THE PARAMOUNTS


The Paramounts undoubtedly deserve their own Shindig! feature; a tough R&B orientated beat combo from Southend-on- Sea, who scored a record deal on the EMI Parlophone label in the latter part of ’63, they were assigned to future Hollies producer Ron Richards, with whom they produced seven cracking singles (covers for the most part), only one of which, a spunky take on The Coasters’ ‘Poison Ivy’, achieved any kind of chart paydirt, and that only peaking at number #35 in January ’64.


The band featured Gary Brooker on keyboards and vocals, Robin Trower on lead guitar, and also, at various stages, bass player Chris Copping and drummer Barrie “B J” Wilson – all of whom would later turn in Procol Harum. The Paramounts did quite a few (typically, now lost) TV appearances, including Thank Your Lucky Stars with The Rolling Stones, who apparently rated them highly (unusual for the Stones to acknowledge any of their contemporaries in anything other than terms of disparagement).


However, despite prestigious supporting gigs with the Stones, and The Beatles on their last UK tour, the band called it a day in ’66. Their last gigs were as backing combo to Sandie Shaw, no less. As Gary Brooker states in the excellent sleeve notes to the Salvo Records reissue of their first album, Procol Harum: “I had retired from being a performing rock person in order to become a songwriter. All at the tender age of just 21!” (Incidentally, after leaving The Paramounts in ’66, guitarist Robin Trower briefly put together a three-piece outfit in Southend called, with uncanny prescience, The Jam.)


The catalytic factor in the coalescence of Procol Harum was the meeting between Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid at the Gloucester Avenue, Camden, North London house of the great, now long-deceased ’60s deejay and scene-maker Guy Stevens, sometime in ’66. It seems inevitable, that Stevens’ name should come in at some stage; Stevens’ influence on the vibrant music scene of mid-60s London was all-pervasive. Reid’s roots lay in the mod scene of London’s East End; he had entered Stevens’ orbit by dint of penning sleeve notes for one of Stevens’ Sue Records compilation albums. Brooker had met Stevens at The Crawdaddy Club in Richmond.


In truth, anyone who inhabited the thriving London club scene of the time would’ve crossed paths with Stevens. According to Brooker, “Guy said: ‘Oh, this is Keith Reid – he writes words. Gary – you write music. I said ‘I don’t!’ He said, ‘Well, you could!’ Anyway, Keith gave me this big envelope of words, which I took away. After The Paramounts had stopped, I opened the envelope and wrote some music to one of the songs. By some coincidence, the next day I had a letter from Keith. It ended with his quoting a line from the very song that I had written the music for – ‘Something Following Me’.”


Keith Reid adds “Gary and I then wrote ‘Conquistador’, with The Beach Boys in mind, and an unreleased song called ‘I Realise’ (AKA ‘Understandably Blue’) which we wrote for Dusty Springfield, but I don’t think she ever recorded it.”


Brooker goes on to state: “I actually got an offer to join Dusty Springfield and her backing band The Echoes. Either I became an Echo, or Keith Reid and I would become songwriters. Keith and Guy Stevens had an unspoken plot – they’d decided I was going to sing these songs. But I’d retired!” Reid in summation states, “Gary and I eventually decided to form a band, write some songs and demo them.”


WHAT’S IN A NAME?


Of course, every band has to have a name; and Guy Stevens again was to provide their moniker, as he did with later that same decade with Spooky Tooth and Mott The Hoople. According to Stevens’ widow, Diane, “Guy had a friend who bred cats. She had a beautiful Burmese Blue whose name was ‘Procol Harum’. Guy suggested that Gary and Keith might consider that as a name for the band – so it became their name.” The name, as it happened, was a misspelling of


‘Procol Harun’, a Latin phrase meaning ‘beyond these things’. Brooker opines, “At first we didn’t know what it actually meant. It could have meant Long Red Tail as far as we were concerned, but it seemed to fit, as we didn’t quite know what we were at that stage either!”


Brooker, Reid and Stevens then started kicking ideas around as to how the band should shape up, sonically. Brooker: “You don’t get away from bass and drums. We wanted a strong electric blues lead guitar player. The combination of piano and Hammond organ would come from gospel music. A bit of inspiration came from Booker T & The MGs with Otis Redding, as well as from Bob Dylan and what he was doing with his then backing band The Hawks (later to become The Band). Dylan’s ‘Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues’, recorded live in Liverpool in ’66 as a single B-side, was certainly an inspiration. More importantly, with the combination of three lead instruments, you could have three different solos. It multiplied the possibilities that groups hadn’t had until that point.”


The Brooker/Reid/Stevens triumvirate placed an ad in the January 28th edition of Melody Maker, which read: ‘Lead guitar, organist and bass wanted for Young Rascals/Dylan type


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