Procol Harum "A Whiter Shade Of Pale" REACTION Video | best reaction video to 60s music 

Having grown up hearing the original I believe this is the most beautiful version and also one of the best live performances of any song I have ever heard.

Gary Brooker pianist was the lead singer of the group Procol Harum. Sadly he passed away in early 2022. Thankfully though he left us with this beautiful memory.

Best live performance of a song ever. ❤

I believe John Lennon said this was the most beautiful song ever written

This is a masterpiece. It is an anthem I remember from the 1960's beautifully sung by the wonderful Gary Brooker who was lost to the world in February this year. RIP legend!

When that Hammond organ comes in with that iconic sound. Ah, days of my youth!

I was their I was only 19 with my dad and it was magical. We were on the hill watching over the stream. Life changing.

Saw Gary Brooker open for Eric Clapton maybe 35 yrs ago.....he sat and sand this song 20 feet in front of me....amazing.....

John Lennon would have his driver drive him around in his Rolls Roy ace and play this over and over when it came out...one of his favorite songs.

Paul McCartney once said this was his favorite song from the 1960s.

The lyrics were based on the Miller's Tale in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, where the carpenter's wife was accused of having an affair. She then turned 'a whiter shade of pale' at being found out.

One of the best pop song ever wrote

Gary Brooker's voice has only improved with age; and this is as good as it gets. I've loved this since my teens. Absolutely superb. I believe he did the orchestration himself.

Its from a concert in Denmark, its the Danmarks Radio symfoni orkester (the Danish Radio symphoni orcestra) playing with Procol Harum, they make concerts every year with different artists at the same place

The best rock song ever , quote by John Lennon

Simply one of the finest live performances ever recorded. Period.

Best version of this song ever

To get an idea of how "big" this song is look it up on wikipedia..sold over 10,000,000 globally, putting it in the top 40 or so songs to have achieved this feat !... And this performance is "Perfection" his voice, the orchestra, the choir , location , everything its Perfection

One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the most commercially successful singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the years since, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has become an enduring classic, with more than 1,000 known cover versions by other artists. Oh, and the name Procol Harum came from a friend's pedigree Siamese cat. The band members liked the name, so they used it.

60's music is just incredible, I don't think that there will be another decade like that ever

It's nice to see young people appreciating the music I grew up with. We had so many great vocalists that sang WITHOUT auto-tune . Just pure talent, passion and soul.

I loved this song in the 60's, but this performance was on another level. RIP Gary Brooker.

All written by an English man back in 1387-1400 the canterberry tales. Made of a volume of short stories. One of the books is title "The Miller's Tale" I have been listening to Procol Harum for 50 years Mr Gary Brooker past away February 19 2022

I've been a musician for over 50 years and have heard this song since it was new. It was just played on a Hammond B-3 organ without the orchestra. The melody is hauntingly beautiful as is the chord progression. The first time (and every other time) I heard this version with the orchestra it brought a tear to my eye because it was so beautiful. The somber mood is associated with songs in minor keys in general but I don't think the message is necessarily sad or negative. He describes a night in a bar where he'd had too much to drink and felt a little "seasick" but the crowd called out for more so apparently, he was performing. They called out for another drink and the waiter brought a tray. It doesn't explain who the woman was but she seemed to turn from ghostly to a whiter shade of pale based on the miller's tale. There is no mention of a relationship as far as I can tell. In all these years I've just enjoyed the song even though the story doesn't really seem to go anywhere in particular.

This is one of the most magical tunes ever composed, JS Bach & Procol Harum

One of the most iconic songs from the 60's. RIP Gary Booker who was an amazing singer even in his later years. This performance was the best ever. Thank you ladies. Good analysis of the song. Thank you. 🙏☮❤

Incidentally, Gary Brooker (the Procol Harum singer) was another ‘name’ who collaborated with Kate Bush. He played keyboard/Hammond Organ on a few of her songs.

Basically it is a couple falling out of love and the man doesn't see what the woman means so his eyes might as well been closed. This has always been one of my favorite songs .

If anyone out there wants to write lyrics about romance without being cheesy/clichéd/dumb, this right here is your masterclass. RIP Keith Reid.

One of the more distinct features of Procol Harum is that they have a member who only does the writing. I understood he tried to create an ambience like a Dali painting. Also Procol Harum has one of its roots in classical music (the other is blues); in this song they used Bach as basis.

