caesar of the televisions'. Mighty Mouse (b. 1942) is the Oscar-nominated Terrytoons cartoon character, whose theme and dialogue were delivered in an operatic style ('Here he come to save the day ...' as the caped Mighty Mouse soared aloft with a jet aircraft sound); television is a 'mighty mouse' in the sense that it is small but astonishingly powerful, and it's like an ordinary mouse in that it has become the infestation of every sitting-room in the land.
• 'Holds his court in every house': the 'court' here, unusually for Reid, is not a legal one, but an Emperor's retinue of courtiers, ie the viewing public.
• 'Spies in every crack and corner': in 1973 the 'fly-on-the-wall' documentary of daily life was still a new, startling and debated phenomenon: TV was now watching ordinary people, as well as the other way round. 'Crack' is a small structural flaw in a wall, but in Luskus Delph 'the widow's crack' suggests that there may be a sexual overtone here too. 'Crack' is the slang verb associated with making ('cracking') a joke or wisecrack; it alliterates nicely with 'corner', usual location for a television set in a room.

• 'Watch you eat your TV dinner': the sense of this line carries on directly from the last, and such enjambements (common in She Wandered Through the Garden Fence for example) are rare at this era in Reid. The TV dinner was in the early 70s a snack-gimmick, a ready-meal sold in a tinfoil tray, to be oven-heated and consumed on the lap in front of the television (post-microwave, of course, it has become a norm). This was seen at the time as a destructive intrusion into family life and table-talk, albeit some sort of a boon for the working mother, a rising class at the time. The idea of convenience food is picked up below in the metaphor 'sandwiched'.
• 'Creeping in through eyes and ears': this line, implying the insidious influence of television, is the one that Spencer Zahn's illustration focuses on, though the creature in question is more Alsatian than mouse, however mighty. The word 'creep' possibly suggests some sort of judgment on the hosts of the TV shows in question.
• 'Finding out your secret fears': the phrase implies that problems are being repressed, since one would normally be prepared to admit to fears. If the TV Ceasar can indeed find out secret fears then it is a most probing phenomenon, hard to equate with the trite fare on television. Secrets are referred to in several Procol Harum songs: 'She's swallowed my secret' (A Rum Tale); 'They knew his secrets every stitch' (The Idol); 'Just a whole load of secrets' (Man with a Mission); 'The secrets of the hive' (A dream in ev'ry home); 'There's a man with a secret' (The Hand that Rocks the Cradle).
• 'Shares the bed in every house': this intimate conjunction of bed and TV was later developed in the Prodigal Stranger's A Dream In Ev'ry Home. The word 'home' appears with remarkable frequency in Procoldom, but this song differs in its frequent repetition of the word 'house': elsewhere we find houses 'open' in Dead Man's Dream, investigated by bloodhounds in Whaling Stories, and threatened with arson in Man with a Mission. 'Bed' is not infrequently-encountered as well: 'and attacked the ocean bed' (A Whiter Shade of Pale); 'and the lipsticked unmade bed' (Homburg); 'to try to throw some light upon the gloom around our bed' (Salad Days (Are Here Again) ); 'His bed is made' (Good Captain Clack); 'I'm lying in my bed hatching million-dollar schemes' (Seem To Have The Blues Most All The Time); 'I wasn't at home in bed' (Juicy John Pink); 'As I lay down dying, a floor for my bed' (Dead Man's Dream); 'Got the wrong side of the bed' (The Thin End of the Wedge).
• 'Gets the news in every house': normally television 'gives' the news rather than getting it. It's worth recalling that in the next song, 'news is leaking out' apparently equates the word 'news' with the disagreeable consequences of unclean copulation.
• 'Who's been doing what with who / How they do it when they do': this beautifully concise couplet speaks of a TV equivalent of the lowest tabloid journalism, gossiping about the amours and proclivities of the famous. Its prurient flavour carries on the theme of 'shares the bed' and possibly 'news' above.
• 'Every saint and every sinner': these terms are tabloidese for the blameless and the guilty parties in the sexual affairs mentioned above. The Saint was a TV series that ran from 1962 right through to the end of the 70s, featuring Roger Moore, and later Ian Ogilvy: rebuilder of Shakespeare's Globe, Sam Wanamaker, acted in one episode. The 'Saint' himself was associated with a very characteristic musical motif which Brooker, perhaps surprisingly, has not seen fit to incorporate into the song.
• 'Every fact and every figure': 'facts and figures' are the stuff of TV news journalism; 'fact' is a contrast to the foregoing gossip. 'Figure' additionally refers to the female form, and leads naturally into the 'flab' that follows.

