I’m only sketching this, with a plan to finish it later.
1. Frankly, the lyrics to “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (AWSOP) sound like gobbledygook to me.
2. Maybe AWSOP is the 1967 equivalent to “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” though Teen Spirit is more fun with it’s pokes at many topics : demanding audiences and an ever stranger world.
3. Several interesting critiques of AWSOP have been offered at this page by The Guardian : I tend to agree with the analyses that (1) say it is about an “acid trip” (or other experience with mood altering drugs) or (2) it is pretentious bullshit, gobbledygook. BUT, …
Consider the commentary of “Gerald Bakes” of “Madison, USA” : “telling his story of himself and a woman, being stranded at sea, both hallucinating and close to death and of the woman, as he watches, finally dying.” [emphasis added] WHAT!? Could this be right?
I dug deeper. And, I think “Gerald” was right. And, if you try to dig out info on him, Gerald, he’s a bit mysterious himself. A farmer in Wisconsin by the name of Gerald Bake was the right age and served in the military. He’s dead now. And, I don’t believe he made the post. BUT, someone who knew him may have….
We detour now. Hit songs often involve ambiguity and confusion and weave together diverse, seemingly unrelated elements.
Consider, for example, Stevie Nicks brilliant “Edge of Seventeen.” (“Edge”) I’ve written about this before, addressing the key mondegren of the song (the “edge” of seventeen derived from a comment by Tom Petty’s wife about marriage at the AGE of seventeen). I even went further and wrote a madcap story about an ineffectual vampire and the Moon Goddess (in reality, Inanna) and “Fate.” (It wasn’t a hit song, but I did explore mondegrens.)
“Smells Like Teen Spirit” (“Teen”) is similar. I don’t particularly like Nirvana, but I ADORE Teen. Teen is a brilliant amalgam of insane wordplay about the angst and frustration Cobain experienced in the music business. (Arguably, it’s a distant cousin to “Bennie and the Jets.”)
Before we move further, let’s agree : AWSOP is the same kind of song as Edge and Teen, but I believe it conceals a dark and sinister story. If you disagree, then no reason to read any further.
What follows is entirely speculative.
First, only HALF the lyrics are in the song, that same half (the first two of the four stanzas) performed in concert. Sometimes the third stanza is performed, but almost never the fourth. Why? Maybe it’s because “Gerald Bakes” nailed it : the song is really about a gruesome, horrific death at sea.
I’ve written about this before, but may not have published that essay. Synopsis : (1) Moby Dick (novel), (2) Nantucket Sleighride (song, Mountain, Felix Pappalardi), and (3) the X-Files (television series) are ALL tied to the same horrible story : the cannabalistic death of Owen Coffin in the 1800’s. I will not recap the details here, but you can easily piece this together with some research. (And, the X-Files / Moby Dick connection is obvious, down to Scully’s father nicknaming her “Starbuck” and her naming her dog “Queeqeg.”
I also believe we do not have access to the original lyrics, those altered to the available lyrics to conceal the true nature of the story. (Even so, the last half of the lyrics are omitted. Doesn’t that seem odd?) Here is (1) my analysis and (2) my best estimate of what I believe to be the original lyrics:
When “Dark Shadows” was in its early stages (disappearance of Maggie Evans) and Jim Morrison wrote and performed “Riders on the Storm” (“there’s a killer on the road / his brain is squirming like a toad”), the term “serial killer” had not yet been coined (in English) by Robert Ressler. No name for the concept existed though an awareness was emerging of that variety of monster. “Language shapes thought,” and we need names for our concepts to explore those concepts.
Similarly, “date rape” was an unknown topic (and likely a forbidden subject for those who had awareness of it) when “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was written, recorded, and released in May of 1967. Consider these lyrics : “We skipped the light fandango,” many sources identifying the phrase as a metaphor for skipping foreplay and immediate sexual intercourse followed by “When we called out for another drink
The waiter brought a tray” More booze? After doing “it,” maybe for an audience? (“The crowd called out for more.”) Sound like date rape to you? Maybe even worse?
Then, the writer of the song, teller of “the tale,” moves on to a new topic, maybe a new tale. At least we HOPE it’s a new tale. But, maybe it’s not?
And, that tale is the death of a woman at sea, something horrific like the death of Owen Coffin that inspired Hermann Melville, Felix Pappalardi, and Chris Carter. My guess is that a recent death, or deaths, provided the key inspiration for the lyrics of AWSOP.
Two candidates exist based on what is listed on the Wikipedia “list of people who disappeared mysteriously at sea” page: (1) “[Holly] Roth, an American crime novelist, disappeared on 11 October 1964 while sailing on a ketch with her husband 20 miles north of Safi, Morocco.” and (2) Audrey Bruce Currier, “American heiress Audrey Bruce Currier and her husband Stephen Currier, wealthy philanthropists described as one of the richest young couples in the world, vanished at sea sometime after 7:30 pm on the evening of 17 January 1967.”
