A Salty Dog
The year was 1995. Halloween was around the corner, and McDonalds needed something new to put in the Happy Meals. When the holiday finally rolled around, plump little children around the country opened their Happy Meal boxes to find a cheap plastic toy of one of the McDonalds mascots dressed in a Halloween costume and, probably at the behest of some suicidally despondent ad executive, one of a series of Halloween themed cassette tapes loaded with awful songs and some of the most cringe inducing jokes that have ever been written.
I remember all this because my dad bought me and my brother one of these Happy Meals. Most likely blind to the oncoming horror, or because we were being loud and annoying, he played those tapes in the car.
Maybe it was because of fatherly duty, or maybe because every second of these tapes brings abject misery, but it wasn’t too long after this that my dad starting introducing me and my brother to actual good music.
He played us every Beatles album. He played us The Rolling Stones. He played us Prince. He played us James Brown. He played us Parliament-Funkadelic. He played us Frank Zappa. He played us big band jazz. He played us weird novelty bullshit from his college days. He played us the classics and some of the most revered albums of all time. He did, to put it mildly, a damn fine job.
Despite the range of music he played for us, there were some albums he returned to more than others, and one of his favorites he liked to play for us was 1969's A Salty Dog, the third album from English proto-prog band Procol Harum.
A Salty Dog, it seems to me, occupies a strange place in rock history. It’s a highly regarded album by most classic rock fans and it sold reasonably well at the time of its release. But it’s not an album that’s brought up in a lot of “greatest of all time” lists and while most people have heard of Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon, ask a reasonably schooled music fan if they’ve listened to A Salty Dog and I wouldn’t be surprised if they responded “No.”
A Salty Dog is not a perfect album. (There is no such thing as a perfect album, but that’s for another article.) Sometimes the melodies go in directions that I think ruin the mood, and though their lyrics are often rich with allegory and subtlety, they have a habit of picking the wrong word or an awkward turn of phrase. In other words, my gripes lay in the realm of the non-rational and the aspects of my taste I can’t control.
I am not here to argue that A Salty Dog belongs in the canon of “greatest of all time" rock albums. It didn’t really raise the bar or push the envelope, and I doubt it was the record that made you want to start a shitty band with your friends in one of your garages. I'm also not here to convince you that it has a whole lot to say about the times we live in now. While the last album we looked at was a scathing indictment of American society, A Salty Dog has more interest in looking inwards into the self.
I am simply here to try to convince you that A Salty Dog, despite its already warm reception, is an underrated and deeply rewarding album that’s well worth your time if you’re open to its style. It’s an album that I personally love, and while childhood nostalgia certainly plays a small role in that love, I’ve found more meaning in now than I did back in my younger days. It’s an album that abounds in style, experimentation, and depths both intellectual and emotional. It is, simply put, fantastic.
And it's short!
1. A Salty Dog
We begin with seagulls, and already, we’re transported to the sea.
Speaking of which, do you guys like sailing metaphors? I ask because if you don’t, I’d stop reading. Many of the lyrics on this album are rooted in works of nautical fiction, such as the novels of Melville and Conrad and one specific poem we’ll discuss later in this article. We’re going to be talking about seas and waters and ships and the types of nautical metaphors that could induce groans in the hands of less worthy writers than Procol Harum's chief lyricist Keith Reid, who has a writing credit on each song.
With that out of the way, the lyrics to “A Salty Dog,” despite the more narrative leaning prose, are surprisingly vague. Our first verses go:
“All hands on deck, we’ve run afloat
I heard the captain cry
Explore the ship, replace the cook
Let no on leave alive
Across the straits, around the horn
How far can sailors fly?
A twisted path, our tortured course
And no one left alive"
A boat sinks. Then a captain tells his crew to explore a ship. (Yes, I know the difference between a ship and a boat.) Is it their own ship or is it someone else’s? It seems to me that either their own ship sank and they took another one, that we’re actually talking about two isolated incidents and the narrator isn’t putting any effort into breaching the time gap, or that the captain crying out is not our singer's captain, but the one of the ship our narrator just had a hand in sinking.
