Beyond The Pale: Procol Harum

PROCOL HARUM – Beyond The Pale - Claes Johansen –

It took over 15 years for Claes Johansen (a Danish professional fiction writer) to write this book, and by all accounts, I find this book a little short in terms of career coverage (only some 170 pages also) of his favourite band. Nothing really scandalous either, since his choices are justified by him and in general, as a Procol fan, I can see why he took the choices he made. The book concentrates mostly on the first part of Procol’s career, which I will admit is the good choice , but by the half of the book (more or less where the B&W pictures are stuck) only the first album has been recorded and they are getting ready for Shine On Brightly, their second. One cannot simply imply that a little too much time has been spent on The Paramounts (the RnB group that evolved into Procol) as the strory of that group is indeed important, and the first half is spotless. And until Procol’s Live album, Johansen is quite descriptive and outside his unreasoned love of A Salty Dog, I can agree with everything he says in the book in terms of personal opinions. One of the few things Mr. Johansen enlightened me with is his view of BJ Wilson as a superb drummer, and a very integral part of Procol’s sound. Another rather interesting thing unravelled in the book  is how most of these Southend-on-Sea (east of London in Essex on the left bank of the Thames across from Canterbury) blokes’ career will keep crossing each other’s paths, with the few Londoner’s they chose to include in their projects.

What I would’ve probably appreciated is another 50 pages to describe a bit more the middle years of Procol, once they had recorded their Live album in Edmonton until the end of the group with their ill-advised Something Magic album. Unfortunately he goes by those years a little too quickly for my taste, even if I agree with him about those later albums being a bit more of a “business as usual” thing. All in all, a very informative (albeit a little short) book, that does not bring very much to the confirmed fan (of which I am, since it took four months of intense lobbying to get Procol in our database), but it did confirm many gut feelings I had regarding the band, most notably as pioneers of prog rock.