Consider this : the father of Audrey Bruce Currier had a long term relationship with the OSS and later CIA. The mind boggles at the potential for conspiracy theories, but none of that is the point of this article.
My guess is that Keith Reid, the lyricist, crafted a new story, inspired by these two recent and mysterious deaths. The song was produced quickly, only two “takes” were required, and it was released on May 12, 1967, almost four months to the day after the disappearance of Audrey Bruce Currier.
AWSOP : “And so it was that later,”
As the [unidentified male] told his tale,
“That her face, at first just ghostly [dying],
Turned a whiter shade of pale [death, specifically lividity].”
Neither women were ever found.
Shudder. Regarding this party, “Mama Told Me Not to Come” springs to mind.
Most people would tell me to stop here, like only two of the four stanzas. After all, I’ve made my point. Why continue?
But, like certain famous late night infomercials, “wait, there’s more.”
AWSOP : “She said, there is no reason
And the truth is plain to see”
Consider these lyrics from Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” :
“When logic and proportion / Have fallen sloppy dead”
“[White Rabbit] was first played by the Great Society in a bar in San Francisco in early 1966,” and Keith had almost certainly heard it. That would make these lyrics a drug reference, particularly to hallucinogenics (such as LSD though possibly others).
But, this could also be a disturbing double entrende, an expression of remorse after the “party” (date rape) mentioned at the beginning of the song, now tying the two separate stories into one. “[T]here is no reason [to discuss what happened at the party any further, because] the truth is plain to see.”
AWSOP : “But I wandered through my playing cards
And would not let her be”
Again, this is tough to decipher. But, “would not let her be” sounds like another reference to the party. Not enough for her expression of remorse. Not enough to say “the truth is plain to see.”
(What could “I wandered through my playing cards” mean, given what we’ve covered so far?)
Compare “Sloop John B” :
“The lyrics describe a disastrous voyage on a sloop, with the vessel plagued by drunkenness, arrests and a pig eating the narrator’s food. In the chorus, the narrator repeatedly expresses a desire to return home.”
Maybe her remorse turned to fear with his relentless anger. Maybe she just wanted to go home.
AWSOP : “One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast”
Nope. But, cleverly concealed! After all, who didn’t know a “virgin” party girl “leaving for the coast” in 1967 as the “Summer of Love” began?
But, maybe “vestal virgin” is a mondegren (similar to “edge” of seventeen from “age” of seventeen, mentioned earlier).
Try this instead :
“A sixteen “vessel virgin” [a young, vulnerable woman (sixteen?) who had never sailed]
“Who was leaving from the coast” [of Gibraltar? Like crime reporter Holly Roth who disappeared?]
[As an aside, could the party girl been a quite illegal party girl, sixteen years old? Jeffrey Epstein was too young, but someone like him?]
Now, we move to the third and fourth stanzas, omitted from the original recording of the song as distributed.
AWSOP :
[Additional Verse]
She said, ‘I’m home on shore leave,’
Though in truth we were at sea
So I took her by the looking glass
And forced her to agree
Saying, ‘You must be the mermaid
Who took Neptune for a ride.’
But she smiled at me so sadly
That my anger straightway died
AWSOP :
[Additional Verse]
“She said, ‘I’m home on shore leave,'”
[military? or she realizes she will be “home” having left shore? She realizes she’ll never return.]
“Though in truth we were at sea” [Try : “in truth, she was at sea”]
[“at sea” : baffled, befuddled, bewildered, dazed; was she still drugged?]
“So I took her by the looking glass” : almost certainly a “White Rabbit” reference since White Rabbit focuses on the works of Lewis Carroll, including “Through the Looking Glass”
AWSOP : And forced her to agree
Saying, ‘You must be the mermaid
Who took Neptune for a ride.’
Another reference to the sex at the party, again, a date rape? Maybe being the “mermaid who took Neptune for a ride” was too obvious, leading to the cut of the third stanza. That said, why did he force her to “agree“?
AWSOP : But she smiled at me so sadly
That my anger straightway died
Was it his “anger” that died? Or her? Was her “smile” a dying one?
AWSOP : [Verse 4]
If music be the food of love
Then laughter is its queen
And likewise if behind is in front
Then dirt in truth is clean
My mouth by then like cardboard
Seemed to slip straight through my head
So we crash-dived straightway quickly
And attacked the ocean bed
The most enigmatic lyrics by far. I won’t try to decrypt them. But a “crash dive” sounds like an ominous lead into “the ocean bed” being a final resting place.
Finally : this song was written for commercial gain. (And, it was successful!) Chances are good that the original version was intended to be a different variant of the kind of terrifying song that “Ode to Billy Joe” would be, released only two months later in July of 1967 after “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was released in May. As such, all of our speculation may be based entirely on fiction.
Fiction. Maybe fiction. Maybe.
Streams Of Destiny 