Procol Harum should be remembered for more than “A White Shade of Pale.” As evidenced by a new CD reissue series on the Salvo label (with digital versions available from unionsquaremusic.co.uk), they were one of the great British bands to emerge from the late’60s. Dubbed “classical rock” for their organic fusion of seeming opposites, they were unlike many groups in the origin story of progressive rock for their ongoing devotion to American R&B, an influence that (usually) kept them from stumbling off the cliff into bombast and pretense.
The band’s final four albums before their long retirement represent a new peak as well as a decline. Grand Hotel (1973) was simply a great LPnot a concept album exactly but a collection of songs that flowed from one to another with elegant coherence. The title track built from a waltzing piano into a full orchestra and chorus, ignited by Mick Grabham’s exquisite rock guitar solo. The tightly wound “Tojours L’Amour” and the killer riff of “Bringing Home the Bacon” show the band rocking at full tilt. Present on most cuts was Procol’s signature sound, a rich Hammond organ set against Gary Brooker’s emotive piano and precisely enunciated soulful vocals. On “A Souvenir of London,” the band plays the part of merry street corner buskers, with B.J. Wilson, one of rock’s best and most rhythmically intricate percussionists, banging a big bass drum.
Grand Hotel’s vision of Euro sophisticationlike Roxy Music with cutaways instead of feather boaswas a prelude to Queen’s hit of a year later, “Killer Queen.” Majestic but never pompous, Grand Hotel is nothing less than a zenith for the aspirations of musicians who wanted to explore the potential of rock as art music. Like many other reissues in this series, Grand Hotel includes a couple of “raw tracks,” early and unfinished versions that reveal something of the group’s creative process.
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Procol Harum lost no steam on its next album, Exotic Birds and Fruit (1974). According to the informative jacket notes, it was recorded in the cold London winter of 1973-74 during a general strike in a studio powered by an auxiliary generator. Perhaps the hard urgency of “Nothing but the Truth” and the prophetic plea for human understanding in “As Strong as Sampson” are explained by the setting. The sound of Eastern Europe, where Procol Harum had toured the year before, clings to “Beyond the Pale.”
Procol’s Ninth (1975) was the beginning of the end. The band decided to wander from familiar settings and producers into the hands of their heroes. Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller had written and produced many great songs in the 1950s for Big Mama Thornton, Elvis and the Coasters, but by the mid-‘70s had drifted toward the anonymity of the mainstream. Many of the songs they produced for Procol’s Ninth were fine examples of Keith Reid-Gary Brooker songwriting, but too often the band didn’t sound much like itself amid the clavinets and faceless brass. A cover of Lieber-Stoller’s hit, “I Keep Forgetting,” which inspired conviction from producers and band alike, generated the greatest heat.
About the band’s final album before retiring, Something Magic (1976), the less said the better. They had run short of ideas by then and run out of time as the focus of pop culture shifted dramatically toward punk. With hindsight, however, Procol Harum kept their creativity rising later into the ‘70s than many of their peers. Grand Hotel and Exotic Birds and Fruit are as good as anything they released in the ‘60s.
