A Whiter Shade of Pale

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A Whiter Shade of Pale
Procol Harum
publication May 12, 1967
length 4:03
Genre (s) Baroque Pop
Psychedelic Pop
text Keith Reid
music Gary Brooker , Matthew Fisher
Producer (s) Denny Cordell
Label Deram Records
album Procol Harum

A Whiter Shade of Pale is the most successful hit of the British band Procol Harum from 1967. The music is by Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher , the lyrics by Keith Reid .

History of origin

Keith Reid wrote the text for A Whiter Shade of Pale in early 1967 and offered it to the London music publisher Essex Music , whose owner David Platz was impressed and asked for the missing music. The independent music producer Denny Cordell , who together with David Platz ran the production company Straight Ahead Productions - and later New Breed Productions - also worked in the same office building as Essex Music . After Gary Brooker had composed the music, two demo recordings were made in mono on March 7, 1967 under the supervision of Denny Cordell . Cordell didn't like the drummer on the demo, so they chose session musician Bill Eyden. Olympic Studios was booked for the final recordings in April 1967 for a 3-hour session in which only 2 takes were created without overdubs and mixed in mono . Under music producer Denny Cordell and sound engineer Keith Grant, the cast consisted of Gary Brooker (vocals and piano), Matthew Fisher ( Hammond organ M-102), Ray Royer (guitar), David Knights (bass) and Bill Eyden (drums). The drummer Eyden hit the cymbals quite hard, so that only the "high-end high-pitch problem" had to be solved in order to get the technically highest possible tones. The entire sound mix turned out to be a fortunate circumstance that was hardly reproducible. Evidence of the recording data has disappeared for decades, as has the original 4-track master tape. When researching a new publication, all that was found was a tape box with the inscription "April 1967: Whiter Shade of Pale plus takes"; the contained tape contained three unmixed alternate recordings of the song, which differed from each other and from the published version each slightly.

The details of the organ's registration have been preserved:

  • Drawbar position upper manual 6886 (Preset B)
  • Drawbar position lower manual 00443
  • Percussion on, soft, slow, second
Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale

Days later, the B-side Lime Street Blues was created in Advision Studios . The single A Whiter Shade of Pale / Lime Street Blues (Deram DM 126) was released on May 12, 1967. The unknown label Deram Records was founded by Decca Records in September 1966 as a subsidiary label. In the British charts the single was listed at number 1 for six weeks from June 8, 1967, in the USA it reached number 5 on the charts . It sold 356,000 copies in England within three weeks of its publication, and in France 120,000 singles went over the counter in just 10 days. At least 6 million singles were sold worldwide.

text

Generally, A Whiter Shade of Pale (German A track paler ) in the media called the song that no one understands. The band members have always made contradicting statements about the interpretation of the text, so that they do not help with the interpretation. In September 1994, Tim de Lisle received the following explanation from Reid: A nervous seducer drinks his courage through alcohol at a party. Increasing alcoholism affects his perception through wandering thoughts: fragments from childhood experiences and his fainthearted goals. The metaphor recurring in the song is about a ship disaster, which draws a parallel between a romantic conquest and the dangers of the sea.

The text is in need of interpretation and must be seen in connection with the psychedelic phase , which was modern at the time of its creation . The essence of the psychedelic was the effect hallucinogenic drugs had on human perception. An early comment by the British New Musical Express denies this psychedelic component; rather Procol Harum plays between the music of Bach, soul and modern jazz. However, the music and not the text is meant here. The confusion about the textual meaning is also due to the fact that half of the text was removed before the recording session. Originally it consisted of 4 stanzas, the second and third were deleted from the music recording. The meaning of the content becomes more apparent if you add the missing stanzas. Then it becomes clear that the narrator is on a ship at sea. In addition, there are surrealist word games and bizarre word cascades, which can also be found in the group's later works. The enigmatic, mystical, if not even impenetrable text - also in English-speaking countries - takes on aural functions, which is underlined by Brooker's expressive voice.

