Procol Harum

I was sitting at the piano somewhere in Switzerland. I wasn't quite sure how, but I had it in mind to write a song. And suddenly a train went by, 'Tu-tuh'. 'Strange sound for a train', I thought. But it was pleasant, and I thought I'd make it a little less dissonant. That's how the opening music of 'A Salty Dog' was born

(Gary Brooker)

Before entering the court of the Crimson King, the world of youth music was in full ferment. The first generation of young people free from war, with the freedom to play and sell their own music, was experimenting with everything possible, drawing on original black rock and blues and mixing it with the most disparate influences. There was garage, rock-blues, Merseybeat, the psychedelic folk of the Byrds. There were very young musicians bringing jazz into rock (Soft Machine), and there were jazz giants doing exactly the opposite (Miles Davis with "Bitches Brew"). Psychedelia was growing ever more mature (Doors, Pink Floyd), and even the avant-garde proved to be a significant influence (Velvet Underground, Red Crayola).

In this great melting pot of creativity, it's no surprise that classical music too could become the starting point for a new formula. Initially dubbed baroque rock, and later - with hindsight - proto-progressive, this fusion of rock and classical music finds its earliest champions in bands like Procol Harum, Nice, Zombies and Moody Blues. The years from 1967 to the first half of 1969 are when the classics of baroque rock were released, from "Days Of Future Passed" (1967) to "Odessey & Oracle" (1968), from "Ars Longa Vita Brevis" (1969) to "A Salty Dog".

The third LP by the British band Procol Harum was released in March 1969, just a few months before "In The Court Of Crimson King", which would come out in October of that same year - the deflagration point that would kick off an entirely different story, that of classic progressive rock. Having, in a sense, dictated the rules of the classically-tinged pop song with the single "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" (1967), Gary Brooker's band - with Matthew Fisher, Ray Royer, David Knights and Bill Eyden, marked by the unusual, yet in some ways programmatic, presence of two pianists - crafted two fully baroque albums with grand, elegant symphonic textures, always in service of the pop song format. Their third work, "A Salty Dog", stands as their most effective synthesis, ten varied and mature tracks that, listened to today, seem to foreshadow much of the following decade's progressive rock.

It opens with the cry of seagulls and just two repeated notes. Its absolute simplicity can't hide the genius of the title track, a true classical composition barely four minutes long, its dramatic solemnity conveyed through keyboards and strings: perhaps the tragic peak of baroque rock's three-year run. The title track clearly foreshadows the sounds that Genesis would bring to their own zenith years later. But if these four minutes are the album's masterpiece, the closing "Pilgrim's Progress" is no less remarkable, a ballad calibrated to the millimetre, tempering the baroque solemnity for an admirable synthesis of their landmark single "A Whiter Shade Of Pale", Liverpool beat, and the psychedelic pop-folk of the Byrds.

Tracks like "The Devil Came From Kansas" and "Boredom", with flute and vibraphone, are decidedly close to the sound of Jethro Tull - not so much the bluesy period of "This Was" (1967), which the band surely knew, but rather the prog albums that Anderson and co. had yet to release.

Other gems include "Wreck Of The Hesperus", with rapid piano notes and guitars that come remarkably close to the glam of Bolan and Bowie, and the blues-rock bordering on Zeppelin-esque hard rock of "Crucifiction Lane".

Finally, there's no shortage of folk tracks steeped in elegant pop atmospheres, like the adorable "Too Much Between Us" and the ironic "The Milk Of Human Kindness".

"A Salty Dog" is a landmark album in Procol Harum's career, but it's also a crucial piece of that sound which - unknowingly - aspired to become progressive rock. And perhaps it's not wrong to say that, without this missing link, the subsequent history of rock would not have been the same.

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06/03/2022