'Emotional Scars'

Keith Reid on the effects of the Holocaust

BtP has recently been notified of two pieces, very closely-related, that relate Keith Reid's writing to the traumatic history of Jewish families in Europe before the Second World War. The author, Scott Benarde, is a journalist based in Delray Beach, Florida, who has just finished writing Stars of David: Rock 'n Roll's Jewish Stories. He appears to have interviewed Keith specially for this project, and – judging from the frankness of the responses – appears to have gained the normally-reticent lyricist's confidence.

From Jewish Community Online

Keith Reid, the non-performing member of the British classical rock band Procol Harum, who provided the lyrics for the band's ten albums from 1967 through 1977, and a reunion album in 1991, bears emotional scars that he traces to the Holocaust.

"The tone of my work is very dark and I think it's probably from my background in some subconscious way," says Reid. Best known for co-writing the international hit A Whiter Shade of Pale, Reid is the grandson of Holocaust victims.

His father, a Viennese lawyer fluent in a half dozen languages, was one of 6,547 Jews arrested in Vienna during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), Nov. 9–10, 1938. The majority of Viennese Jews were sent to Dachau, then released several months later after promising to leave the country. Reid's father, Irwin, fled to England along with a younger brother. The paternal grandparents Keith never knew vanished. Their fate was never determined.

Reid's mother, born in England of Polish parents, maintained a Jewish home and made sure Keith and his older brother, Michael, became bar mitzvah. Reid, however, had heard enough Holocaust stories and suffered enough anti-Semitism in primary school that a bar mitzvah was the last thing he wanted.

"The last thing you wanted to do as a kid was to stick out, but I just stuck out," Reid says. Judaism, he adds, "only has negative associations for me. It goes back to my dad and what happened to him and the events of those times."

from South Florida Sun-Sentinel, 7 April 2002

Songs out of Shadow: Holocaust's influence reaches to today's rock music

One of the first things Gene Simmons reveals in his new autobiography, Kiss and Make-Up, is that he is the child of a Holocaust survivor. The co-founder and bassist of Kiss, one of rock's most commercially successful bands, writes that his mother – Flora Klein, a Hungarian Jew – was sent to concentration camps at age 14, "where she saw most of her family wiped out in the gas chambers."

The ghostly tentacles of the Holocaust, which will be recalled this week with Holocaust Remembrance Day, have reached farther and wider than perhaps realized, even casting a shadow on rock music. Simmons is but one of a number of prominent rock and pop musicians whose families suffered during the Holocaust. That flesh-and-blood connection to such a cataclysm has colored their lives and music.

Piano man Billy Joel, Procol Harum lyricist Keith Reid, WAR harmonica player Lee Oskar and Ten-Wheel Drive lead singer Genya Ravan are the children of those who survived the Holocaust, or fled before the Final Solution became Nazi policy. Sharing similar histories are Bob Glaub, longtime bass player for Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt, and singer-songwriter Dan Bern, among others.

David Draiman, lead vocalist for the Chicago-based ultra-hard rock band Disturbed, is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Draiman rebelled against his strict Jewish Orthodox upbringing, but the band's 2001 concerts included graphic film clips of concentration camp victims as part of a montage illustrating "people being murdered for being different."

The performances opened with uniformed men escorting Draiman on stage and putting him in a "shower" that began to spew "gas." He explained on the Web site Unearthed.com that "what we're talking about here isn't a Jewish thing. It's a people thing. ... It's the ultimate example of how the world deals with people who do not fit in."

Hit-spinner Billy Joel's grandparents and father, Howard, barely got out of Germany in 1939 before the Nazis implemented their plan to exterminate the Jews of Europe. The blows of losing their business and Nuremberg home, being forced to flee, and spending three years as refugees in Cuba may have caused the Joels to keep their Jewish roots under wraps when the family arrived in the United States in 1942.

In one of life's great ironies, Howard Joel was drafted in 1943 and was among the troops who liberated Dachau, the infamous concentration camp in southern Germany. "I had relatives that were in concentration camps – although not Dachau – and some of them were put to death. But at Dachau ... it was terrible. We were too late to help," Howard Joel said in a 1994 Billboard interview.

It's no coincidence that so many of Billy Joel's songs champion the underdog. He has paid tribute to unemployed steelworkers in Allentown, to disparaged Vietnam veterans in Goodnight Saigon, and to Long Island fisherman struggling to make a living in The Downeaster Alexa, illuminating their dignity and resolve. His 1985 hit Keeping the Faith sums up this subtext in a song title.

Emotional scars
Lyricist Keith Reid, the non-performing member of the British classical-rock band Procol Harum, bears emotional scars that he traces to the Holocaust.

"The tone of my work is very dark, and I think it's probably from my background in some subconscious way," Reid says. Best known for co-writing the international hit A Whiter Shade of Pale, Reid is the grandson of Holocaust victims.

His father, a Viennese lawyer, was among the thousands of Jews arrested in Vienna during Kristallnacht in 1938. He was sent to Dachau, then released several months later after promising to leave the country; he fled to England with a younger brother. The paternal grandparents Keith never knew vanished. Their fate was never determined.

Reid's mother, born in England of Polish parents, maintained a Jewish home and made sure Keith and his older brother, Michael, had bar mitzvahs. Reid, however, had heard enough Holocaust stories and suffered enough anti-Semitism in primary school.

"The last thing you wanted to do as a kid was stick out, but I just stuck out," Reid says.

Judaism, he adds, "only has negative associations for me. It only meant unhappiness and suffering. It goes back to my dad and what happened to him and the events of those times."

Keith Reid's page at BtP