I point this out because Reid loves this kind of opaqueness, and you should get used to it now because it's not going to stop anytime soon.
Either way, our sailor has been out there for a long time. He’s seen endless death and destruction, some of which seemed to be done by his own hands. When you live a dangerous life at sea, at a certain point, I'd imagine that at some point, it starts to blend together into one period of unending misery. Eventually you have to ask yourself, like our singers seems to be doing in the second verse, “How did I get here?”
The song then continues.
“We sailed for parts unknown to man
Where ships come home to die
No lofty peak, no fortress bold
Could match our captain's eye
Upon the seventh seasick day
We made our port of call
A sand so white, and sea so blue
No mortal place at all"
Besides the constant threat of violence, we’re now introduced to two new perils of a sailor’s life: Fear and pride. Our sailor is traveling into unknown waters. While there’s assuredly some sort of thrill to be found in venturing into unexplored territory, there also has to be an element of fear, especially when your captain is dead set on finding whatever treasures can be found in such places, be they material or metaphorical. Luckily, when they made this step, they seemed to have found some sort of paradise.
But there is, of course, another way of reading into these lyrics: That the captain has boldly led them all to their demise and now they’re in the afterlife. We are, after all, in “no mortal place."
Again, it’s up to you to decide, but I think the vagueness is entirely the point. It’s a verse about the uncertainty of stepping into the unknown, and what better way of evoking such a feeling then by painting a picture of paradise that also looms with dread? When you put yourself out there or go on an adventure, you’re leaving your zone of comfort. What are you supposed to feel? Exhilaration to be sure, but also apprehension, and I think Reid’s writing here does a masterful job at expressing the disquiet of setting out for new lands.
Finally, we’re in the last verse.
“We fired the guns, and burned the mast
And rowed from ship to shore
The captain cried, we sailors wept
Our tears were tears of joy
Now many moons and many Junes
Have passed since we made land
A salty dog, the seaman's log
Your witness, my own hand"
Our sailor's journey ended in some form of uncertain chaos, and now it’s over. The sailor, or our salty dog if you like your old-timey sailor parlance, seems spent, and he hasn’t been back on the ocean since. But he will tell us his tale and what he’s learned.
These lyrics are fraught with allegory, and there are millions of ways to read into them. However, the reason I’ve spent so much time on this song is that there are several themes brought up that will persist throughout the rest of the album. Journeys. The weight of your actions on yourself and others. Pride. Experience. Redemption.
The songs on this album return to all this and more (Tee hee hee. You'll see what I did later.) and thus you can say that “A Salty Dog” is almost like an overture. Everything you need to know about this album is contained in this one song, and thus you are now equipped to look for them as the music continues.
More importantly though, the coupling of this long sea voyage and the song’s sweeping orchestra makes us imagine an epic journey, and thus this song effectively gives the rest of the album permission to do whatever it wants. We’re going to encounter strange things and have new experiences. Though this is a rock album, we’re going to explore some blues, some soul, and even some tropical music with different tempos and moods all over the emotional spectrum. Lyrically, we’re going to explore some more religious and emotional territory. Things we’ll get stranger and Reid’s love of evocative-but-vague lyrics will continue.
But we’re on a journey together. We can go anywhere now, so let’s keep moving.
2. The Milk of Human Kindness
So you’re going on a journey! Where do you begin, and more importantly, why is said journey necessary? As we’ve discussed in the obnoxious amount of narrative structure articles I’ve written lately, journeys always start in familiar territory. The same is true with this particular journey, as musically, the band keeps things simple by leaning away from the lush orchestration of the opening track and back into simple piano, electric organ, guitars, bass, and drums. Sounds we’ve heard from Procol Harum before.
Lyrically, the song describes a relationship with which our singer has grown fed up, and he's decided to leave.
