Procol Harum

It's evening, some time in the Autumn of 1972, and I'm all alone in the back room, tuning up and down the medium wave (AM) band of my parents' transistor radio (normally permanently tuned to Radio 2 - the BBC's middle-of-the-road music station) looking for something interesting. I'm drawn in by a fascinating wall of sound featuring a rough-edged vocal singing surreal lyrics over a delicious mixture of rock and orchestral instrumentation with a driving beat and a superlative hook. It turns out I'm listening to 'Conquistador' by Procol Harum and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. I've only been paying attention to pop music for a few months, I've never heard of (let alone heard) 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' but this is the moment of love at first hearing between myself and what has remained ever since my all-time favourite rock band.

Jump to January 1973. My parents have bought themselves a record player for Christmas and I'm about to buy myself an album for the very first time, laying out the princely sum of 75p. I'm browsing among the "Music for Pleasure" LPs in the Maidstone Woolworth's and I spot the name Procol Harum, and the song 'Conquistador' is one of those featured. The LP is titled A Salty Dog but it isn't the original album of that name: it is in fact The Best of Procol Harum which MfP have repackaged and given a misleading name; something they were rather prone to in those days. The true identity of the record only emerges some weeks later when I compare my new purchase with a friend's copy of The Best Of.... Of course these 1960s recordings inhabit a rather different sound world from that astonishingly sumptuous wall of sound captured in Edmonton, but all the same I'm delighted with the lyrics and sound of this very strange group I seem to have stumbled across. Pretty soon I know the record by heart and consider myself a fan.

A few months later is my 15th birthday. Grand Hotel has been recently released but I haven't yet heard anything from it. All the same I'm going to blow all the money I was given for my birthday on buying a full-price (£2-30) LP for the first time and Grand Hotel will be it. The gatefold sleeve and lyric booklet seem wonderfully luxurious and the packaging echoes the decadent, fin de ciercle feel to much of the music. I adore the title track and 'Fires (which burnt brightly)' and play the record to death. I devour every scrap of information on the band, its history, and its music that I can glean from the music press.

Within six months I've gone from not even knowing the name Procol Harum to being thoroughly enamoured. Next year (1974) I buy Exotic Birds & Fruit in the week of its release and then set about back-filling my collection with the rest of the band's albums. The following year's Procol's Ninth disappoints, sounding very much like a band running out of inspiration (especially lyrically), though it's fun to see my heroes on "Top of the Pops" as 'Pandora's Box' makes a foray into the singles charts. By the time of 1977's Something Magic the band already seem a relic of former days (though I enjoy Side One of the LP hugely) and it comes as no surprise to learn soon after of their disbandment.

And there it might have ended. Except that, although the band were no more, the music wouldn't go away. I never saw the band live (though I once saw Gary Brooker playing in Eric Clapton's backing band) but the records remain firm favourites. With the advent of CD in 1983 I begin to look out for Procol albums on the new medium, and gradually build up a complete collection of their original albums, along with three solo albums by Gary Brooker. Through Ecto I learn of the existence of 1991's The Prodigal Stranger which made an interesting, if bloodless, postscript to the band's recorded career.

The release, in 1999, of a CD from the BBC Archives of Procol Harum performing on the radio programme In Concert 25 years earlier seems to have marked an upswing of interest in the band. Gary played ocasional concerts under the Procol Harum name with a line-up that featured Matthew Fisher (and Mark Brzezicki, who played on The Prodigal Stranger) which led to more extended tours. Eventually this incarnation of Procol Harum recorded a new studio album of original Keith Reid compostions, 2003's The Well's on Fire.

It's hard to say what it is that I find so utterly compelling about this band's music. Indeed there are many answers, depending on the album (or even song) in question and my mood at the time, which is part of the fascination. But perhaps most important of all is that there is somehow something unique about the sheer sound of them. A sound that is at once full and spacious: the instrumental arrangements and Gary Brooker's vocal timbre combining to tickle all parts of the aural spectrum while never sounding cramped, in spite of the profusion of musical elements contributing to the sound. Procol Harum's music, perhaps uniquely in the world of rock, sounds truly orchestral in its conception: even when executed by just four or five instruments. Adding orchestral parts to the mix, something first heard on A Salty Dog and reaching its peak (on record) with the album Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, is a natural extension of this and the band sound totally at home playing in that context: something that couldn't be said of most rock bands who've tried making records with symphony orchestras. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt in my mind that Procol Harum's music remains fresh, exciting, and endlessly fascinating thirty years on and looks set to retain those attractions indefinitely. They do say that the first cut is always the deepest and, as far as my love of Procol Harum is concerned, that most certainly is true!

For more information on Procol Harum you must vist the Beyond the Pale website. This is the ultimate resource for anybody interested in the band, for whatever reason. A staggeringly huge compendium of information, interviews, reviews, analysis, and news of the band members that's utterly unrivalled. Constructed and maintained as a labour of love by the band's fans, it is testament to the deep and lasting affection that Procol Harum inspired, and continue to inspire, in those who respond to their music. Their encyclopedia of links to other web-sites related to the band is so comprehensive that it would be an unecessary duplication for me to list any other sites here. The personal web-site of Matthew Fisher, the man who defined the band's trademark organ sound on their early albums, is currently suspended.

Procol Harum's music could hardly be described as even borderline Ectophilic, so you'd hardly expect an entry for the band in the Ectophiles Guide to Good Music, but for my own amusement I've constructed my own survey of the band's albums in the style of the Guide.