The 40 Essential Albums of 1967

The success of Procol Harum's debut single, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" - Top Five in the U.S. in the summer of '67 - has long eclipsed the hard-rock might of the group's first album. That is partly because of its muddy sound - the band was recorded live in the studio, in mono. Nevertheless, lyricist Keith Reid's surrealist studies in melancholy and mortality rumble with a heavy-R&B noir powered by Matthew Fisher's ruined-church organ, the haunted-Hendrix scream of Robin Trower's guitar and singer-pianist Gary Brooker's white-soul growl. British progressive rock rarely sounded this bold and bruising again.