“When you knew that I had given
All the kindness that I had
Did you think that it might be time to stop?
When you knew that I was through
That I’d done all I could do
Did you really have to milk that final drop?”
Part of what I like about this song is that it’s not really clear who the singer is talking to. Decades of pop music has taught us that it’s probably a lover, and indeed, our singer asks in the second verse, “Did you feel you had to break that lonely vow?”
Of course, when we hear “vow,” we think marriage. However, marriage usually isn’t a “lonely” vow, and moreover, this album isn’t much concerned with romantic love. He could also be talking to a friend or a family member or even an institution and the lyrics still apply. As such, it becomes much easier to project yourself onto the situation.
So what’s a scorned man to do? Get out, of course. Our chorus goes:
“Not content with my mistake
You behaved just like a snake
And you left me fore a wasp without a sting
Tell all my friends back home
That I did it on my own
And that there well-worn cares they should cling.”
The person/thing doing the scorning underestimated our singer’s ability to do anything about it. But he has one move up his sleeve: A clean break from his entire life. His home, his friends, whoever the person he’s talking to is. All can go, and he has no intentions on maintaining connection with anyone. "Fuck you all, I’m heading out to sea."
The singer has thus found himself in a moment where grand decisions can be made. There is a kind of glory in impulsively shaking off your entire life and stepping out into a new adventure. But while such a move can lead to glory, it can also lead to destruction. With a clean break comes disconnection, and while that may be the goal, the other side of the coin is regret. I mention this because…
3. Too Much Between Us
“Too Much Between Us,” one of the more lyrically lucid songs on the album, is about loneliness, longing, and the inability to fix either problem. Our singer describes this feeling with an unusual amount of clarity.
“There’s you, you’re sleeping over there
Whilst me, I’m sitting here
With so much sea between us
I can’t make it much more clear”
But then we enter more Procol Harum-y waters when our narrator sings:
“There’ll be no time for crying
We won’t make it more than six
I could change my plea to guilty
But I don’t think it would stick.”
To be honest, I’m not entirely sure what he’s trying to communicate in the second part, but I think it’s safe to say that he and whoever he’s talking to are in a relationship. What his partner thinks of his relationship, I don't know, but he certainly knows that it’s over. Given that he seems to be standing metaphorical trial, I think we can assume that either he’s done something terrible to her or the other way around. (Or him. We are talking sailing metaphors here, after all, and you all read Billy Budd.) More than likely, they've been mistreating each other. But in the end, this relationship isn’t salvageable, and though they're in the same room, both are on their own separate journeys far away from one another.
Though the “literal distance in a relationship” metaphor is one we’ve seen many times before, it works for me here because the longing becomes further amplified in the second verse.
“Let him who fears his heart alone
Stand up and make a speech
For him perhaps an emperor’s throne
If he could only speak.”
Maybe this relationship can be saved after all. If you fear loneliness and think your relationship is worth some risk and potential pain, you should stand up for it. Hell, there may be some glory in it. Or a figurative throne.
But he can’t find it in him to speak, and he goes on to say:
“Far too few and far to follow
For shame I’ll heed the cry
Be with me when I need a drink
Be with me when I die.”
To boldly stand up for your relationship implies that you’re acting out of some sort of pride or sense of righteousness. Love is worth fighting for, so fight for it! (Or you're an asshole and love is merely a conquest for you.) But those qualities don't seem to be in our singer. Whatever’s happened in this relationship, or whatever defect of his character, has robbed him of his ability to act on the positive elements of his personality, so instead he’ll act on the worst parts.
Companionship, for him, isn’t born from glory. The distance, it seems, can only be closed by reaching out from a place of fear and vulnerability. He just wants someone to turn to when things go downhill, because facing sadness and existential pain is scary, and you may want someone to help you when shit hits the fan.
Combined with the dreamy guitar and (what I believe is) a celeste, “Too Much Between Us” is one of the more openly forlorn songs on the album. It may be a little too sentimental for some. But it works for me.
