Top Ten Banned Songs: A Whiter Shade of Pale (#1)

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Tomorrow we’ll continue with a similar theme, looking at the infamous “Clear Channel Memorandum” and songs that showed up on that. But today we close out the list of my favorite tunes that ran afoul of “authoritarian” figures. Let’s close out on a high note! #1: A Whiter Shade of Pale - Procol Harum Your friends and mine, the Illinois Crime Commission, are back for another one of their songs that they said shouldn’t be played because it was “obviously about drugs.” Yeah, and that band name, right, fellas? Or, as the quote from lyricist Keith Reid says, “It was influenced by books, not by drugs.” There’s a very literary quality to the lyrics of this marvelous tune (“her face, at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale;” “the room was humming harder as the ceiling blew away”), but I guess the older generation didn’t think these young, long-haired rockers could read. I have my doubts about the people who were doing the banning, to tell you the truth. What a song. Thanks for reading. A Whiter Shade of Pale Written by Keith Reid, Gary Brooker, and Matthew Fisher Recorded by Procol Harum Released as a single, 1967 Reason banned: perceived drug references We skipped a light fandango: