Bonus Tracks:
Rockin' Warm-up / Go Go Go / Move On Down The Line
The Dead Man's Dream Take 7
Procol have a laugh...
Still There'll Be More ( Instrumental Take 3 )
About To Die ( Instrumental takes 1 + 2 )
Barnyard Story ( Take 4 remix )
Piggy Pig Pig ( Take 2 remix )
Your Own Choice ( Take 14 remix )
Whaling Stories ( Take 2 )
Gary Brooker – Piano, vocal
Keith Reid – Words
BJ Wilson – Drums
Robin Trower – Guitar
Chris Copping – Bass, organ
Producer: Chris Thomas
Liner notes: Patrick Humphries (from a 1988 Castle Communications LTD CD re-issue)
Home was Procol Harum's fourth album, which gave the band breathing space after the majestic A Salty Dog. Home was their first album without Mathew Fisher, whose hallmark organ sound has graced the first three Procol albums, and of course was such a feature of A Whiter Shade of Pale.
Like Orson Welles, Procol Harum could be said to have started their career at the top and worked their way down! This though, is an unjustifiably blinkered view of one of Britain's best and most eclectic bands of the sixties. While A Whiter Shade of Pale is indelibly associated with 1967's Summer Of Love, during their ten-year career Procol released ten remarkable albums.
Home is a marvellous souvenir of Procol Harum's variety: their roots are displayed on the opening Whisky Train, Robin Trower's bluesy guitar blazing a tribute to Presley's Mystery Train; the epic Whaling Stories is Procol at their most ambitious, ploughing the furrow of 'progressive rock' they had made their own; Your Own Choice and Still There'll Be More are typically inscrutable, while the plaintive Nothing That I Didn't Know displays a gentler, acoustic side of the band.
With Gary Brooker's gutsy vocals, Trower's flamboyant guitar, B.J.Wilson's relentless drumming – he was, after all, Jimmy Page's first choice for the Led Zeppelin drumstool – and Keith Reid's enigmatic lyrics, Home shows how far Procol had come since their days as the Paramounts, and how much they'd developed in three years since A Whiter Shade Of Pale had seen them earmarked as one of Britain's most promising new bands.
With so much already achieved by the time of its release in 1970, Procol Harum proved with Home that there was still plenty ahead. They were never the one-hit wonders their critics claimed; if nothing else, this album at least proves that!
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Patrick Humphries in Mojo magazine: August 1999
A Salty Dog towered over all competition on its initial release in 1969. Now wholly reconfigured with bonus tracks and B-sides, plus illuminating sleevenotes, the album's stature as one of the progressive rock albums of all time is assured.
The title track cosies up comfortably alongside Whiter Shade ... whilst the band rock out on Devil Came from Kansas and Juicy John Pink. This was Procol in excelsis: Robin Trower's guitar was held in check, Matthew Fisher's brooding Wreck of the Hesperus was solemnly mighty, and Gary Brooker had rarely sung better. The extra tracks include the legendary , only-ever [sic!] take of McGregor and long-gone B-side Long Gone Geek.
Home was the inevitably disappointing follow-up when Procol slipped into a rocker mode - an impression reinforced by the generous 40-odd minutes of bonus tracks. But the intervening years have been kind and the original 1970 album now sounds better than on the initial release.
Procol were one of the great unsung bands of our time; Westside's systematic re-release programme should help restore them to a prominent position.
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Review by Tim Jones
The fourth album from Gary Brooker, Robin Trower et al is thoroughly treated in an accompanying booklet, along with the nine bonus alternate takes. Of these, The Dead Man's Dream, a Midnight Cowboy-styled prog-rock downer, is the pick, being rendered in utterly chilling fashion (presaging BJH's Dark Now My Sky).
Other alternative album tracks are offered in instrumental form, the ad-libbed Still There Will Be More [sic] warmly overlaid with some great string widdling and rampant drums. Piggy Piggy Pig [sic], with its phased vocals, becomes a full-blown melodrama, reminiscent of early Peter Gabriel, and the menacing Whaling Stories, with its raking guitars and spotlight-grabbing vocals are transfigured by pompish drumming and organ rushes into proto-metal of the Sabbath ilk.
As for other numbers, About To Die is exceptional for its pulsing, tidal rock beat and heartfelt vocals, but none lets the side down.
A solid album and second-eleven.
The group's hardest-rocking classic album is, beyond some superb vocalizing by Gary Brooker, principally a showcase for Robin Trower's high-powered guitar and a rock-hard rhythm section, with B.J. Wilson only a little less animated than Ginger Baker on some of the music. Procol Harum had a split personality by this time, the band juxtaposing straight-ahead rock & roll numbers like "Still There'll Be More" and the Elvis Presley-influenced "Whisky Train" with darker, more dramatic pieces like "Nothing That I Didn't Know" and "Barnyard Story." Chris Copping doubles on organ, replacing Matthew Fisher, but the overall sound is that of a leaner Procol Harum, all except for the ambitious "Whaling Stories" — even it was a compromise that nearly worked, showcasing Trower's larger-than-life guitar sound (coming off here like King Crimson's Robert Fripp in one of his heavier moments) within a somewhat pretentious art rock concept. It shows the strains within their lineup that the producers chose the lighter, more obviously accessible "Your Own Choice" — on which Gary Brooker's piano is the lead instrument — to end the album after "Whaling Stories"' pyrotechnic finish. Home has appeared several times on CD, in a poor-sounding edition from A&M ages ago, on a rather better-sounding Mobile Fidelity edition in the late '80s, and at the opening of the new century in a remastered edition from Europe's Westside label that not only features significantly increased clarity on all of the instruments, but also detailed annotation and the presence of nine bonus tracks from the same sessions, mostly rock & roll warm-ups and early takes of the finished material. Those cuts reveal interesting sides to the group's own internal dynamics and the way that they saw their sound, and one can add another star to the rating for the West Side version.