4. The Devil Came from Kansas
"The Devil Came From Kansas" contains the first of many Biblical references and themes we’ll see throughout the rest of the album. In this case, we seem to be addressing the ever-present Biblical theme of redemption and the struggle to obtain it. Our first verse goes:
“The devil came from Kansas
Where he went to I can't say
Though I teach I'm not a preacher
And I aim to stay that way
There's a monkey riding on my back
Been there for some time
He says he knows me very
But he's no friend of mine"
The devil’s out there, lurking somewhere. Where precisely he is, or depending on your interpretation of certain Biblical texts, where precisely it is, the singer doesn’t know.
Our singer does, however know about himself, and he explicitly tells us that he's not a man of God. Though we don’t know precisely what he’s done in his life, he's a man plagued with burden, and the troubles that cause him strain have been with him so long that he sees them with a certain amount of familiarity. With acquaintance comes comfort, but he knows that his troubles won't help him. So he continues to search for answers.
“The devil came from Kansas
Where he went to I can't say
If you really are my brother
Then you'd better start to pray
For the sins of those departed
And the ones about to go
There's a dark cloud just above us
Don't tell me 'cause I know"
Given the Biblical nature of the lyrics our singer has described so far, one can easily make the argument that this verse is about the rapture. I’m not sure I’m willing to go that far, but I can say that the singer sees where his actions may lead him, be it to his own death or the end of the world. So he wants us to pray for the sinners, including presumably himself, because all of this leads to calamity in this life or the next. And the devil’s still out there.
Finally, we get to our third verse:
“Though I never came from Kansas
Don't forget to thank the cook
Which reminds me of my duty
I was lost and now I look
For the turning and the signpost
And the road which takes you down
To that pool inside the forest
In those waters, I shall drown"
There’s some parts in Isaiah that involve a sinner cutting down some trees and placing wells, but to me, the interesting part here isn’t literal Bible referencing, but the questions that the end of the verse presents. We’ve established that our sinner is looking for redemption, and he sees the impending consequences of the life he’s chosen to live. What, then, does he actually do in the pool in the forest? There’s an argument to be made that it’s suicide, but there’s also an argument to be made that it’s a baptism.
Either way, there’s a purging of his old self in favor of something new, and our sinner's going to keep searching for the path no matter where it leads or how it ends.
Also, other than some Biblical context for “pilgrim,” I’ll admit that I have no idea what the chorus is about. The whole "sell you cheese" part may be him saying he's a shyster. But I don't know. Analysis, guys. It’s hard.
5. Boredom
Sometimes, journeys go to dangerous and strange places. One minute, you’re sailing on, and in the next, you’re feeling extraordinarily lonely while you dwell on your faults and you’re thinking about either being baptized or killing yourself. Stories tend to cut out all the boring parts of a journey, and we as an audience feel drawn more towards the thrilling, or at the very least, the interesting.
However, that’s not how journeys work in real life, and for those of you who have ever found yourself, say, on the final day of a cruise whiling away the hours reading the book your high school English class is reading next quarter so you can skip homework for the next few weeks when all of the sudden, you learn that there's a soft ice cream machine near the pool and there's nothing stopping you from eating all of it, you know that sometimes, you’re just sitting around being bored.
“Boredom” is exactly what you think it’s about, only instead of being bored on a literal ship or bring bored with your third bowl of chocolate and vanilla swirl, it’s about being bored with the often black and white nature of life. The metaphorical chocolate and vanilla swirl that you eat over and over again. (My writing's deep, guys.)
The lyrics present us with a series of binary choices.
“Some say they will, and some say they won’t
Some say they do, and some say they don't
Some say they shall, and some they shan't
Some say the can, and some say they can't"
Our chorus then goes:
“All in all, it’s all the same
But call me if there's any change"
The clear-cut way of the world and the people living on it bore our singer, and he wants change. Even if it’s only slight, like a whiter shade of pale. (See what I did there?)