At the beginning there is the puzzling title, which has lost the originally intended subtitle "(The Miller's Tale)" and whose wording Keith Reid claims to have accidentally picked up during a conversation: "My God, you've just turned a whiter shade of pale." Procol Harum biographer Johansen compares the song's play on words with those of the earlier rhythm and blues , which treats the relationship between man and woman (especially sexuality) in metaphorical form. In A Whiter Shade of Pale , the couple's eroticism begins with the flamenco-like fandango , who is considered particularly voluptuous and here, accompanied by exuberant cartwheels, an encouraging audience ("the crowd called out for more") how a show is danced. The beginning of the refrain, with the reference “as the miller told his tale”, also indirectly emphasizes the subject of sexual seduction by alluding to Boccacio's cycle of novels Dekamerone and Chaucer's rather shoddy Miller's Tale .

Finally, the "sixteen Vestal Virgins " of which the text speaks are the virgin servants of the Roman goddess Vesta, whose task it was to remain chaste and to receive a sacred and eternal fire of purity. The narrator, however, does not want to leave his partner pure and untouched like one of the 16 vestals, but rather seduce him into unchastity with his nautically inspired psychedelic party. What he finally (as the unrecorded 3rd verse reveals), after a short excursion to Alice's wonderland , also succeeds in the ambiguous "ocean bed".

music

From a musicological point of view, the song belongs to so-called “Baroque Rock” because of its classical influence, as does Eleanor Rigby from the Beatles . Fisher's solemn organ playing was inspired by Percy Sledge's When a Man Loves a Woman . He had the idea for the chord progression from Johann Sebastian Bach's Air from Suite No. 3 in D major . The Suite no. 3 in D major (BWV 1068) can be seen on the bass lines and the organ. The pop song consists of two melodies, the one sung and the one played contrapuntally by the organ ; the compositional technique of counterpoint reached its climax with Bach. The piece is considered to be the first adaptation of Bach works in rock music, namely the opening chorus of the cantata 140 Wachet, the voice calls us, BWV 140 . However, it is not a real arrangement, as only the harmony sequence of the first bars has been adopted.

The comparison with Bach's Air from the Suite in D major is closer , as the sustained 4/4 time, the long note at the beginning and the diatonic descent of the bass line can be recognized (measure 5 of the Air with measures 2 and 3 of the song, each set in a different key ). A slowly descending, heavy bass line is carried by the harmonies of C major, A minor, F major, D minor, G major and E minor. The song is in a typical verse-chorus-verse-chorus (ABAB) style. When comparing notes, Bach author Greenberg comes to the conclusion that A Whiter Shade of Pale represents a Bach music quotation in one measure and has an unmistakable relationship to Bach. Overall, this paraphrasing can be described as successful.

Cover versions and statistics

Over 700 cover versions are known. Including from the Box Tops (November 1967), Johnny Rivers (LP Realization ; January 1968), Joe Cocker (August 1978), Bonnie Tyler (LP Goodbye to the Island ; January 1981), Willie Nelson (February 1982), Doro Pesch ( LP Force Majeure ; February 1989), Puhdys (LP anniversary album ; 1989), Annie Lennox (LP Medusa ; March 1995), Michael Bolton (November 1999). Sarah Brightman presented a version performed in operatic style (LP La Luna ; June 2001); Nicole can find a version on the unplugged concert DVD Mitten ins Herz (February 2008). The song was again listed at number 13 in the UK when it was re-released in April 1972.

reception

The music magazine Rolling Stone leads A Whiter Shade of Pale on place 57 of the 500 greatest songs of all time . It was recognized as the international "Song of the Year" at the Ivor Novello Award ceremony in March 1968. Pitchfork picked A White Shade of Pale at # 142 of the Top 200 Songs of the 1960s. In 1998 the hit single was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame .

Dispute over authorship

The music publisher Essex Music had originally registered Keith Reid as lyricist and Gary Brooker as composer with BIEM . Organist Matthew Fisher first claimed in an interview in Melody Maker on August 13, 1973 that he composed the organ solo, the contrapuntal melody and the Bach passages by himself. Therefore, on May 31, 2005, he sued his bandmate Gary Brooker and the music publisher Onwards Music Ltd. before the London High Court of Justice . (which had since taken over the rights from Essex in December 1991) on a £ 1 million portion of the royalties . The judgment passed on December 20, 2006 awarded him 40% of the authorship. The judgment of December 20, 2006 was based on the assumption that the “organ solo represents a distinctive and significant contribution to the overall composition and is clearly the achievement of the creator”.

