Father of Six

Danielle came over the other day to borrow my “best of” Procol Harum and “best of” J. S. Bach CDs. Well, actually she just wanted the PH CD so she could get A Whiter Shade of Pale (AWSoP) into her iTunes library, but what kind of a father would I be without providing her with the J. S. Bach source compositions?

I cannot possibly deliver a full criticism of the piece here, but will offer a few salient opinions.

The two Bach songs which greatly influence AWSoP are “Sleepers Awake,” and “Air on a G String.” AWSoP isn’t precisely one, nor is it a direct copy of the other, but an ingenious melding of the two Bach pieces to create a rather splendid, magnificent and wonderful tune, whilst underneath it is somber and even grave. Interestingly enough, Matthew Fisher, the PH organist who, after a long legal struggle, is recognized as co-author and the creative genius for the song, claimed that Bach’s B Minor Mass is the primary influence for the intro. I’ve tried to tie the B Minor Mass to the tune, but can’t make the auditory connection.

AWSoP is also very symmetrical and circular, there is no place for a break, bridge, or coda, and so the recording softly fades away, leaving the pattern still echoing in the listeners mind. I believe that it simply cannot be improved upon.

Lyrically, the song is somewhat of an enigma. There is something going on in this song and it might be compelling, or perhaps not. Originally released in 1967, some critics have said that AWSoP is when rock lyrics began to be seen as poetry. Maybe, but publication of the song represents a distinct demarcation; it’s when rock grew up. I ’m not sure I’d call it poetry. There are some literary references there which spice things up a bit, but more than anything else, I think it’s an attempt at stream of consciousness whilst telling the story of a failed attempt at a sexual encounter.

On the title, singer and lyricist Keith Reid has this to say in the Melody Maker edition of 3 June 1967:

“. . . at a ‘gathering’ ‘Some guy looked at a chick and said to her, ‘You’ve gone a whiter shade of pale.’ That phrase stuck in my mind. It was a beautiful thing for someone to say. I wish I’d said it.’”

So what is AWSoP about? This is how I choose to interpret the lyrics –

To wit:

AWSoP Interpretation (Sorry about the link to a separate file, but I couldn’t seem to figure out how to format it properly here.)

Put the two aspects together – the musical and the lyrical - and what you have is kind of a juxtaposition of classical baroque fugue underneath a stream of consciousness or surrealist poem about a dude at a party, getting into altered mental states, trying to have sex with a chick, and realizing it is never going to happen.

One of the original sources - 250 seconds - of pure rock psychedelia.

By the way, I’m especially fond of the tune. I had Tami convinced that it needed to be a part of our wedding. Unfortunately I haven’t always been as smart as I am now, and in 1995 all I could tell the church organist was that we wanted AWSoP. He told us he couldn’t find the sheet music (liar) and didn’t know how to play by ear (not much of an artist, eh?), so he chose some other random organ fugue, which probably turned out to be Bach anyway.