Posted on 11/15/2006 10:25:30 AM PST by weegee
SMASHED HITS Pop lyrics re-appraised by the Magazine
A Whiter Shade of Pale, a number one single in 1967, is at the centre of a legal dispute. But what do the words mean? - "Great intro, uh?" - "They nicked it from Marvin Gaye." - "He nicked it from Bach!" This description of Procol Harum's 1967 hit A Whiter Shade Of Pale is from the film The Commitments, but it might also end up as an exchange in the Royal Courts of Justice, where former members of the band are trying to settle a royalties dispute over the song - if the legal system muddles up its soul legends.
While Judge William Blackburne ponders how to divvy up the millions at stake, others are listening again to the lyrics of this chart-topper and asking: what's going on here? And just how do you skip the light fandango?
Fittingly for a song with disputed authorship, A Whiter Shade Of Pale is rich in quotations from other works, and not just the classical motif that many hear in the arrangement: the JS Bach piece used in the cigar ads.
Even the title comes from an overheard conversation. In 1967, lyricist Keith Reid told the Melody Maker that he was at a "gathering" where "some guy looked at a chick and said to her, 'you've gone a whiter shade of pale'. That phrase stuck in my mind."
That's fantastick
Pop music is full of such snappy malapropisms: Ringo's back-to-front phrases were known as "Ringoisms" by his fellow Beatles, and resulted in songs including A Hard Day's Night and Eight Days A Week.
The result in Procol Harum's case was a pair of verbose verses which nod to various archaisms unfamiliar to the pop charts, including The Miller (as in Chaucer's vulgar tale told by a drunkard); vestal virgins (handmaidens to a Roman half-goddess) and the light fandango (John Milton coined "the light fantastick" to describe dancing in 1632; the phrase became common coinage before being mangled, via the Spanish courtship waltz the fandango, into Procol Harum's "the light fandango").
For the record, and bewilderingly, Reid pooh-poohs any link between "the Miller told his tale" and The Miller's Tale; he prefers Willie Nelson's rendition, which is mangled again into "the mirror told its tale".
Miller or mirror, it's a rum brew. The combination of dense allusion and Hammond organ had already been patented by Bob Dylan, but he was no chart-topper. While A Whiter Shade Of Pale was the number one single, Sgt Pepper was the number one album - a psychedelic commercial victory for hearts and minds.
By some accounts, this is the point where pomposity set in to pop, legitimising classical motifs and impenetrable lyrics until the Year Zero of punk. But is the song as incomprehensible as they say?
Bawdy pun
If you stop decoding the references, a clear if woozy tale emerges: there's dancing, a waiter brings drinks, their effects are felt, and a woman is approached. Could it be that A Whiter Shade Of Pale is about a boozy one night stand?
In the book Lives Of The Great Songs, Mike Butler puts a compelling case, uncovering the song's missing words, which are performed at gigs but which would have made the single over-long.
They begin "She said 'I'm home on shore leave', though in truth we were at sea" and end "So we crashed dived straight way quickly and attacked the ocean bed". A maritime metaphor climaxes in a bawdy pun, the relationship is consummated, and the song seems... well, a little less mysterious.
It's not the lyric, though, that's in legal dispute. The keyboard player, Matthew Fisher, is claiming royalties for the keyboard breaks which link the verses.
The backing is certainly effective. The song is built around a descending sequence, but so are many, from Pachelbel's Canon to The Farm's footie anthem All Together Now. To stop it descending forever, you need a flourish to get back up to the top, and A Whiter Shade Of Pale has a corker.
Indeed, similar trills were used months later by Serge Gainsbourg in the more explicit Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus and months earlier in Percy Sledge's When A Man Loves A Woman - which might be what the Commitments were thinking of.
Who came up with that corker might now be a legal matter, but one that may not matter.
Word power
Music royalties take many forms (sales, airplay, use in films and games etc), but the names in brackets after a pop song's title are usually whoever wrote the words, and the tune to which they're sung.
In their guide to How To Have A Number One The Easy Way, situationist chart-toppers The KLF put this down to a Western musical tradition which privileges words and melody, arguing that if the lawyers were "of African descent, at least 80% would have gone to the creators of the groove".
There are exceptions, of course: Pulp, Coldplay, REM and Placebo are among the bands who have split credits among the band members on the recording.
And how a band deals with this has seen many old friends looking daggers at each other across the courtroom, from Spandau Ballet through The Smiths to Bob Marley's Wailers.
None of this, however, is likely to cross your mind while you listen to the song, whoever takes the credit. And it may be unhelpfully reductive to read it as a half-remembered sexual liaison; plenty of songs have portrayed these, without ending up as wedding favourites.
The Commitments ends on an imagined exchange where the band's manager explains to Terry Wogan what he has learned and quotes from A Whiter Shade Of Pale:
- That's very profound, Jimmy! What does it mean? - I'm [expletive deleted] if I know, Terry! This seems unlikely to feature in Judge William Blackburne's summing-up. Smashed Hits is compiled by Alan Connor.
PALE SIGNIFICANCE Released 1967 No.1 in UK charts No. 5 in the US Covered by Willie Nelson, Annie Lennox and Sarah Brightman
Ping me when they figure out the low spark of high heeled boys.
"Only time will tell if we stand the test of time" - Van Halen
We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray
And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale
She said, 'There is no reason
and the truth is plain to see.'
But I wandered through my playing cards
and would not let her be
one of sixteen vestal virgins
who were leaving for the coast
and although my eyes were open
they might have just as well've been closed
She said, 'I'm home on shore leave,'
though in truth we were at sea
so I took her by the looking glass
and forced her to agree
saying, 'You must be the mermaid
who took Neptune for a ride.'
But she smiled at me so sadly
that my anger straightway died
If music be the food of love
then laughter is its queen
and likewise if behind is in front
then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
and attacked the ocean bed
I'm busy with the pompatous of love.
"I am the Eggman, they are the Eggmen, I am the Walrus, koo koo kachoo." - The Beatles (the World's favorite songwriting band)
Said the joker to the thief!
One of my favorite songs. It was really well placed in The Big Chill, too.
first tell me what "25 or 6 to 4" means
Were you listening in on Bubba and the Burglar's conversations again?
It think that was the odds at Kent State, the greatest shut-out of the 60's.
I still am not getting pinged on this list weegee. Do you mind adding me, I must have done something wrong?
Thanks.
Kent State happened in May 1970.
I guess the 60's were good to me. :)
Never let historical accuracy get in the way of a cheap laugh.
It's the time of day. Twenty-five or twenty-six minutes before four o'clock.
That's what I always assumed anyway.
All the world's a stage--Rush nicked it from Shakespeare
We are all of us in gutter, some of us looking at the stars -- Pretenders nicked it from Oscar Wilde
Yellow matter custer dripping from a dead dogs eye--John Lennon nicked it from a child's school song
The Doors nicked some Classical Spanish guitar for Spanish Caravan and STILL have to pay royalties despite the author being dead for centuries.
You are right. I actually wasted a few minutes looking it up online. Another mystery from my youth cleared up
Thanks a bunch. I will try to contribute something meaningful to the list.
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