However, while this ennui may seem like cause for depression, the music itself suggests a different kind of feeling. The band presents us with a jaunty little tropical tune consisting of a sleigh tambourine, an acoustic guitar, some recorders, a marimba, and a few other instruments we haven’t heard on the album thus far. All together, it's very charming and sunny.
The music implies that our singer is happy to coast through these encounters rather than suffering through boring choice after boring choice. Change provides excitement and stimulates the mind, but change for change’s sake isn’t the answer either, and it’s all about finding peace and order with whatever befalls you.
It’s just like the binary choices themselves. Some can live with the often black and white nature of life. Some can’t. Some like chocolate and vanilla swirl, and though your lactose intolerance has worsened in your mid-twenties and consuming large quantities of ice cream leads to severe gastrointestinal distress, you’re at peace with that part of yourself, and you can still enjoy a bowl every now and then regardless.
6. Juicy John Pink
With “Juicy John Pink,” we got ourselves another Bible tune. But whereas “The Devil Came From Kansas” is arguably about the quest for redemption, “Juicy John Pink” is about a less glorious but thematically related Biblical concept, which is that of begging for forgiveness when you know you fucked up one too many times.
Our singer wakes up in a red room surrounded by four angels. The sky begins to tremble. The rain falls. It becomes obvious to our singer that this is his end, and despite apparently leading a life of sin, he drops to his knees and begs for mercy. He knows he deserves to go to hell, but in the literal end, he realizes the error of his ways and pleads for forgiveness anyways.
I didn’t write the lyrics down for you because there aren’t that many to write down. This is a simple song with simple lyrics that feed thematically into what’s come before on the album. What sets this song apart, however, much like “Boredom,” is the music itself. Whereas “Boredom” was going for a more laid back tropical vibe, here Procol Harum gets into some down and dirty blues. Backed by nothing but a traditional electric guitar, a harmonica, and what sounds like foot stomping for percussion, singer Gary Booker’s vocals take on a bit more grime when he belts out this tune, sounding just like the men who came before him who found themselves at the crossroads. Only white and British.
As I said, this is a simple song. The only thing I have left to point out is that when I said that the song “A Salty Dog” gives the album permission to do whatever it wants, this is what I was talking about. Of course, English rock bands replicating the sounds of American blues music isn’t anything out of the ordinary. But when you have an album of mostly traditional rock, and all of the sudden you do a blues song, it might seem a little jarring.
Unless you’ve already established that this work, as a whole, is about going on a journey. Again, journeys take us to new and strange places, and when we go back home, we find that our horizons have expanded.
As to who Juicy John Pink is, I don’t know. Is he our singer? Maybe. Is he the same guy from “The Devil Came From Kansas” and are those the same dark clouds, only this time, are they finally opening? Again, maybe. But either way, if I was in the south and there was a man named Juicy John Pink, I’d assume he’s a sinner one way or another.
7. Wreck of the Hesperus
One winter day, off the coast of Massachusetts, a sea captain brought his daughter onto his ship. His sailors noted the dark clouds above them and the changes in the weather patterns, and they brought their concerns to their captain, telling him a hurricane is coming. The captain ignored them. To the surprise of nobody but the captain, they soon ran into the previously predicted hurricane, and the captain tied his daughter to the mast to prevent her from going overboard. He begged God to see them through the storm alive. God didn't grant him his wish, and the ship crashed on the reef of Norman’s Woe. A fisherman later found the bodies.
So goes the story of the poem “Wreck of the Hesperus,” published in 1842 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, an American poet with one of the greatest names ever conceived. It’s a narrative poem with a simple rhyme scheme and a simple message: Don’t ignore warning signs because of your own selfishness. Listen to those who know better, and heed their words carefully, or it may lead to ruin. (Relevant, don’t you think?)
I think Procol Harum’s “Wreck of the Hesperus” is the same story, but told from the perspective of the crew.
