Whaling Stories, Card Games and the Big Reunion

Kent Zimmerman in The Gavin Report, 20 September 1991

‘Procol Harum, besides the people that have been in it, has always been an entity. It seems to have had a life of its own. Sometimes it’s been our boss where it isn’t even the people — it’s this thing.’

Gary Brooker describes Procol’s ten year/ten album output in cautious terms. ’Twas a time when nobody, but nobody, told a whaling story like Keith Reid and Procol Harum. Brooker is reverent about the past and expectant about the future. It’s as if he’s talking about the titular head of a prestigious royal family: Procol Harum, the entity.

‘Procol Harum never liked making records unless we had something to say,’ says the familiar voice over the phone. ‘That’s probably why we stopped playing. We could have carried on and made more money. We still had two or three albums on our contract. We could have gotten another million dollars out of it all. But we felt we’d said enough. Today,’ he pauses, ‘is different.’

During the late sixties and throughout the seventies Procol Harum’s members, particularly its constant frontman Gary Brooker, were notoriously reluctant to comment on a song’s content or meaning. Decades later, a jovial Brooker is equally evasive, only in a nice way. Perhaps it’s because since its inception, Procol has always carried its own onboard wordsmith in the form of lyricist/tangential whaling story/graveyard yarn spinner Keith Reid.

At least Brooker cops to a close working rapport, a process that has only became [sic] easier when it came time to unite for Procol’s rustic nineties début. They have a new album, cryptically titled The Prodigal Stranger, that is bursting with twelve new medium-tempo dreams sometimes lit by moonlight, sometimes fueled by dual keyboards and lots of night. Unlike writers like Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford who correspond by mail, Brooker and Reid are in each other’s faces.

‘Keith Reid and myself are very hands-on when it comes to writing songs. Keith normally has the lyrics ready since it’s impossible to dash off a set of lyrics in, say, an hour. I guess it’s safe to say that the lyrics aren’t spontaneous when we’re putting together a song. After he puts together his thoughts, it’s really up to us as musicians and singers to continue the process.’

It was the tragic death of drummer Barrie James Wilson (aka BJ) that sparked Procol line-up [sic] to get together after twenty-one years. For those either unfortunate enough to have never heard him perform either [sic] live or on record, BJ Wilson (alongside the late Keith Moon) literally invented the theatrical phrasing that first defined English rock’n’roll drumming, a style that was adapted to virtually every rock ballad recorded thereafter. A textbook example of one of Wilson’s entrances was the awe-inspiring, dramatic, devil-be-damned leap several bars into the introduction of the classic song, Salty Dog. Not long after Wilson’s death, Brooker made a melancholy call to his former lyricist.

‘Towards the end of 1989, I phoned up Keith with the idea of writing some new songs with Procol Harum in mind. He was keen, so we both started thinking about it.

‘I’ve kept in touch, while not with every single member. I’ve certainly kept in touch with Keith. Also, I’ve taken on the job of looking over our past to a certain extent, which takes a bit of managing. No one really oversees Procol Harum except ourselves.’

Brooker stopped ballading after recording 1985’s Echoes in the Night with Reid and original Procol Hammond-man Matthew Fisher, but weeds through the Procol legacy three or four times a year (‘Making sure everybody involved with the music is getting paid’). ‘I went fishing for a couple of years until ’87, when I started a little band sheerly for the fun of playing live again,’ he says.

Although Brooker was relatively busy playing in Eric Clapton’s band, among other projects (including a symphonic piece written for the Copenhagen ballet), he hopped on Reid’s enthusiasm to dust off Procol’s legacy, and in 1989 spent a whirlwind six days in New York jamming. What he found, besides Reid armed with fresh lyrics, was producer Matt Noble. The second Matt in Brooker’s life (Fisher being the first) helped him put together a smooth method of songwriting and demo recording — a process much easier than the method Brooker used during the seventies.

‘I came over to New York where Keith now lived so we could work with Matt Noble who had this studio. There we were able to put the songs together, record them and have it down on tape so we could listen to it rather quickly. In the old days, Keith and I would write at the piano. That was it. Things have changed with the technology of it all. I think, while in New York, we wrote and recorded five songs.

‘After the results with Keith and Matt sounded good, I thought, “All right, let’s try that in England with the same kind of system. Put it down as you do it.” With Matthew Fisher nearby with his studio, we figured we’d do it with him this time.

‘We wrote another five songs with Matthew, keeping up that little process. He lives about forty-five minutes from me. I see him from time to time. At first we played him the songs we’d done in New York. He liked them. I think if he had felt we were on too strange a path, making songs that he couldn’t relate to, Matthew wouldn’t have had any more to do with it.’

Brooker, although himself only five or six years out of the studio, also found new technology agreeable to the starving Procol entity. Brooker, Reid and Fisher began feeding. ‘Recording now,’ Brooker recalled, ‘the self-indulgences aren’t quite there anymore. It was nice to concentrate solely on putting out good stuff, making it as good as you possibly can. It’s lucky that we had plenty of time. I know when Keith, Matt Noble and I were working, we weren’t under any pressure to get it all done by next month. When you’ve got a full band of five or six people with mortgages asking “When are we going out on tour?” — which was what it was always like during the seventies – there’s always that pressure.’

The Prodigal Stranger is important in that it unites Procol’s most interesting — and volatile — line-up in the form of Brooker, Reid, guitarist Robin Trower and the moody Matthew Fisher. Beautifully paired with Brooker’s classical piano and Reid’s literate image work is Trower’s underwater guitar tones and Matthew Fisher’s oft-imitated Hammond organ. Admittedly the combination is still spooky, still individually intense [sic] at high decibels.

‘I have to say that had Matthew not been involved, Keith and I might have carried on, though that’s hypothetical speculation on my part. However I do realise that if we would have ended up with twelve songs and an album made with Procol Harum’s name stuck on it with just me and Keith involved, there might have been some open debate, I suppose. Don’t get me wrong. I’m pleased that Matthew and Robin are involved, otherwise we might have gotten a little stick from the media. The whole project evolved beautifully into a group project.’

Indeed Matthew Fisher’s organ work is substantial, bringing back some of those goosebumps (and yes, a tear or two) as his notes echo a lonesome path behind Brooker’s familiar phrasings. Just as Brooker’s voice soars on Hold [sic] On, or as Reid’s cryptic card game on The King of Hearts shines on brightly, Matthew Fisher’s work on Perpetual Motion is one of Prodigal’s [sic] Stranger’s near perfect hands. ‘The time off was nice. I mean, since 1977, that’s a long time between albums. Now I’d love to see us get busy on this, get out and play and make a whole new string of albums. I’ve learned so much from the first ten albums with Procol.

‘I found during the old days, you really had to keep a careful look on things in case you disappear up your own backside.’

A cautious Brooker is nevertheless anxious to take the Procol line up on the road. ‘We’ll try a few gigs at first, be back by Christmas and then see how we’re doing. Because none of us are spring chickens, we may find constant touring too much of an endeavor. We’re not a bunch of twenty-five year olds. We’ve already done that.

‘The ideal scenario is that the album does well and we go back out come the New Year. We have another ten albums in us to take us up to the year 2001.’

More than any recent interviewee, Brooker is unabashed about the past, opting to freely discuss it in place of evading [sic] the explicit explanation of some of the new songs. Since Procol’s inception on to the airwaves in 1967 with Whiter Shade of Pale, the band has always sounded much older than their years, their songs the rantings of mature souls often tortured by ghosts of drink and death. Perhaps this regroup marks the fact that time has finally caught up with the Procol sound, indeed a sound now constructed by life-experienced adults rather than ridiculous Brits in embarrassingly tight britches with Guinness bellies and triple chins playing fast-paced orchestral gyrations for a new generation of Yes-heads.

‘I think Procol Harum are most comfortable playing some of those medium tempos and moods. I certainly am. I can really sing rock’n’roll when I want to, even though we don’t have a lot of up-tempo classics. In fact, you’ll have trouble finding anything faster than Conquistador, Gary laughs.

‘We’re much better at plugging in that power at midrange. Tempo is not so important to me now. That’s how people mess up their albums, putting on the obligatory rocker.’

Anyone who darkens their record store’s doorway knows that the Procol Harum catalogue is currently in a state of mild disrepair, plagued with the out-of-print blues, tacky import twofer packages and reissues spanning three American labels. Getting the music back into its original form in cohesive shape is bound to take time and effort.

‘There’s a lot of legalities involved that have not been fully sorted out,’ replies Brooker, Procol’s unofficial curator, ‘As far as the catalogue for CD, I’d like to go back to the very best first-generation masters that we can rustle up, because I don’t think we’ll get around to remixing stuff. I’d like to see each record packaged separately, possibly down the road doing something boxed.’

As chief instigators, Brooker and Reid are comfortable with Procol’s fit into the nineties. Their relationship is one that has already weathered some testy times.

‘Keith once lived in a little shell when he was working with us. Once the eighties came around, and he started to do a little management with Robin and Frankie Miller, he came out of it more. He’s now able to relate to people better. He moved to New York in 1986. He loves it there. Now he’s a much bigger part of Procol Harum. I can’t put it any plainer than that. Did you think he just writes the words? Sometimes it’s hard to put your finger on it, but he does more than just write the words, even though he does that quite well.

‘Keith and I talk about the band constantly, about the world, about the ethics of everything. Between us, we always come to a kind of path. We figure out the road ahead, the directions and the sidetracks and make sure we stay on the right side of things — make sure the engine doesn’t konk [sic] out.’

As with Matthew Fisher and Robin Trower, the once-elusive Fisher is ready for the road. Trower, leading his own band since leaving the Procol stable in after 1972’s [sic] Home [sic] album, is roadtested as well.

‘Matthew wants to travel. We’ll probably have trouble getting him back to England. He’s enjoying life and Procol Harum at the moment. He’s a great musician and he’s actually come of age as an organist. He is a strong man.’

And?

‘Well … he’s impossible, really.’

Complex?

‘Oh, he certainly is. Very complex.’

This tenuous new marriage includes a few new faces. Producer Matt Noble (‘a little bit of new blood’) was avidly involved in overseeing and mixing the Prodigal project. Bassist Dave Bronze is ‘the best bassist we’ve had yet.’ Big Country drummer Mark Brzezicki ‘is a true musician. He’s like BJ in that he listens to what the vocals are doing.’

Despite a soft, recessionary concert season, Brooker is hopeful about Procol’s first case of road fever in over a decade.

‘We’re getting a lot of ’phone calls from other bands asking us to tour with them. A package with us, Yes and Jethro Tull might get people off their bums. It has to be done exactly right since a sixties/seventies revival isn’t exactly what we’re into.’

Alas, coming back means a total commitment to The Entity.

‘We originally felt that unless we were able to get a good set of songs going, there wasn’t much basis of going off and making a record. We aren’t messing around.’

PS (2026) Apparently this originated in 'a music radio business magazine, The Gavin Report, out of San Francisco' (Mike Howard).