A Whiter Shade of Pale

A Whiter Shade of Pale
What’s It All About, Alfie?

Before getting my master’s degree in the last 60s, the rock band Procol Harum sang A Whiter Shade of Pale. Unless you are forty or older, you won’t appreciate or even understand the band’s dress code, along with many young adults of the time.

I have loved that song for decades but can’t grasp why. Read the lyrics to the song that sold over 10 million single copies.

We skipped the light fandango
Turned cartwheels ‘cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
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
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

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

And so it was that later

I love the song, but I don’t have the foggiest meaning of the lyrics. The lyrics seem like a musical version of Trump’s speeches. I guess that I need to be gentler with Donald the Dumb and his MAGA minions. They adore Trump’s words, like I love the lyrics of A Whiter Shade of Pale.

Someone authored a book entitled Procol Harum: Beyond the Pale. The writer said the lyrics “deals in metaphorical form with a male/female relationship which after some negotiation ends in a sexual act.” Hmmm. The writer alluded to this part of one of the stanzas.

Would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast

Another writer saw the lyrics relating “to a drunken seduction, which is described through references to sex as a form of travel, usually nautical, using mythical and literary journeys.” That was a failed attempt at clarifying the lyrics.

Keith Reid, who wrote the lyrics, explained the motivation behind creating A Whiter Shade of Pale.

I was trying to conjure a mood as much as tell a straightforward, girl-leaves-boy story. With the ceiling flying away and room humming harder, I wanted to paint an image of a scene. I wasn’t trying to be mysterious with those images, I was trying to be evocative. I suppose it seems like a decadent scene I’m describing. But I was too young to have experienced any decadence, then. I might have been smoking when I conceived it, but not when I wrote. It was influenced by books, not drugs.

If the lyrics are clear to you, email me what Reid meant. John Lennon said A Whiter Shade of Pale was his favorite song during the Summer of Love in 1967. However, it doesn’t explain the lyrics. The lyrics are slightly clearer than Trump’s writings or speeches.

So, I can’t explain my love for A Whiter Shade of Pale. I love to watch the following video of Procol Harum’s A Whiter Shade of Pale, in which they sang at Ledreborg Castle in Denmark.

Their performance was four decades after it was first recorded. Procol Harum and I have grown older and wiser on our journey down the yellow brick road of life. That might explain why I love their song.