Celebrate Walpurgis!

Mikael Werkelin (Sweden)

Repent Walpurgis was the last song I heard from the original albums of the 60s and 70s Procol. Why? Well, the reason is that I bought the Procol Harum albums in the wrong order! In 1977 I bought my first Procol Harum album. It was Something Magic. Then, for some reason, I went backwards and bought Ninth, Exotic Birds & Fruit, Grand Hotel, Live, Broken Barricades, Home, Salty Dog, Shine On Brightly and finally a strange false-stereo copy on Polydor of Procol Harum.

And what do I think of Repent Walpurgis? Well, it's a perfect ending of an album, a powerful and magnificent instrumental with some tasteful organ and guitar improvisations over a four-chord sequence. I play Hammond myself and Matthew is of course a big source of inspiration. I'm more doubtful about Robin. I think his style was more suited to The Paramounts. I've maybe missed something, but was he really as good as some say? I think the one who really shines during this song is BJ Wilson. The song was the end of the beginning of something great!

Mikael Werkelin, Gotland, Sweden 

More Walpurgis revels here