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Procol Harum | Format: Vinyl

Product Details

• Vinyl
• Label: A&M
• ASIN: B001HEH0N8
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Vinyl
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #957,953 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Editorial Reviews

The group's hardest-rocking classic album is, beyond some superb vocalizing by Gary Brooker, principally a showcase for Robin Trower's high-powered guitar and a rock-hard rhythm section, with B.J. Wilson only a little less animated than Ginger Baker on some of the music. Procol Harum had a split personality by this time, the band juxtaposing straight-ahead rock & roll numbers like "Still There'll Be More" and the Elvis Presley-influenced "Whisky Train" with darker, more dramatic pieces like "Nothing That I Didn't Know" and "Barnyard Story." Chris Copping doubles on organ, replacing Matthew Fisher, but the overall sound is that of a leaner Procol Harum, all except for the ambitious "Whaling Stories" - even it was a compromise that nearly worked, showcasing Trower's larger-than-life guitar sound (coming off here like King Crimson's Robert Fripp in one of his heavier moments) within a somewhat pretentious art rock concept. It shows the strains within their lineup that the producers chose the lighter, more obviously accessible "Your Own Choice" - on which Gary Brooker's piano is the lead instrument - to end the album after "Whaling Stories"' pyrotechnic finish.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Most Underrated Album in Rock History, August 25, 2000

By 

Eric M. Van (Watertown, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Home (Audio CD)

Nobody knows it, but HOME is not only Procol Harum's best album (which is saying a lot) but an easy choice as one of the ten best albums in rock history.

Nobody knows it, because the subject mattter -- death -- is so very disturbing. So, to begin with, listeners are likely to reject individual songs, like "The Dead Man's Dream," a Lovecraftian horror tale of terrifying power, or "Barnyard Story," whose closing quatrain has to be the most exquisite artistic expression of suicidal depression in pop music history (if not all literature).

And given all this darkness, what listener is going to stop and try to add up all the songs to see if they form a whole greater than the sum of the their parts? There's a theme here, obviously, but is there a statement?

Yes. And a hugely positive one. Like SHINE ON BRIGHTLY and A SALTY DOG, HOME ends with a song that solves the Zen riddle of why life is like a beanstalk -- but with a special twist for the specific problem of coming to terms with your own mortality. Earlier we learned that "there is no maze to unwind;" the hidden truth about life is that there is no hidden truth. In "Your Own Choice," our narrator realizes that there *is* no coming to terms with your mortality -- which paradoxically, is how you *do* come to terms with it. You must lose faith in humanity to have any faith at all.

The opening track, "Whiskey Train," is a fine blues rocker, but nothing special. The chorus of Robin Trower's other composition, "About to Die," leans perhaps a little too heavily on The Band as a model. Every other moment on this album is breathtakingly perfect. Really. Kudos to producer Chris Thomas, especially for the job he did capturing B. J. Wilson's astonishing drumming (imagine Beethoven in Keith Moon's body). Gary Brooker's singing and piano playing are terrific. Likewise Chris Copping's organ playing -- it's less majestic and melodic than predecessor Matthew Fisher, but actually better suited to the darker material. And Trower -- long before he discovered Hendrix -- had an utterly unmistakeable style of his own; his lead /rhythm playing in the powerhouse rocker "Still There'll Be More" and his solo in "Whaling Stories" mark him already as a genuine Guitar God.

The sequencing is close to optimal in terms of exploring the death theme -- try 1, 4, 5, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9. That actually tells a story -- the death of a friend ("Nothing That I Didn't Know") plunges the already alcoholic narrator into a Christ-obsessed ("About to Die" and "Barnyard Story"), suicidal and homicidal ("Still There'll Be More") rumination which extends into a contemplation of the apocalypse ("Piggy Pig Pig" and the band's crowning masterpiece, "Whaling Stories") before arriving at the unexpected Answer (complete with bucolic harmonica).

Lyricist Keith Reid has said that the album's thematic unity was not intentional, and that only in retrospect does he realize how depressed he must have been at the time. Consider this: after writing four albums full of songs about death (with the sea as an almost constant metaphor), he hardly ever dealt with this subject matter again. And though I hate to endorse the "suffer for your art" notion, truth to tell, once he succeeded in working through this great question that lay at the heart of all his early work, he quickly became just a shadow of his former artistic self. In a strange way, I think that's testament to the power of the first four Procol Harum albums, and especially this, the stunning climax and capstone.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars One of Procol's Best, June 27, 2009

By 

[e-mail] "aka B. D. Love" (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home (Audio CD)

While one can share a former reviewer's frustration, one should agree not to take it out on the artist or material at hand. This is the second Procol Harum record I bought, after a high school friend turned me onto A Salty Dog, which stands, perhaps, as their masterpiece (well, along with Grand Hotel and Exotic Birds and Fruit), though they never did make a duff record (well, Something Magic...). The playing is majestic, it also rocks very very hard, being more guitar-oriented than other PH records, and Brooker's voice--what more can possibly said about it's bell-in-the-church-steeple clarity and resonance? Great pianist, too. If you are a rock and roll enthusiast, then here is where I'd recommend you begin to enter Procol Harum territory, particularly if all you know is "Whiter Shade of Pale" or "Conquistador." Then buy everything they ever recorded. The match of Brooker's music and Keith Reid's lyrics is one of the most serendipitous occasions in the quantum universe.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Procol brings home the bacon on fourth album., August 3, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (Detroit, MI) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home (Audio CD)

Procol Harum's first album sans organist Matthew Fisher, Home is the dividing line between the two camps of Procol devotees: Those who gave up on the band after Fisher left, and those who thought the band was better off without him. On Home, Fisher's sublime, cathedral-like organ passages are replaced by stark, whittled-down arrangements (there are no Salty Dog string sections here) dominated by Robin Trower's bluesy guitar and Gary Brooker's gruff voice and pounding grand piano. New bassist/organist Chris Coppings attempts to emulate Fisher's organ on cuts like Piggy Pig Pig, but lacks Fisher's presence. Titles like Dead Man's Dream and About To Die showcase Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid in a particularly dark state of mind. Still, the epic Whaling Stories more than compensates and is alone worth the price of admission.