He was in his 60s when he sang this, his voice hadn't really changed over the years. A true artist. Along with Comfortable Numb always brings tears to my eyes.

I'm old enough to remember parties in the 60s. When came the last dance they would often play a slow, sentimental song like "Unchained Melody" (Righteous Brothers), "The Long & Winding Road" (Beatles) or this beautiful song by Procol Harum. Even without lyrics, it still stirs the soul and is full of longing. There is something sacred, almost religious about that tune, maybe because it resembles the music of Bach. A timeless song indeed.

That absolutely was one of the best arrangements of any song that you'll ever hear...

It amazes me is he had this voice when he was 25 .

"Her face at first just ghostly turned a whiter shade of pale." Accordion to one story I heard, Gary Booker overhead someone use that phrase at a cocktail party. And thus genus is created.

A Whiter Shade Of Pale By Procol Harum is a classic song from the late 60's. I've heard it many times but never seen it performed live and accompanied by an orchestra. This was really good.

The Miller’s Tale is a story from The Canterbury Tales. It’s rather naughty. If you learn about the ending, you’d turn a whiter shade of pale.

They meet and Skip the lights fandango which is the mating dance you might be familiar with with the woman having castanets, When she finds out from the bartender (The Miller) that she made a mistake about the man , her ghostly face turns a whiter shade of pale. From an interview with the writer. “It’s like a jigsaw where you’ve got one piece, then you make up all the others to fit in. 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.”

This is one of the best live performances.....EVER🎼!! As others have noted, their lead singer is Gary Brooker, who passed away in Feb from cancer at the age of 76. Please do listen to the original sometime when you get a chance, as his voice sounds the same then in 1967🎤.

For myself as far as Procol Harum goes, there is only one, Live, fully orchestrated, "Conquistador" . 🤙👣

Go back and listen to the 1960's version. Hard to believe, but I actually grew up in the 60's, 70's. An incredible experience! Especially since I grew up in San Francisco. Time indeed flies by. I'm actually grandpa old!!!

Further info, this is one of the most important songs in Rock history! It marked the transition of Rock from a fluffier thing in an artistic endeavor! The lyrics and their meaning have been analyzed and gone over for decades! Notice the lack of a rhyming of the lyrics! It’s neither linear or vertical but 4 dimensional!

Grandma used to call it flushed! When all the blood seems to drain from your body! My first slow dance my first love to this song ! Summer 1967! I remember, father was Navy I was 14 island of Guam! Later that night she told me she would be returning to the States! Her father's tour was over! I remember! Knowing we would probably never see one another again! Both our faces turned a whiter shade of pale!💔! Thank you for this wonderful memory!❤! Yep stepped on her foot!☺! We never saw one another again, but I hope she remembers when herring this song!🥰 And had a Beautiful life!❤❤❤

One of the greatest songs ever, this live performance takes it to a new level

This is the first reaction video - to this performance -where the reactor knew when the vocalist came in. Indeed, many reactors were totally surprised when the singer appeared thinking by then that it was an instrumental piece of music. SO, I guess the younger woman must have read up in the performance beforehand OR had even watched previously.

It seems almost incomprehensible to me that there are people out there who have not heard Whiter Shade of Pale. I am also jealous of the pleasure of hearing it for the first time as to me and my generation it is a classic that has been flogged to death so much you become complacent as to its genius.

I was going to see them here in Cambridge UK about 1967 but they were exhausted due to their tour. So we saw a replacement group: The Jeff Beck Group. Jeff Beck (ex Yardbirds) , Ronnie Wood (now Rolling Stones), Aynsley Dunbar (very well known drummer) and Rod Stewart as lead singer!! Pretty good replacement group! Saw some amazing groups here in Cambridge in the’60’s.

Imagine the equivalent of a surrealist painting in rock music. This is it. Parts of scenes showing faces turning pale from around 1385 (the Millers Tale) onwards.

whoever put the arrangment together was spot on

RIP Gary Brooker and thank you🙏 You certainly left your mark on this world 👍

rip brooker, one of the greatest songs ever

RIP Gary. Jim

His voice never failed him...R.I.P.

I came into my adult life with this song as my carpet ride. It never ever gets old ....

It's amazing what you can do with great music.

This is better than the hit in 67. RIP Gary Booker.

