'I'd never read The Miller's Tale in my life,' Reid told Songfacts. The chorus seemingly nods at Geoffrey Chaucer The Miller's Tale ('And so it was that later / As the miller told his tale'), but Reid brushed that off. Keith Reid's lyrics for 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' aren't your basic throwaway pop fluff. Procol Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale, live in Denmark 2006 On our own terms, we were always trying to make a soul record.' It's a live recording… I think we did three takes. 'No other band had that it gave us a bigger sound. 'We had this concept for the sound of Procol Harum to be Hammond organ, piano and blues guitar,' Reid told Uncut.

Incredibly, they laid it down in just two takes (or three, depending on who you talk to), with no overdubs. The group didn't have a proper drummer at the time, with session player Bill Eyden ably sitting in. On the recording you've got Gary Brooker on vocals and piano, Matthew Fisher on Hammond M-102 organ, Ray Royer on guitar, and David Knights on bass. 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' was the first Procol Harum single, and the band's lineup was very much in flux when they recorded it at Olympic Sound Studios in London with produer Denny Cordell. I wasn't consciously combining rock with classical, it's just that Bach's music was in me.' Who performed on 'A Whiter Shade of Pale'? If you trace the chordal element, it does a bar or two of Bach's 'Air on a G String' before it veers off. 3 BWV1068 (aka 'Air on the G String').īrooker told Uncut: 'Things can be gifted. You cultured listners at Gold will no-doubt recognise a little bit of something in the instrumental organ break of 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' – something that sounds a lot like JS Bach's 'Air' from his Orchestral Suite No. How was 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' inspired by JS Bach's 'Air on the G String'?Ī Whiter Shade of Pale/Air on a G String | Procol Harum JS Bach Mash up 'As one of those people who do remember the '60s, I am glad that the author of that memorable organ part has at last achieved the recognition he deserves,' said Law Lord Baroness Hale. The Law Lords ruled in Fisher's favour so the song is now credited to Gary Brooker, Matthew Fisher and Keith Reid. There was some back-and-forth with various appeals until April 2009, when the final appeal was heard in the House of Lords – the fist time a dispute over songwriting had reached that court. Well in 2005, the band's ex-organ player Matthew Fisher sued Gary Brooker, claiming he'd co-written the music for the song. Matthew Fisher and his wife at the High Court. You don't have to know what he means, as long as you communicate an atmosphere.' They weren't obvious, but that doesn't matter.

'When I met Keith, seeing his words, I thought, 'I'd like to write something to that'.

Having played rock and R&B for years, my vistas had opened up. He added to Uncut: 'I'd been listening to a lot of classical music, and jazz. 'I was immediately taken with the immense length of the original four verses with a chorus on each, and the narrative form it took, with its mysterious characters and goings-on.' Of the music, Brooker told Prog: 'I'd been working on a musical idea, which until then had been purely instrumental, when I opened the post and 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale' was on the top of other lyrics. As soon as we played it for anyone, we got an immediate response.' 'When I heard what Gary'd done with them, it just seemed so right. 'The fourth wasn't any great loss, but you had the whole story in three,' Reid told Uncut magazine in February 2008. Very rarely, they'll even play the fourth, too. Sometimes the band will play the third in concert. Four? Yep, despite the song only having two verses, Keith actually wrote a couple more.

Procol harum whiter shade of pale