Monday, January 16, 2006

A Whiter Shade Of Pale

On 15 May 1967, Paul was out on the town.
"The night I met Linda I was in the Bag o'Nails watching Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames play a great set. Speedy was banging away. She was there with the Animals, who she knew from photographing them in New York. They were sitting a couple of alcoves down, near the stage. The band had finished and they got up to either leave or go for a drink or a pee or something, and she passed our table. I was near the edge and stood up just as she was passing, blocking her exit. And so I said, 'Oh, sorry. Hi. How are you? How're you doing?' I introduced myself, and said, 'We're going on to another club after this, would you like to join us?'

"That was my big pulling line! Well, I'd never used it before, of course, but it worked this time! It was a fairly slim chance but it worked. She said, 'Yes, okay, we'll go on. How shall we do it?' I forget how we did it, 'You come in our car' or whatever, and we all went on, the people I was with, and the Animals, we went on to the Speakeasy.

"It was the first evening any of us had ever heard a record called 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' with words about feeling seasick. The lyrics were all very strange and poetic and the theme was a famous Bach theme but we didn't know that. We just thought, God, what an incredible record! It was a sort of marker record. It was a benchmark. And we were all trying to guess who it was. So we had to go to the booth and ask, 'What was that one you just played?' and he said, 'Oh yes,' "Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum.' 'Procol what? Is it Latin or something?' And there were rumours went around about what that meant. So all the mystery of the evening.

LINDA: I first met Paul at the Bag o'Nails. The Animals were old friends because I'd photographed them so much in New York, so when I came to London they took me out; and we went to see Georgie Fame at the Bag o'Nails. And that's where Paul and I met. We flirted a bit, and then it was time for me to go back with them and Paul said, 'Well, we're going to another club. You want to come?' I remember everybody at the table heard 'A Whiter Shade of Pale' that night for the first time and we all thought, Who is that? Stevie Winwood? We all said Stevie. The minute that record came out, you just knew you loved it. That's when we actually met. Then we went back to his house. We were in the Mini and I think Lulu and Dudley Edwards, who painted Paul's piano; Paul was giving him a lift home. I was impressed to see his Magrittes."Paul McCartney: Many Years from Now

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