One of my all time favorite songs for over 50 years! So glad I grew up in the era of music like this. RIP Gary Booker

I love how you 2 lovely ladies keep picking some of my favourite songs for you videos. Keep up the good work! David x

The original was released in 1967, and the most amazing thing is how little Gary Brooker's voice had changed in all that time. As a 22yr-old in 1967, he had a mature voice even then. You really should do a reaction to the original for comparison's sake. The meaning of the lyrics has remained a subject for debate over the decades, with apocryphal stories, literary assurances, and lyricist's denials leaving it a mystery. What remains is a sentiment in keeping with what Freddie Mercury said about "Bohemian Rhapsody", that it's really up to each person to interpret as they please and by so doing it makes the song personal to each listener. The tune itself was a misremembering of a Bach piece, which created a unique song with a classical feel to it. This was a foundation for a style that came to be known as 'progressive rock'. Going by what Gary Brooker said, it was just chance that the lyrics (one of two sets messengered to him that morning) were matched to the Bach-ish tune he was composing at home. But the meaning of the lyrics can never be exactly known. What can be said is the lyrics work perfectly with the music to make a 'mood', which is often a characteristic of particularly artistic-based progressive rock. This video of Brooker performing at a Danish music festival is so perfect and beautiful...RIP Gary. By the way, not necessarily for reaction video, but for your personal enjoyment, you should listen to Procol Harum's "A Salty Dog", another 'mood' piece with some ambiguity in the lyrics, but it's set in 19th Century ship culture, wooden ships years at sea. It was released as a concept album in 1969 with orchestration backing. It really is worth a listen.

Hi sisters! If you ain't feeling the music you are numb. This was a live open air performance in Denmark and just shows how some of the early groups were masterful at their craft. No desk mixing no fiddling with knobs and levers just raw instrumentation and vocals...those were the days!

Not many singers can sound as good or even better than they did the 40 years after they recorded the song originally. His voice is spot on but a bit deeper and grittier but in a very good way. Superb version.

Being quite old, I remember this when it first came out in 1967 - a non-orchestrated version that became one of those songs that is part of the backdrop of one’s life. Then a few years ago I found this masterpiece of a rendition on RU-vid and the song acquired new meaning to me, as it has for many, I think. Gary Brooker absolutely nails it - amazing, so many years after he first sang these words about the Miller telling his tale. When I heard last year that Procul Harum were doing a kind of farewell tour I was among the first to buy tickets for their show in London. Then came the news that we’d been dreading - the concerts were postponed because Gary was ill. We’d known that for some time. But still we clung onto hope. Then in February this year we learned that the concerts would never happen, as Gary had skipped his last fandango at the age of 76. But what a great legacy.

Every time I see this, I am blown away by how Gary Brooker's voice never changed with age. If anything, the years help him add emotion that his young self couldn't quite match. Btw, this was a hit in 1967!! RIP, Gary.

My kind of music too. Great song and group. Great performance. Transformative.

Best music ever from '65 to '75. I know it's subjective. My first 8 track was Procol Harum and there were other great songs on the album. Cool reaction. Thanks, take care.

It's hard to believe they released that song in 1967. And, he could still belt it out like that, all those years later.

This performance was 50 years after the song was on radio so in that aspect alone it makes it quite amazing.

One f the first bands I saw live, I wish I could have seen him when Gary Brooker did again 50 years later.. Rip

It's hauntingly beautiful.

Yeah, the "Miller's tale" was when, right there in public, he told everyone that she was cheating on him. The singer in the song is an observer, and when everything else was going great ... all of a sudden, this happened. It was a memorable experience for everyone there, I'm sure.

This is the best recording of this song I've heard.

Procol Harum also sang Conquistador, another magnificent song.

Ladies, this is one of many of your excellent reviews/ reactions …especially from one of the biggest bands in the world! 👍🏻👍🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

RIP Gary Booker, another legend taken from us too soon.

"A Whiter Shade of Pale" is a song by the English rock band Procol Harum that was issued as their debut record on 12 May 1967. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June and stayed there for six weeks. Wikipedia.

Gary Booker just passed away back at first of this year. God bless an God speed brother. An the man sang that song better at this event than when he was a young man in the sixty's.

Hello Ladies ! yes many years ! i ve known that band since the early 70s ! There s so many other great songs ! i hope you listen to all the other ones ! he s like the captain of a ship ! definately one of my best bands ! And the organ is the famous Hammond B-3 wich is the best organ sound ! most rock bands play with that !