We start with a relatively triumphant sounding piano. “Hey,” thinks the listener who has never heard this song before, “maybe this won’t end in a spectacular clusterfuck like the poem does.” And despite the name of the song, it’s easy to believe this person, what with this piano working lockstep with those guitars and those big heavy drums. There’s some sort of order here. Maybe—
“We’ll hoist a hand becalmed upon a troubled sea
'Make haste to your funeral' cries the valkyrie
We'll hoist a hand or drown amidst a stormy sea
'Here lies a coffin,' cries the cemetery, it calls to me"
Whatever disaster the captain has steered his crew into has already happened. Unlike the poem, it’s unknown whether or not they saw this particular calamity coming. But it’s here, and death seems certain. However, there is a tiny glimmer of hope, as these lines seem to suggest that they can make it through if they stick together. But then we’re hit with the chorus.
“And all for nothing, quite in vain, was hope forever tossed
No thoughts explained, no moments gained, all hope forever lost
One moment's space, one moment's final fall from grace
Burnt by fire, blind in sight, lost in ire"
There is, after all, no hope to be found. Their lives have been thrown away for no reason, and any chance they had to find some sort of peace before the end gets lost in a moment of panic and mania. The orchestra then kicks in to reinforce the scope of their inevitable demise and drawn out the piano, and your humble writer gets depressed and takes a few moments off to go look at pictures of Alaskan malamute puppies.
The second verse then kicks in, and it operates much like the first.
“We’ll hoist a hand, becalmed upon a troubled sea
I fear a mighty wave is threatening me
We'll hoist a hand, or drown amidst this stormy sea
'Come follow after,' cry the humble, 'you shall surely see."
(Note: I’m not entirely sure whether I think the “you shall surely see” part is a continuation of the quote or not, but it makes a certain amount of sense to me.)
We then get to the chorus again. (At least on this album, Procol Harum loves four line verse, chorus, four line verse, chorus.) Only this time, instead of “AND all for nothing, quite in vain…” it’s “BUT STILL for nothing, quite in vain…” This suggests to me that the humble, whoever they are, are telling our doomed sailers that there is some sort of satisfaction to be found in death. However, amidst all the chaos, our sailors can’t seem to find whatever that feeling or clarity may be.
The lyrics don’t back up the humble, but the music itself does, as again, we’re met with that sweeping orchestra, only this time it’s somehow even more sweeping. It’s hard not to project a certain triumphant feeling onto the music, despite the grim subject matter. Our sailors can’t find peace. But maybe we can.
The next two songs go to equally grim places, but I promise you that we’re going to end this album on a positive note. In the meantime, here’s another malamute puppy.
8. All This and More
At the beginning of “All This and More,” our singer is not in the best of places.
“It’s not that I’m so cheerful, though I’ll always raise a smile
And if at times my nonsense rhymes, then I'll stand trial
My friends are all around me, but they only breathe through fear
Were I to cry, I'm sure that still they'd never see a tear"
Our singer is surrounded by people he calls friends, but he’s unsure if he truly has a connection with any of them. So he feigns a smile and pretends that he has the slightest clue of what he’s talking about. His friends seem to buy it, but he feels isolated, and so does everyone around him, despite them all sharing the same place and a past.
Love doesn’t bring these people together, nor does the simple enjoyment of each other’s company or the desire to connect. The one thing they all seem to have in common is fear. What everyone is so afraid of, be it existential pain or a giant sea monster or whatever, is never made explicitly clear. But they all share the same uneasy waters.
We learn more about our singer’s state of mind in the second verse.
“Dull and sullen, much subdued, my skull a stony glaze
Whirlpools rage on constantly, I'm not so well these days
There must be something somewhere near who sees what's being done
The harbor lights are burning bright, my wax is almost run"
Bored. Angry. A general feeling of decline. I think it’s safe to say we’re talking about general depression at this point. The world around him shines brightly, and his candle’s beginning to flicker. Someone or something out there may be able to see what’s happening inside of him, but our singer may be too far gone, be it in terms of literal distance or the vastness of the metaphorical disconnect.
