[188.1] BEYOND THE PALE

A bit outside the usual musical territory of NFE, but I was pleased that former Procul Harum keyboard player Matthew Fisher today won a share in the copyright and royalties of 'A Whiter Shade Of Pale'. It's a great song - an intriguing blend of ballad, Bach and lyrical psychedelia with a fine Hammond M-102 drawbar / Leslie cabinet sound (not the B3, as is often assumed). Fortunately the adjudicator, Justice Blackburne, read music as well as law at Cambridge.To prove his point Fisher [pictured] led the court through what the Daily Telegraph described "a dizzying 40 minutes of bar by bar analysis, picking out quavers, sequences, ascending and descending scales and dissonances." Good on him.

We skipped the light fandango
turned cartwheels 'cross the floor
I was feeling kinda seasick
but the crowd called out for more
The room was humming harder
as the ceiling flew away
When we called out for another drink
the waiter brought a tray

And so it was that later
as the miller told his tale
that her face, at first just ghostly,
turned a whiter shade of pale

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