When I heard a cover of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" the other day, I thought to myself that I'd heard it before in some classical piece. I got into an argument about this with my girlfriend, who claimed it wasn't of classical origin at all, but from a rock band called Procol Harum. I thought that if so, they must have "borrowed" it from Bach or someone.

So, I set out to find the original. I compared it to Air by Bach, Adagio by Albioni and Canon by Pachelbel, but although all three have some resemblance to the melody I was looking for, none of them matched. I asked a lot of people if they could help me out, but drew blank again.

So I did what I should have done in the first place: I searched on Google. And hit jackpot, of cource. I found several pages entirely dedicated to explaining why "A Whiter Shade of Pale" sounded like Bach, but wasn't.

The song is made up of two melodies. The vocal R&B melody, which is composed by Gary Brooker, and the organ background melody by Matthew Fisher. The chords of the song are actually the same as those of Air by Bach, but it is usually the organ melody that makes people connect the two. This is not so strange, since Fisher was influenced by both Air and Sleepers Awake by Bach when he composed the tune. But make no mistake: the melody is not a copy of anything in any of those pieces, it merely has the same mood.

AWSOP has been covered a lot afterwards. I've found versions by Annie Lennox of Eurythmics, Joe Cocker, Willie Nelson & Waylon Jennings, Sarah Brightman, Van Morrison, David Lanz, King Curtis, Sammy Hagar & Neal Schon, Doro Pesch, Glenn Hughes, Percy Sledge, Helge Schneider and Uriah Heep. Presumably I've just uncovered the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

You can read more in-depth explanations at these internet pages:
http://www.bachfaq.org/awsopafg.html
http://www.procolharum.com/awsopcomp.htm

Or, you can hit Napster and compare the pieces yourself.