complete artistic triumph, and was the first of their albums to make the UK Top 30 (#27, in July ’69). A Salty Dog opens with the majestic title track, a brooding, richly atmospheric item, with a string arrangement conducted by Brooker, and is perhaps the most concise distillation of how to fuse elements of classical orchestration with a rock lyric. ‘A Whiter Shade’ aside, it’s the


the station


switchboard was jammed with


callers wanting to know where


they could get the record


band’s defining moment. Contemporaries such as Jimmy Page acknowledge it as Procol’s finest recording, and he’s not wrong; when released as a single, however, it ran aground at #44 – rough justice for such an indisputably fine track, but in truth, it would’ve been a tough commercial call at any time.


They could also turn their hands adeptly to delicate acoustic balladry, such as A Salty Dog’s ‘Too Much Between Us’, a co-write between Brooker, lyricist Keith Reid and


L-R; Gary Brooker; Robin Trower; B J Wilson; David Knights; Matthew Fisher.


guitarist Robin Trower, with a maritime lyrical reference that is a motif marbled through several tracks on the album. It contains one of Brooker’s must sensitive and controlled vocal performances, and underscores just how emotionally engaging a singer he could be. ‘The Devil Came From Kansas’ is, by contrast, a grinding, teak- tough bluesy rock outing that would become something of an in-concert tour-de-force. Guitarist Robin Trower makes his vocal debut on the track ‘Crucifiction Lane’, adding another useful musical prong to the Procol attack.


Procol Harum were offered a slot on the bill at the Woodstock Festival, where they would have been going on immediately before Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. However, the band declined the offer, owing to the fact that Robin Trower’s wife Andrea was about to give birth. As it happened, the baby was born two weeks late. Trower himself conjectures that, had they played Woodstock, “I think we may have been one of the biggest bands in the world!”


In support of the album, the band played at London’s Lyceum Theatre at one of the venue’s “midnight court” shows, and at The Camden Fringe Free Festival on Hampstead Heath. They turned out to be valedictory performances for bassist Dave Knights and organist Matthew Fisher, both of whom quit the band soon after. As replacement for both Knights and Fisher, the band recruited Chris Copping, who had been in a pre-professional line-up of The Paramounts way back when. Copping played bass keyboard in the manner of Ray Manzarek of The Doors, as well as playing


occasional bass guitar. The rationale behind recruiting Copping was to bring in a greater R&B influence to the Procol sound. Matthew Fisher hated touring; he wanted to get more into record production. Fisher would also go onto release a couple of pretty good solo albums in the early ’70s, too. Production for the new album, Home, was to be handled by Chris Thomas, the beginning of a long and very fruitful partnership between producer and band.


Home brought the band into the ’70s on a positive note; a more combo-orientated affair that exuded a genuine confidence, that aspect being shored by the new managerial team of Chrysalis management, Terry Ellis and Chris Wright. The sessions were good- humoured affairs frequently “warmed up” by the band running through old rock ’n’ roll and R&B songs before working on their own material. Home scraped into the UK Top 50 album chart, and the band again toured the USA and Germany – their strong commercial territories.


Despite the old poisoned chalice of a massive debut hit, and the wilting of the summer of love, Procol Harum survived the ’60s, and would move on to the Chrysalis label from ’71 onwards. The second part of this feature deals with that era, where the band released a remarkable series of albums that made for one of the most substantial bodies of work by a British rock combo.


Acknowledgments: the quotes contained herein come by kind permission of Henry Scott-Irvine from his liner notes to the excellent Salvo label reissues of the Procol Harum catalogue.


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