Another installment of Top Of The Pops this week – Tonight, its from November 24, 1967 and features live performances by The Troggs, The Hollies, Procol Harum, The Foundations, and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich.
Procol Harum had issued their second single, Homburg. The way one story goes; when their debut, A Whiter Shade Of Pale came out, there actually was no Procol Harum, officially. It was, for all intents and purposes, the previous incarnation of the band, known as The Paramounts who had broken up in 1966 and from which this session was done initially as a songwriting demo for Gary Booker. But with the enormous worldwide success of A Whiter Shade, an official Procol Harum emerged, this time with non-Paramounts drummer B.J.Wilson and the rest became history. There are several versions of this story; this is one of them – the other was that Procol Harum was formed in April of 1967 and went into the studio to cut this track, working on a new direction for this newly named band. Whichever story is fact, doesn’t diminish the fact that Procol Harum became an overnight success and A Whiter Shade Of Pale became an anthem, and set the stage for a whole genre of Art Rock/Classical Rock and eventually Prog-Rock to come about.
The rest of this installment of Top Of The Pops features The Troggs doing Love Is All Around – The Hollies performing King Midas In Reverse, The Foundations doing Now That I’ve Found You and Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich doing Zabadak – all performed in BBC sessions and the show, as usual, hosted by Brian Matthew.
Continuing a look at 60s music in a way you may not have heard before, if you weren’t near a station that ran Top Of The Pops via the BBC Transcription service, or missed it completely the first time around.
Once again, big thanks for Gray Newell for providing these slices of history.
Wow. That was fun! Love Brian Matthew’s very “professional” enthusiasm. Nice to hear some Procol Harum other than “A Whiter Shade…” I forgive them for sowing the seeds of Prog Rock 😉