What's truly amazing about Gary's performance, is that he obviously had kept up his vocal training. Truly amazing performance for a man of 60. Elton John said it was one of the greatest songs ever, and John Lennon played it every time he drove in his Bentley.

My favorite version of this classic. Aside from enjoying the performance, when I watch the video I always think that it would have been great to be there.

the best live performance ever for this song originally sang in the late 60s. Gary Booker is 60 years old here. sad to say he passed away on February 19, 2022 at the age of 76 after a long battle with cancer.

Gary Brooker the lead singer, such a distinguished voice, sadly passed away in February of this year.

A masterpiece from the PSYCHEDELIC age, 1967, The Summer of Love!!

A Salty Dog and Conquistador same concert is a must listen.

Gary Brooker's voice could only be called a miracle. RIP Gary. The original was released in 1967. I remember it as a kid from AM radio, and TV. Even though it seems to be about the end of a relationship, it brings a picture of the Vietnam era to me. It's not the lyrics, I think that is about the organ, the total sound and how well Keith Reid painted a picture of this painful ending. Side note, Procol Harum toured with the Bee Gees in 1968. I wish I could remember where I read it, but I saw something with Gary talking about standing off stage to watch how the brothers incorporated Bill Shepherd's orchestra into their performances, and being heavily influenced.

Song was everywhere during the Summer of Love. The original featured Matthew Fisher on organ.

Love the reaction ladies. Great song to have a favorite🤘❤️ from this same concert a must must must listen is Salty dog. Will not dissapoint. Promise. And this 🇮🇹 never breaks a promise. RIp Gary Brooker😢

The orchestral opening had me thinking a string and oboe concerto, added to Gary's best ever effort here is my new favorite, all time.

An interview with Procol Harum said that this song was just about a bad acid trip. You have to hear the original version. The organ is epic.

This song was played by our local rock band as their last song of the night , every Saturday night at our local dance ,I particularly loved it because it was usually the only song they played that you got to hold a girl in your arms in a slow dance everything else was rock and roll or jive and you didn't even need a partner to participate .I met a 16yr old beautiful young woman i asked to dance to this song and ended up married to her for 41 yrs until her passing 15 yrs ago so this song brings a smile to my face and a tear to my eye everytime I hear it , this was the first time I've heard it with an orchestra and it was beautiful. If I could be so bold to ask you to check out a fellow Australian singer John Farnham a contemporary of the Bee Gees who we Aussies claim is the best singer ever and had a concert in Melbourne with the Melbourne Symphony orchestra and shows what you can do with rock music accompanied by one of the world's best Symphony orchestras ,if your interested check out his tribute cover of the Beatles song HELP but do yourself a favour and check out the Beatles original first , I guarantee you will be blown away .

In an interview Gary stated that the song was the story of a night of drinking and trying to pick up a woman. This performance was from 2006 in Denmark and was the last song of about 12.

Usually, a piece of music in its original version is the best thing you can hear. I have known this piece since it was released in 1967, it has accompanied me all my life. Here Gary Brooker has managed to interpret A Whiter Shade Of Pale even better than he did in 1967. Unfortunately, he has already passed away. R.I.P. Gary

I saw them sing this song in Hawaii in1972. I was a great concert with Humble Pie as well.

Hard to believe you've never heard the song. This is an incredibly powerful version of it. The 1967 original is amazing too they've always painted beautiful pictures in my mind, I never looked at it as melancholy, but joyous

This has been the greatest since 1967 !

Gary passed away not so long ago.😞 a wonderful man, working class northern (UK) lad who never forgot his roots, he will be sorely missed R.I.P. Gary..❤️

One of the most memorable and perfect riffs of all time.

you guys are a breath of fresh air. keep being honest

This song went straight to no 1 in the UK 🇬🇧 one of my favourite bands when I was younger my era you need to listen to 60s early 70s bands and singer Janis Joplin in my opinion one of the greatest rock blues singers of all time . Here’s another one for you "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" By the Hollies

The orchestra behind is the Danish National Symphony Orchestra and Concert Choir. The concert is one of Ledreborg Castle Concerts where the orchestra is celebrating the summer season. Try to listen to the theme from Once upon a time in the west from this orchestra ...

Chillbumps. Gary's voice sounds better than in the 60s. RIP Gary