Holding On

[1991]
Lyrics by Keith Reid
Music by Gary Brooker
Album: The Prodigal Stranger



Sometimes reunions can be unfulfilling and happen for the wrong reasons, however this was not in Procol Harum’s case, as tracks from the reunion album, ‘The Prodigal Stranger’, all highlight how the song-writing has matured and show that Gary Brooker still has one of the finest voices in rock. More than a dozen years after disbanding, Procol Harum reformed for this 1991 release. The group is here built around the songs of pianist and singer Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid. The band's sound is here further bolstered by founding member Matthew Fisher on organ, and guitarist Robin Trower, both of whom departed at different points during their first five years. Sadly, drummer B.J. Wilson, who was a remarkable stylist and a key component of the group's sound, died a two years before this reunion. The production on The Prodigal Stranger is big and bright, and typical of the time at which it was recorded. Dual keyboards still inform Procol Harum's sound, as do the vocals of Brooker, a man who possessed of one of the great voices of late-'60s rock music. The group's overall sonic bearing remains perfectly matched to the words penned by Reid, which are rife with poetic juxtapositions, magical circumstances, and layered meanings, much like the music itself.

[1] 'Zika nor nama ... hesah!': these are the spellings transcribed from the Gary Brooker Ensemble's score for the choir at Aldershot. 'Zika' has been glossed as 'bury' but the phrase as a whole defies interpretation: it doesn't make sense in Swahili, despite GB's claim in contemporary interviews, or on the Zoo promotional CD: 'It was thrown somewhere towards Ethiopia … we needed some girls to do some chanting. And these girls … were South Africans … and they were quite fluent in either Swahili or Zulu, I'm not sure what …'). It would be interesting to know if these 'girls' contributed the idea for mouth-clicks from their own ethnic experience, or whether the band brought the idea in themselves – the idea has been familiar to all pop music audiences since Paul Simon's Graceland album. These exotic words have remained in all orchestral performances of the song, and have remained a source for onstage fun: 'Anybody from Swahili here? I knew there would be! Careful girls!' Gary joked at Guildford 2000.