Most of these early compositions originated from Reid’s lyrics, with the music built later to accommodate the structure. But Reid’s family stayed put — perhaps as immigrants they were most comfortable living among their own people.Reid’s father, Irwin Reid, a Viennese lawyer fluent in a half-dozen languages, was one of over 6,000 Jews arrested in Vienna during Kristallnacht on November 9 and 10, 1938. “Something Following Me” is classically soulful with lyrics influenced by Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man”.

The band's claim to fame is 'A Whiter Shade of Pale', a huge hit in 1967. This was all topped by the poetic lyrics of wordsmith Keith Reid. A live version of the song was released as a single five years later and peaked at #16 on the charts, the second highest charting song in the band’s history.“She Wandered Through the Garden Fence” is a light and bouncy number with a bright and riff-laden organ line and lead by Brooker and melodic vocals by Reid, despite some of the dark lyrics.
It’s widely agreed upon that a friend had a cat named Procol Harum and the name stuck. its "sun" side down for the nipple 13.02.13 he may be old, and his head like a breast, but Ruput has gone up, for declaring removal of the lady chest. LosGranosTV 109,174,877 views. It goes back to my dad and what happened to him and the events of those times.”Like many early English rock ‘n’ roll groups, Brooker’s previous band, the Paramounts, mostly recorded versions of American hits. While his idol was the American Jewish songwriter and Nobel Prize winner Bob Dylan, his lyrics relied more on a superficial surrealism, perhaps inspired by his love of French avant-garde films and the art of Rene Magritte and Salvador Dali. Procol Harum built on their success in 1967 with a series of fine albums well into the 1970s, although frequent personnel shifts would never quite let the band elevate to top-level popularity. Procol Harum found their niche by combining centuries-old classical and baroque elements with the then modern day moody-ish soul inspired by artists like Ray Charles. Homburg Procol Harum cover Jeroen Janssen. “A Whiter Shade Of Pale” was one of their very first efforts; other than keyboardist Fisher, the recording didn’t include any other members of what would become Procol Harum. The song is the first on the album to prominently feature guitar by The second side opens with another soulful number, “A Christmas Camel”, with a melodic keyboard duel between Brooker’s piano and Fisher’s organ and steady rhythm held down by Some versions of the album include “Homburg”, the follow-up single to “A Whiter Shade of Pale”, with surreal lyrics and a hypnotizing rhythm. Procol Harum was in fine form for this show recorded for the cameras on the venerable British outfit's final date of its extensive 2003 world tour. Many assumed his lyrics were inspired by or about drugs, but as the band’s in-house intellectual, Reid scoffed at the notion, insisting they were derived from “books, not drugs.”While songs like “A Christmas Camel” and “Bringing Home The Bacon” were presumably not inspired by anything in Reid’s upbringing, “As Strong As Samson,” released in the wake of the Yom Kippur War, clearly addressed conflict in the Middle East as well as geopolitics in general, while basing itself on a biblical metaphor:“The tone of my work is very dark, and I think it’s probably from my background in some subconscious way,” Reid told Bernarde.The name of the group, incidentally, has been the subject of some debate.

This week Procol Harum singer Gary Brooker checks in to our travel Q&A. 5:37. Still, the group released a half-dozen albums, which is on a par with the output of such likeminded groups as Yes, Genesis and the Moody Blues.Reid penned all the group’s lyrics.

Procol Harum reconstituted itself in 1991, but Reid no longer works with the group.