To bring Head Full of Snow’s Procol Harum Week to a close, we list our five favourite tunes from the erudite songsmiths of psychedelic and progressive rock grandiose.
Actually, following a ruddy great trawl through what’s on offer, this may be retitled our “five favourite Procol Harum tunes available on YouTube.” They’re all absolute stonkers, nonetheless. ‘A Salty Dog‘, ‘Grand Hotel‘ and ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ are absent from this list as they were posted earlier this week.
So with no further nonsense, let’s get stuck in. Read more…
With packaging as lush as and three times more lickable than a Gary Brooker orchestral arrangement, Salvo release the Creme de Menthe of their Procol Harum 40th Anniversary reissues, the four disc compendium, All This and More.
All this and more, indeed. What we have here is three CDs spanning the lengthy career of Southend-on-Sea’s finest, a DVD brimming with live performances, and a 70-page booklet distended with photographs, song facts and the story so far regarding the perennial psychedelic/progressive/symphonic rock act.
Procol Harum were already into their fifth line-up when, in 1973, they released their sixth studio album, Grand Hotel.
With guitarist Robin Trower and his replacement for Live in Concert with the Edmonton Orchestra, Dave Ball, both gone, Mick Grabham, ex of Ladbroke Grove country rockers Cochise, joined the fold and along with Alan Cartwright on bass, Procol Harum were back to being a five-piece. Grand Hotel also saw a triumphant return to the symphonic sound they had been drifting away from on the previous studio albums, Homeand Broken Barricades.
The opener to the album Grand Hotel, and one of Procol harum’s finest.
Released in 1973, ‘Grand Hotel’ cements Procol Harum’s place as one the finest progressive/symphonic rock bands the genre had to offer. I don’t think anything else needs saying.
For their sixth album, Procol Harum departed the studio and took to the stage of the Northern Alberta Jubilee Auditorium in Edmonton, Canada, with a full symphony orchestra as their backing band and a 24-voice choir providing vocal support.
Released in 1972, Procol Harum Live in Concert with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra (to give it its full, roll off the tongue title) was the result and it finds the band in their natural live habitat, their most ambitious songs up until that time heard in all their symphonic rock glory.
As reviewed yesterday as part of Procol Harum Week, here’s the barnstorming opener from 1971′s Broken Barricades album, entitled ‘Simple Sister’.
Well most of it anyway, as this video seems to be a sawn-off version, running at two minutes shy of the album original. Nevertheless, it gives a good feel for the harder rock edge that was heard on the Broken Barricades album.
‘A Salty Dog’ is widely regarded as one of Procol Harum’s finest songs, and you wouldn’t get any arguments from Head Full of Snow on that count.
Taken from the 1969 album of the same name, it marked vocalist and songwriter Gary Brooker’s first attempt at an orchestral score, and the lavish result places ‘A Salty Dog’ in the bracket of all-time great progressive rock compositions. It can also be regarded as quite a feat, considering Brooker had no classical training whatsoever.
In 1971, when Procol Harum’s Broken Barricades was first released, the band that has been through a massive 23 different line-ups was only on their third, the same quartet responsible for the previous album Home.
There was Chris Copping doubling up on bass and organ, alongside BJ Wilson and Robin Trower from the classic era, on drums and guitar respectively. Then, of course, there was the one constant factor in Procol Harum’s lifespan: Gary Brooker, singer, pianist and songwriting partner to the band’s lyricist, the ever-present Keith Reid.
Home had seen the psychedelia of A Whiter Shade of Pale, and the earlier albums, shown the door in favour of a harder rock sound that kept the progressive edge and cemented Procol Harum’s reputation as one of the most innovative acts doing the rounds.
Broken Barrricades saw them continue along this road, paring back the symphonics that had really come to the fore on A Salty Dogand Home’s ‘Whaling Stories’, to produce an album that’s still chock full of ideas, despite seeing them in their rawest form.
Head Full of Snow’s 100th post coincides with the launch of Procol Harum Week. It’s almost as though I planned it that way. And where else would one kick off a Procol Harum Week than at the moment in time where it all began? The debut single that has gone on to be named the UK’s “most played record ever”.
Whether you love or hate it, there’s no denying that if at some point over the last 42 years you’ve heard a bit of music, there’s more chance of it being ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ than anything else.
Though not their best song, it managed to capture a moment in the summer of 1967 when, if you were fortunate enough not to have to work for a living and bought into the whole flower power freedom movement, anything seemed possible. The fact it caught on with the mainstream too, quickly elevated AWSoP to the legendary stature it enjoys today.
Just a quick announcement from the editorial staff here at HFoS towers that next week is officially declared Procol Harum Week.
Kicking off tomorrow, Head Full of Snow is dedicating itself to the innovative progressive rock act that will, unfairly or otherwise, forever be associated with one song, ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’.
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