Matthew Fisher at the Hammond M-102 made A Whiter Shade of Pale memorable, and had to fight to get a writing credit which ultimately arrived in 2009. This was when he started a band called the Pinewoods, ultimately becaming Procol Harum, fractured Latin for “beyond these things”. His father being a musician encouraged him to learn the piano, cornet, trombone, guitar and banjo but after his father’s death when he was 11, life changed with his mother having to find work on a factory assembly line.Īfter dropping out of college to work as a musician, he began playing with the R&B group, the Paramounts, which, by the time it fell apart in 1966, had already shared bills with the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. Once we had recorded it and had captured that very characteristic sound, a rather haunting sound, we really did think that it was a good one,” Brooker had told UK Music Reviews.īrooker’s childhood wasn’t an easy one. So we honestly believed that it was going to be a hit even before we had recorded it. “Whenever I played it to anyone, it was just me sitting at the piano, and every person thought that it sounded like a hit. At the first Brit Awards in 1977, it was joint winner (alongside Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody) of the ‘best British pop single 1952-1977’ while in 2009 it was named the most-played song of the last 75 years by UK radio stations.

Whiter shade of pale lyrics