Keith Reid, founding member of Procol Harum and the songwriter behind the band’s biggest hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” has died. He was 76.
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Reid died on March 23, 2023, at a hospital in London, according to his family, and had been receiving cancer treatment for several years.
“We are sad to hear of the death of Keith Reid,” read a statement on the official Procol Harum Facebook page read. “An unparalleled lyricist Keith wrote the words to virtually all Procol Harum songs, as well as co-writing the John Farnham hit ‘You’re the Voice.’ His lyrics were one of a kind and helped to shape the music created by the band.”
The statement continued, “His imaginative, surreal, and multi-layered words were a joy to Procol fans and their complexity by design was a powerful addition [to] the Procol Harum catalog. Our thoughts go out to his family and friends.”
Born Oct. 19, 1946, in Hertfordshire, England, Reid grew up in London. His father was a holocaust survivor and he once said that his lyrics were “very dark and I think it’s probably from my background in some subconscious way.” After leaving school early to pursue songwriting, Reid founded Procol Harum in 1967 with bandmate Gary Brooker, who died on Feb. 19, 2022, at the age of 76.
That same year, the pair also wrote the band’s biggest hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” along with Procol bandmate Matthew Fisher. Reid said that he got the idea for the song after overhearing someone use the phrase at a party.
“A Whiter Shade of Pale” peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the U.K. charts for six weeks, and remains one of the few singles to sell more than 10 million physical copies.
The song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998 and was also one of six songs inducted into the new Singles category by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2018. Though “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was the band’s biggest hit, Procol Harum also had success with their 1967 song “Homburg” and 1972 single “Conquistador.” Both songs were also written by Reid and Brooker and were top 40 hits for the band.
Along with “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” Reid and Brooker were the band’s chief songwriters and often worked in tandem — Brooker on piano composing, while Reid wrote the lyrics. Together, the duo also penned the band’s “A Salty Dog,” “Grand Hotel,” and “Shine on Brightly,” and a majority of the songs within their catalog, before Procol Harum broke up following their 1977 album Something Magic.
In 1986, Reid relocated to New York and founded a management company. Throughout his career, Reid also wrote songs for Peter Frampton (“Breaking All the Rules”), The Jeff Healey Band (“River of No Return”), and even several songs for Brooker, including “No More Fear of Flying,” the title track off his 1979 solo debut.
Years later, Reid reunited with Brooker for Procol Harum’s tenth album, The Prodigal Stranger, in 1991 and the follow-up The Well’s on Fire in 2003. In 2017, the band released their 12th and final album Novum, which was the only release within their catalog that didn’t feature Reid’s lyrics.
Reid wrote and produced the album The Common Thread under the moniker The Keith Reid Project in 2008, which featured John Waite, Southside Johnny, Manfred Mann’s Chris Thompson, and other artists, and released his follow-up, In My Head, in 2018.
Photo: Monitor Picture Library/Avalon/Getty Images
