![]() ![]() My favourite was the one about the violated nuns escaping the Nazis. Over the years, people have offered up explanations from drunken seduction, and drug overdoses, to necrophilia, to Arthur Miller’s tale with Marilyn Monroe. That’s not to say people haven’t wracked their brains these last 45 years to offer meaning to Keith Reid’s mesmerizing poetry. Those were the unique times in which the song was born. It meant just what you wanted it to mean. We reacted to the elliptical poetry the same way we did to A Day in the Life - as beautiful words that filled your head with images that just let your imagination fly: the more abstruse, the better. However, I am reliably informed that anyone who throws their hands at an organ keyboard will come out with something owed to Orgelbuchlein- Bach’s Little Organ Book.Īfter singing the first verse, Jimmy Rabbitte goes on to say, “Poxiest lyrics ever written.” Well, they are vexing, perhaps, or mysterious, elusory, and some think, impenetrable, but frankly, that summer we never worried too much that they didn’t make immediate sense. I was also told it was inspired by Bach’s Sleepers, Awake. I was working as a copywriter in advertising at the time and wrote Hamlet cigar commercials, where we used the Air on a ‘G’ String music played by Jacques Loussier, so I always assumed it was that. Personally I never got the Sledge connection. OK, we meant Percy Sledge, a mistake which we turned into a joke later, when Stephen is in the priest’s confessional. The opening notes of AWSoP ring out and Stephen says, “Great intro, eh?” “Yeah they nicked it from Marvin Gaye” says Jimmy.” “He nicked it from Bach” counters Stephen. Jimmy Rabbitte, the young band’s manager in the story, visits the keyboard player, Stephen, in a church where he is playing the organ. In The Commitments, we were a tad disrespectful. Except we were in Austin, Texas and it was sung by the great country-blues singer, Toni Price, with the lyrics taped to a mic-stand and the accompaniment on steel guitar. And, like many others, it was played at my wedding. Apart from (or maybe because of) being one of the nuts who couldn’t stop playing the song that summer, it subsequently found its way into my film The Commitments and later I had the pleasure of working with Gary Brooker on my film of Evita. My own connection to AWSoP (as the aficionados call it) is somewhat nebulous. It certainly was the most played song during that summer of love, as I bore witness, along with any song from Sergeant Pepper coming a close second. ![]() The BBC says it went on to be the most played song in 70 years. With all this competition, this brand new band with the funny name and even odder song topped the UK charts for six weeks and soon became a worldwide hit, selling ten million records and spawning a thousand cover versions. Pink Floyd went quadraphonic, the Stones were busted at Redlands, Hendrix burned his guitar at Finsbury Park and, miraculously, Britain even won the Eurovision song contest that year with Sandy Shaw. Apart from the Beatles there were Otis, Aretha, Dylan, The Who, The Doors, The Kinks, The Animals and Cream. It was a tough time to make a debut, because 1967 was a great year for music. To misquote the poet Philip Larkin: it came upon us in the summer of love, between Apollo1 and the Beatles’ eighth LP. ![]() Odd enough that anyone who has been anywhere near a radio, Walkman or iPod in the last forty five years almost certainly would have listened to it. Let’s face it, Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale is an odd song. INTRODUCTION TO HENRY SCOTT IRVINE’S PROCOL HARUM: GHOSTS OF A WHITER SHADE OF PALE By SIR ALAN PARKER ![]()
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