Gary Brooker would no longer have been entitled to 50% of the royalties, but only to 30%. Brooker therefore appealed against this judgment, claiming that Fisher only joined the band after the song was written. On May 7, 2008, the Court of Appeal ruled on appeal that the appeal against the December 20, 2006 judgment was dismissed. Fisher is one of the co-composers of A Whiter Shade of Pale . However, he was not granted the right to royalties because, in the opinion of the court, he had waited too long with the lawsuit.

After Fisher in the House of Lords had himself engaged again appeal against this decision, this verdict was unanimous by five Lords Law from the House of Lords abolished in the former role as the highest court of the United Kingdom on July 30 of 2009. Fisher were finally granted the author's rights in the sense of the court ruling of December 21, 2006 with a share of 40% of the royalties.

Use of the piece

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Joseph Murrells, Million Selling Records , 1985, p. 248
  2. ^ Claes Johansen, Procol Harum: Beyond the Pale , 2000, p. 67
  3. ↑ cf. Johansen 2000, p. 66
  4. ↑ Eyden was the drummer for Georgie Fame
  5. ↑ 117 Church Road, Barnes / London SW; this new studio didn't open until 1966, and this is where the Rolling Stones recorded almost all of their records
  6. ^ Art Dudley, in: Stereophile, September 2003: Procol Harum (1967)
  7. ↑ cf. Johansen 2000, p. 68
  8. ↑ cf. Johansen 2000, p. 73
  9. ↑ Eric Siblin, The Cello Suites: In Search of a Baroque Masterpiece , 2010, p. 231
  10. ↑ BBC Radio 2, Sold on Song, April 2005, The Song Nobody Understandings
  11. ↑ Michael Butler, in: Tim de Lisle, Lives of the Great Songs , February 1995
  12. ↑ The Independent, September 18, 1994, In Truth They Were at Sea
  13. ↑ Jim DeRogalis, Turn on Your Mind: Four Decades of Psychedelic Rock , 2003, p. 167
  14. ^ Edward Macan, Rocking the Classics: English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture , 1996, p. 21
  15. ↑ George Case, Out of Our Heads: Rock 'n' Roll Before the Drugs Wore Off , 2010, p. 75
  16. ^ New Musical Express of September 9, 1967, Sven Wezelenburg (Danish correspondent), Procol Harum on Stage - Fantastic, Immobile Yet so Moving
  17. ↑ Lee Jensen of October 26, 2011, The Lost Lyrics of Procol Harum's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' ( Memento of September 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ↑ Robert Dimery, 1001 Songs: You Must Hear Before You Die , 2011, p. 72
  19. ↑ cf. Johansen 2000, p. 58
  20. ↑ cf. Johansen 2000, p. 59
  21. ↑ Classic Pop Icons, A Whiter Shade of Pale
  22. ↑ Michael Long, Beautiful Monsters: Imagining the Classic in Musical Media , 2008, p. 133
  23. ↑ Tobias Blücklein, Switched-On-Bach: Arrangement of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach in the field of jazz, rock and pop music , 2010, p. 37 ff.
  24. ↑ Olaf Benzinger, Rock-Hymnen , 2002, p. 33 f.
  25. ^ Bernard S. Greenberg, Does 'A Whiter Shade' quote Bach? from July 4, 1997 ( Memento from June 16, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
  26. ↑ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time on RollingStone.com (accessed July 22, 2020)
  27. ↑ The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s on Pitchfork.com (accessed July 22, 2020)
  28. ↑ GRAMMY Hall of Fame on Grammy.com (accessed July 22, 2020)
  29. ↑ A Whiter Shade of Pale authorship lawsuit . Retrieved September 21, 2006.
  30. ↑ £ 1m was over Whiter Shade . Retrieved February 22, 2012.
  31. ^ Court of Appeal of May 7, 2008, Order No. 6799, Appeal No A3 / 2007/0157 (English; PDF; 348 kB)
  32. ↑ Result of the appointment process  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.orf.at  
  33. ↑ Victory for Whiter Shade organist (English)