Now, at this point, you might be saying to yourself, “Garth, bring back the puppies.” However, despite the widening gyre and the general malaise, I’ve yet to bring up the chorus!
“In darkness through my being here, away from you
The bright light of your star confronts me, shining through"
Something or someone out there is giving our singer hope, or at the very least, making him feel a tiny bit better. What works for me the most, despite even the inkling of positivity that I can pounce on because, yes, I am aware of another way of reading into this chorus, is that the lyrics make who or whatever’s he talking about intentionally unclear. Who is this “you?” Is it a person? Is it a place? Is it a thing? Ultimately, whatever it is, it’s his port in the storm.
And this mysterious noun seems to be doing it’s job, because finally, we get a third verse.
“Come Lollard, raise your lute and sing
And to my ears her beauty bring
Like Maddox in the days of old
We'll feast and drink until we fold
And folding still, we'll spare a thought
For what's been lost and what's been caught
And maybe then begin again
For love is life, not poison"
I like to believe he’s with the same group of people he was with in the first verse. He felt disconnected to them, and thus so did we. Now he’s referring to some of them by their names, and already, we feel closer. He wants to hear music and reminisce and enjoy the spoils of friendship. Maybe these people are the subject of the chorus. Maybe not. Maybe he’s genuinely feeling better. Maybe not. But I can’t help but to read into this with a more positive bent, for I’m Mr. Positive Happy Guy.
9. Crucification Lane
Remember all those positive vibes shining through the darkness of the last song? Here, we return to the darkness, only this time there’s no way out. You may have been able to guess this, what with the obviously gleeful images a name like “Crucification Lane” brings to mind.
“Crucification Lane” consists of two long verses and no choruses. The first verse is pure lamentation. It begins:
“You’d better listen anybody
'Cause I'm gonna make it clear
That my life is unimportant
What I've done I did through fear"
The rest of the verse continues in similar fashion. He’s calling out to the world in a state of pure desperation about the woes he feels, his failure to overcome them, and his desire to wither away and die. And if the lyrics didn’t make you feel shitty enough, the music itself strengthens each word for maximum impact.
The rhythm itself sounds like something recorded in a swampy studio down in Georgia, but the tempo is much slower and the chords much different. I’m out of my depth in regards to which notes they specifically play, but whereas a lot of the southern soul at the time sounded warmer with traces of melancholy, the chords from the slow electric guitar on “Crucification Lane” sound more foreboding and edgier.
On top of all this, whereas most of the songs on this album are sung by Gary Brooker or producer Matthew Fisher, Procol Harum’s lead guitarist Robin Trower takes lead vocals on this one. While Brooker and Fisher, particularly Fisher, sound like English rock singers, Trower sounds like he’s spent his days in a bar or a pub breathing in nothing but cigarette smoke. It’s not a particularly aesthetically pleasing voice, but it’s the perfect voice for this song. Trower wails each lyric like he’s on the cross himself, and he wants the whole world to experience his pain.
While the album’s nautical themes come back in the second verse, the mood and the content remain much the same. Only in this verse, the religious implications of the title of the track finally come into play:
“Tell the helmsman veer to starboard
Bring this ship around to port
And if the sea was not so salty
I could sink instead of walk"
Jesus could walk on water because he’s a manifestation of God on Earth. He was a holy man whose soul was so unburdened that he could walk on the essence of life itself. (That’s not the point of the story, but you get what I'm saying.) Our singer has no desire to reach this spiritual level. He wants to drown, but he can’t, because the essence of life is no longer pure, and the imperfections mount so high that he can literally stand on top of them.
The song ends on the most grim note:
“And in case of passing strangers
Who are standing where I fell
Tell the truth, you never knew me
And in truth it's just as well"
If the point was to connect with someone in his final hours, it’s here he realizes that he’s failed. His speech has fallen on deaf ears, and throughout his whole life, nobody ever really knew him. And he thinks in the end, given the kind of person he is, that he deserves his fate. The world is better off that he never found the connection that brought such happiness to the singer at the end of “All This and More.” He came into this world a stranger, and that’s how he’s going to leave it.
