A Whiter Shade of Pale

Ok, admit it. You loved the song, have always loved the song, but have never been entirely sure what it was all about.

That’s how it has been for me to some extent. Right from the start when it first aired in the Summer of Love it had a gripping, seductive quality. The chord progressions mesmerized as did the lyrics, strangely abstract yet vivid enough to play with your imagination. It seemed like there was something there but you just couldn’t get your hands on it. At least that’s how it was for me. Whether the lyrics or the evocative music, in England when Sgt. Pepper was the number one album, this was the number one single.

Twenty years later I still played the 45 once in a while. (I think it’s still inside my Wheels of Fire album by Cream.) And to this day as an amateur pianist I can’t help but run through those chords now and then, just letting the sweet sounds saturate the room.

But those lyrics… Unraveling the poetic unto total transparency is not always necessary. Appreciating a turn of phrase, and accepting the ambiguities, this is what gives a poem or a song like this one, and many of Dylan’s, it’s longevity. The mind can play with it endlessly, like an impossible labyrinth or Borges’ Library of Babel, and you never figure it out. But each time it leaves you with something to take away, a moment of delight and self-forgetfulness.

It's the opening line of the second verse that really used to get me. "She said there is no reason, and the truth is plain to see..." Which truth? The truth that there is no reason? Or the ultimate truth that caused her face to turn a whiter shade of pale?

The playing cards speak to me of the old "know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em" type of thing, though Kenny Rogers didn't do The Gambler till a few years later. Dylan, too, refers to having to play the cards your dealt in Series of Dreams. And the last couplet in that stanza "Although my eyes were open, they might just as well've been closed" it speaks of an interiority of transcendence, the contrariness of Truth with a capital T, and seeing the light. Which I did, but did not. Or, of blindness in spite of light.

Here then are the lyrics. Frivolity and fear, clarity and obfuscation, vividness and ambiguity all rolled into one. Afterwards I've given you a link to a page with much more insight about this song than I would have mustered on my own. Before you head there be sure to watch the YouTube vid below featuring Gary Brooker, who co-wrote this, accompanied by Peter Frampton on guitar and Ringo Starr on drums.

A Whiter Shade of Pale

We skipped the light fandango,
Turned cartwheels 'cross the floor.
I was feeling kind of seasick,
But the crowd called out for more.
The room was humming harder,
As the ceiling flew away.
When we called out for another drink,
The waiter brought a tray.

And so it was that later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

She said there is no reason,
And the truth is plain to see
But I wandered through my playing cards,
And would not let her be
One of sixteen vestal virgins
Who were leaving for the coast.
And although my eyes were open,
They might just as well've been closed.

And so it was later,
As the miller told his tale,
That her face at first just ghostly,
Turned a whiter shade of pale.

For more background about White Shade, check this site out. Listen first to the music, however. Let it take you away.