Song
In the early summer of 1967, in the same week that "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" surged to the top of the British album charts, Procol Harum's debut record became the best selling single. It was titled, "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Enigmatic and rather haunting, the song remains in the nation's consciousness when so many other hit singles have been buried in the past and largely forgotten. What was "the light fandago" and why all those vestal virgins leaving for the coast? The music was certainly influenced by Bach as the chief composer Gary Brooker later admitted and the lyrics created by Keith Reid have a dreamy, metaphorical quality - suggestive rather than clearcut. Keith Reid once said that he had been at a party when he heard someone tell a stoned partygoer that she had lost her colour and turned "a whiter shade of pale". That odd phrase stuck in his head, only to emerge later when he was crafting the lyrics for Broo...