…
…
…
10. Pilgrim’s Progress
Finally, we reach the end of our journey, and much like last time with Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, we close on a song that's half the reason I wanted to write this article in the first place. This is the best song on the album, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s one of the most underrated classic rock songs of its era.
Much like “Crucification Lane,” “Pilgrim’s Progress” breaks the established “verse, chorus, verse, chorus” structure in favor of five short four line verses.
“I sat me down to write a simple story
Which maybe, in the end, became a song
In trying to find the words which might begin it
I found these were the thoughts I brought along"
As I said, we’ve reached the end of our journey. It’s now time to reflect and read the logs the singer promised us at the end of “A Salty Dog.” We’ve travelled far together. Sometimes, the journey was triumphant. Sometimes it left us miserable. But it’s over now, days have passed, and his thoughts are now clear. It’s time to find out the point.
“At first I took my weight to be an anchor
And gathered up my fears to guide me round
But then I clearly saw my own delusion
And found my struggles further bogged me down"
We go on journeys or trips or adventures because something’s missing. Whatever that something may be could be as trivial as “I’m bored.” But boredom is an absence of stimulation, be it mental or physical. In this case, I would argue that our voyager has been missing something far greater in himself, and rather than engage with that emptiness in a healthy way, he let his insecurities guide his decision making.
But eventually, he caught on. He tried to thrash away at his problems with… his problems. And this only led to further problems. Soon enough, he realized he was going nowhere.
“In starting out I thought to go exploring
And set my foot upon the nearest road
In vain, I looked to find the promised turning
But only saw how far I was from home"
In setting off on this journey to find whatever it is that'll fill the emptiness inside, he thought there would be a clear path. "Eventually, the right choice will emerge, and all I have to do is follow it in order to find the answers I seek."
As you may have noticed, we’ve encountered a lot of potentially fateful turnings on our journey to the end of this album. Apparently, none of them were the one our voyager was looking for. Again, the folly of this way of thinking has become clear. He wanted to find his way on the road. Instead, he only found isolation and loneliness.
“In searching, I forsook the paths of learning
And sought instead to find some pirate's gold
In fighting, I did hurt those dearest to me
And still no hidden truths could I unfold"
The previous verse may have sounded like our voyager was trying to say that you shouldn’t go on journeys. (Or I made it sound that way and I’m shitty at expressing myself.) I don’t think that’s the case. He’s not saying “Don’t go on journeys” so much as “Go on journeys for the right reasons.” Don’t hit the road purely for material gain or because you think it’s going to solve the fundamental problem of who you are. Hit the road, or the waters, to learn about yourself. For the experience. For the broadening of your perspective. To help people and learn about where you live and where you came from.
There are no guaranteed answers out there in those waters, and the more you try to find them, the more the people you love will suffer your frustrations, and you’ll never be happy.
Finally, we reach the end of the song.
“I sat me down to write a simple story
Which maybe, in the end, became a song
The words have all been writ by one before me
We're taking turns in trying to pass them on
Oh, we're taking turns in trying to pass them on
The wisdom in these logs, it seems, wasn’t just his alone. It’s also the wisdom of the sailors and voyagers who came before him and had to learn the exact same lessons. In the end, it’s cheesy to say that “life is the voyage,” but in this case, indeed, life is the voyage. Learn from those who came before you, and what they experienced and learned. It’ll help you going forward, because you have your own journey to go on now. It would help to have some advice before you go, don’t you think?
And so the song ends. We think it’s over, but then that piano kicks in. And the drums. And the guitar. And the joyous wailing of the singer. Rather than coming to a definite end, we begin to fade out. Our joyous band, for all we know, keeps playing this tune forever. The journey isn’t over. It’s just beginning.
A little corny? Maybe. But let me have it.
