Keith Reid, the lyricist for Procol Harum whose poetic vision on Whiter Shade of Pale made it a defining song of the 1960s, has died aged 76.
He died in a London hospital, after receiving cancer treatment for two years. The band paid tribute to him on social media, writing: “His lyrics were one of a kind and helped to shape the music created by the band. His imaginative, surreal and multi-layered words were a joy to Procol fans and their complexity by design was a powerful addition the Procol Harum catalogue. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.”
Reid was born in Welwyn Garden City in 1946. His father was a Holocaust survivor who fled from Germany – Reid later said his lyricism “is very dark and I think it’s probably from my background in some subconscious way”.
In 1966 he was introduced to future Procol Harum frontman Gary Brooker via a mutual friend, with a view to writing songs with Brooker for his band the Paramounts, but the group disbanded and the pair began a separate songwriting partnership. “We found out that what we were doing – which seemed perfectly normal to us – seemed quite adventurous to other people,” Reid said. “We realised we’d have to form our own band in order to perform the songs.”
This was the six-piece Procol Harum, including Brooker as lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, and Reid, as lyricist, in the unusual position of a full-time non-performing member.
For their 1967 debut single A Whiter Shade of Pale, Reid wrote a downbeat psychedelic fantasia whose obscure meaning – it begins “we skipped the light fandango” – has been pored over by generations of pop fans. A vision of humming rooms and ceilings flying away suggest an acid trip or drunken tryst, while other lyrics nod to a romantic breakup or even perhaps comment on the souring idealism of the 1960s. Reid said he began with the title phrase: “Basically you have to invent a whole picture that this little piece you’ve got fits into. So it’s kind of like you’ve been given the last piece first, and now you have to make up the picture that that piece completes.”
Powered by Brooker’s full-bodied soul vocal and Matthew Fisher’s melancholic organ line, the song defined that year’s Summer of Love and was a huge hit, spending six weeks at No 1 in the UK and reaching No 5 in the US. The band’s follow-up Homburg, with another Reid lyric that blended failed romance and surrealist imagery, was also a UK Top 10 hit.
Procol Harum never had quite the same level of success, but continued until 1977, with Reid writing almost all their lyrics across nine albums. They re-formed for a further two Reid-penned albums, The Prodigal Stranger (1991) and The Well’s on Fire (2003), plus another without Reid, 2017’s Novum.
After Procol Harum, Reid worked as a manager for other artists, but after relocating to New York and restarting his songwriting, he had another chart success in 1986 with a song for Australian pop singer John Farnham, entitled You’re the Voice – it reached No 6 in the UK and spent seven weeks at the top of the Australian charts, also reaching No 1 in Germany and Sweden.
He also released two solo albums, The Common Thread (2008) and In My Head (2018), with his songs performed by musicians such as Southside Johnny and Manfred Mann’s Chris Thompson.
