Procol Harum

Procol Harum is an English Progressive Rock and Baroque Pop band founded in 1967. The group's membership has changed frequently, the only constant members being singer/pianist Gary Brooker (and lyricist Keith Reid until 2003). The group recorded 10 studio albums before disbanding in 1977, then reunited in the 1990s, having recorded two more studio albums since then and continuing to perform live up to the present.

With the death of Gary Brooker in February 2022, Procol Harum's future is in doubt; he was the only constant member of the band.

"Pilgrim: I wish to know the meaning of life, father. Dalai Lama: Well my son, life is like a beanstalk, isn't it?"
 * Can't Get Away with Nuthin': Disgustingly, "A Souvenir of London".
 * Chronological Album Title: Procol's Ninth
 * Cover Version: Not common for them, but they did cover "I Keep Forgettin'" (by Chuck Jackson, written by Leiber and Stoller) and The Beatles' "Eight Days a Week", both on Procol's Ninth. There's also the Cover Album Ain't Nothin' to Get Excited About, credited to the pseudonym Licorice John Death and not released until 27 years after it was recorded.
 * Crapsack World: The entire Broken Barricades album is pretty much a window-jumper.
 * Downer Ending: Downer Beginning, middle, and ending, really...Broken Barricades.
 * Dying Dream: "The Dead Man's Dream"
 * Epic Rocking: "In Held Twas In I"
 * Fake-Out Fade-Out: "Rambling On"
 * Fake Band: Originally. Brooker and Reid recorded "Whiter Shade", and had to assemble a band when it hit.
 * Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Their popularity in the United Kingdom faded quickly after their first single "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and from then on they toured mostly in the United States (in the late 1960s) and continental Europe (from the 1970s onward).
 * A Good Name for a Rock Band: According to this page, the band's first manager, Guy Stevens, happened to look at a pedigree certificate for a cat named "Procul Harun", and immediately suggested it as the band's name. (The cat's owners actually called him "Claude"; "Procul Harun" was only a name chosen by the cat breeder. The "Procul" part was the breeder's registered prefix, and "Harun" is an Arabic equivalent of "Aaron".)
 * Hey, It's That Guy!: later famous as a solo artist, Robin Trower was the guitarist for the band's first several albums.
 * Jekyll and Hyde: Mentioned in the lyrics of "Monsieur Armand" (re-recorded as "Monsieur R. Monde" - see Spell My Name with an "S" below), with the "other" person telling the narrator that the former is Jekyll and the latter is Hyde.
 * Koan:


 * One-Hit Wonder: While they did get several singles onto the UK singles charts, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" utterly overshadowed all the rest of them.
 * "Conquistador" did well in the U.S; and their album sales made up for any lack of success on the pop charts.
 * Rock Me, Amadeus: The middle section of "Repent Walpurgis" comes from Bach's Prelude No. 1 in C major (BWV 846).
 * It's debatable whether or not "A Whiter Shade of Pale" actually copies from Air on the G String. According to Brooker, "I think only the first four notes are the same, then it starts to change."
 * "Grand Hotel" quotes the Russian folk song "Otchi Chyornije".
 * Seadog Beard: Depicted on the cover of A Salty Dog.
 * Parodying the packet design from a well-known brand of cigarettes.
 * Slave Brand: "Memorial Drive"
 * Spell My Name with an "S": This band name gives rise to all sorts of misspellings, such as "Proul Haven", "Procyl Harom", "Parocial Harem", etc. What's more, the official spelling itself resulted from a mistake: manager Guy Stevens suggested the name "Procul Harun" to the band during a phone conversation with the band, and they misheard.
 * Then there's the song "Monsieur Armand", recorded in 1967 and left unreleased, then re-recorded and released in 1975 with the title spelled "Monsieur R. Monde", possibly for reasons related to publishing rights.
 * Title Confusion: Their fourth album is titled Home. Its front and back cover illustration has a sort of "board game" theme featuring portraits of the band members cut and pasted onto cartoon characters, including some speech balloons and written sound effects such as "Whoosh!" and "Sploosh!". It just so happens that "Whoosh!" is printed on the front cover in a font size nearly as large as was used for the title. Because of this, some Benelux-market editions of the album state the album title as Whoosh on the center label / cassette label / sleeve spine.
 * Word Salad Lyrics: Some of them.
 * Word Salad Title: "In Held 'Twas in I" (This title comes from putting together the first word of the lyrics of each section of the song.)
 * X Meets Y: Electric organ player Matthew Fisher's playing style has been described as something like Jimmy Smith meets Johann Sebastian Bach.