Procol Harum's first year in the NME

Silence in Munster: 9 March 1968

These excerpts from New Musical Express, kindly selected for 'Beyond the Pale' by Yan Friis, show the first news of Quite Rightly So – sans Fisher credit, incidentally – which is to be performed on television; and Procol opening for the Bee Gees in Germany!

Front page: Full page advertisement for Barry Noble’s I Can’t Forget (MCA)

Main feature headlines:

TOM JONES HITS BACK at death-song critics by Alan Smith

ALL IS FRIENDLY AT DONOVAN’S RETREAT - which is really Gipsy Dave’s pad in London’s Wimbledon by Keith Altham

 SOLOMON KING VALUES FRIENDS, NOT MONEY by Richard Green

FOUNDATION CLEM REVEALS POPLAND’S 'BLACK SPOTS' by Richard Green

BRITAIN’S No 1 ABI and ESTHER WANT TO SETTLE DOWN HERE by Alan Smith

There’s a fantastic advertisement: it shows two badly drawn faces; one with fat sideburns, the other with a moustache (John Lennon on Sgt. Pepper-style):

Make the scene with these fantastic new raves! FALSE SIDE PIECES (19/6, set of two), FALSE MOUSTACHE (19/6) as seen on TV

Tipped for the charts by Derek Johnson:

Beatles, Lady Madonna
Paul Jones, And The Sun Will Shine
Cilla Black, Step Inside, Love
Four Tops, If I Were A Carpenter 

NME Top 5

1 (1) Cinderella Rockefella, Esther & Abi Ofarim
2 (3) Legend Of Xanadu, Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich
3 (5) Fire Brigade, Move
4 (2) Mighty Quinn, Manfred Mann
5 (10) Rosie, Don Partridge

News pages:

Monkees, Bee Gees, Procol, Plastic follow-ups; Supremes ’Town’ LP date

(excerpt)

… Procol Harum’s first single of 1968 is set for March 22. Written by Gary Brooker and Keith Reid, it is Quite Rightly So (Regal Zonophone). The group introduces it on Southern-TV's Time For Blackburn next weekend.

POPLINERS

(excerpt)

… Procol Harum at London Marquee next Tuesday (12^th) …

BEE GEES TRIUMPH WITH GERMAN FANS
by Andy Gray

(report on the BeeGees’ German tour with concerts in Hamburg, Bremen, Nuremburg, Frankfurt, Munster and Cologne.)

(excerpt)

While the Bee Gees drew the screams during the second half, Procol Harum’s first-half performances were greeted with appreciative silence. ‘It was a bit frightening at first,’ Procol’s drummer Barry Wilson told the NME, from Munster.

‘We have never opened a show before, and were a bit worried by the silence all through our act, but when we finished they just went wild, and it’s been like that every night since.’

Procol Harum return to Britain on Monday to start promoting their new single, Quite Rightly So.

Read more from the first year of Procol press