• 'Fights the flab in every house': 'fight the flab' was the weight-watching radio [not TV] catchphrase of Irish disc jockey Terry Wogan (A Whiter Shade of Pale recently featured high in Wogan-listeners' chart of all-time favourites) who later became a major figure as a TV chat-show host. 'Fight the flab' was his dieting slot for housewives, and the phrase also caught the ear of sometime Reid-collaborator, BJ-collaborator and all-time Procol friend Vivian Stanshall, who then spent much time in a BBC sound lab attempting to realise the sound of flab being fought, for a comedy sketch which was never produced. The 'flab' reference shows a concern with body image, quite rare in the Procol corpus, but also found in 'growing fat with sin' in Barnyard Story, in A Rum Tale, perhaps, where food is disavowed, in Toujours l'Amour where 'she grew thin and I grew fat', and in Bringing Home the Bacon, with its disgust at copious ingestion. There is more fighting in Reid songs: 'In fighting I did hurt those dearest to me' (Pilgrims Progress); 'French girls always like to fight' (Grand Hotel); 'The cause for the fighting has long been a ghost' (Fires (Which Burnt Brightly)); 'Fighting for freedom' (As Strong as Samson); 'fighting monsters all my life' (Fool's Gold); 'We must fight it out' (The Final Thrust); 'One hell of a fight' (This Old Dog); 'Not a lover or a fighter' and 'talking of the fight' (the unpublished I'm a Reader and a Writer).
• 'Tops the pops in every house': Top of the Pops is the UK's TV chart show, on which Procol Harum appeared when their singles charted, except in the case of Conquistador for which a rather insubstantial film interpretation was offered.
• 'Sandwiched in between the ads': the word 'sandwich' occurs in a different context in Playmate of the Mouth; here the ironic reference is to television's actual content merely being 'filler' between the commercials, which are seemingly the programmers' main concern. It's not clear what is thus sandwiched here: 'something for the mums and dads' might be a Top of the Pops phrase for a more-slushy less-rocky type of number; but Top of the Pops itself is a BBC show, and as such has never suffered from advertisements, which occur only on the commercial channels. Cartoons of the Mighty Mouse variety would have occurred between the ads, but these would not have been 'for the mums and dads'. Incidentally this is the only explicit reference to 'dad' or 'father' in any Procol song (barring references to the Dalai Lama in Glimpses of Nirvana and perhaps to 'my old man' in Your Own Choice), and the only song in which mum / mother and dad / father appear together. Other parental references in the songs include 'Can't you hear me mother calling you?' (Crucifiction Lane); 'Old Mother Hubbard's ran off with the chair' and 'Call my mother's name' (Drunk Again); 'you have caused your mother great distress' and 'You wouldn't take your mum's advice' (The Piper's Tune).

• 'Great to have you on the show / sorry that you've got to go': this couplet compiles two typical chat-show clichés, the first being the catchphrase of TV mogul and presenter (Sir) David Frost. Gary's 'oooh' at 3:52 is an unmistakable parody of Frost's vocal mannerism. Procol Harum played on Frost's show, and Reid commented in Circus (May 1973), 'Remember how David Frost always used to say, when he ended an interview with one of his guests, "'great to have you on the show"? That kind of prompted me, after seeing him doing one too many "great to have you on the shows", to write the song.' Frost is possibly most famous for his Richard Nixon programmes, the highest-rated news interviews in television history; he now co-hosts the suitably voyeuristic Through The Keyhole, in which TV does indeed come into homes.
• 'Gets the vote in every house': the line may primarily relate to Party Political broadcasts, but in 1973 few families would have had more than one television set, so disputes over which programme to watch would be decided by a vote. Uniquely for Procoldom we see the whole family assembled, and it is seemingly the children's vote, Mighty Mouse, that wins. However since the song equates this Mouse with Caesar and with television, it seems we are being shown a victory for the medium rather than for any particular message. Keith Reid would revisit this song's theme of invasive manipulation in much later songs such as All Our Dreams are Sold and The Pursuit of Happiness.

Thanks to Frans Steensma for discographical information about this song