Song of the Day 2/25: Procol Harum, “A Whiter Shade of Pale”

I don’t expect the death last week of Gary Brooker, frontman for Procol Harum, to put a stop to fans advocating for the band’s induction to the Rock Hall of Fame, but it does make it beside the point. Brooker, who founded the band from the remnants of his earlier group, the Paramounts, was its main composer and its one constant musician through the years.

Procol Harum was hard to categorize. In retrospect they’re often called proto-prog, because Brooker’s piano and Matthew Fisher’s Hammond organ drove their sound, but Brooker’s soulful voice and Robin Trower’s blues-infused guitar made them more rock-oriented than most prog bands. Yet their fame today rests almost entirely on this song, a sterling example of baroque pop thanks to its obvious debt to Bach, and one of the touchstones of the psychedelic era. It only reached No. 5 in the US but was a No. 1 smash in the UK, topping the chart for five weeks.

The band even made a promotional film for the song, a proto-music video of the sort the Beatles frequently produced.

“Whiter Shade of Pale” was among the first collaborations between Brooker and non-performing lyricist Keith Reid, Procol Harum’s other constant (the name, BTW, was the name of a purebred cat belonging to a friend of Reid’s). Though its gnomic lyrics have inspired thousands of interpretations, Reid maintains it’s a simple girl-leaves-boy story, something that was clearer over the course of the original four verses.

Brooker often performed the longer version live, usually with three verses. Reid has said the last verse is no great loss, but this version includes all four.

For the sake of comparison, here’s Bach’s “Air on a G String.” It starts with the same descending chord pattern, but “Whiter Shade of Pale” is a simpler composition with a much different, more melancholy air.

And for the sake of a cheap laugh, here’s British comic David Mitchell singing the lyrics to the theme song of “The Muppet Show.”