Procol Harum Gig Finder

About This Site

This site aims to offer a list of every known gig by Procol Harum, from the first (the UFO Club in London on 12th May 1967) to the last (Spiez in Switzerland on 24th August 2019), with details of the band's line-up and, where available, a set list.

At present it does not include TV and Radio appearances.

Sources

The main sources of information are:

• The Procol Harum Tour Schedules pages at Beyond the Pale (BtP) — some of this information comes directly Procol's management.
• The extensive fan-submitted listing at Setlist.fm (though many entries derive from BtP).
• The listing on the Concerts Wiki at fandom.com.
• The Procol Harum Concert History at Concert Archives.
• For 1967–1973, the list of 507 Procol Harum concerts on the (unofficial) On A&M Records site.
• For 1967–1982, the five archived lists of the Procol Harum Tour Archive at the Wayback Machine (files PHA–PHE).
• Many submissions from fans who have combed their memories and ticket-stub collections, or conducted searches of web sites or press archives for gigs they remember.
• Occasional more or less official listings published in connection with the venues themselves.

With the recent publication of Frans Steensma's definitive Procol Harum. Day-by-day the Gig Finder is gradually being updated to reflect the results of Frans's researches.

Reliability

The only truly reliable information about gigs comes from published contemporary concert reviews, subsequent press coverage, torn ticket stubs, and recordings.

But...

• There exist posters, advertisements, press announcements, and unused tickets for gigs that were planned but never took place.
• There are gigs which are thought to have taken place, but where we have been unable to track down convincing and conclusive details.
• There are dates when two gigs seem to clash, but we can't tell which took place. Have we just got a wrong date for one of them, or did it never take place?
• A few gigs listed on our source sites look geographically implausible — a gig in California on one day and a gig in London the next, New York one day and Honolulu the next (though that one has now been solved)?

We have included such uncertain-looking gigs, partly to forestall the "What about...?" questions, but also as an invitation to readers to alert us to convincing evidence one way or the other. The Notes section, below, explains how these are indicated

We don't include gigs that were planned, and even publicised by a promoter, but where Procol's management was unable to finalise a contract with the promoter. Details of these will be found at Beyond the Pale. Needless to say, we don't inlcude the many gigs which were planned but ultimately made impossible by the pandemic and/or the final illness of Gary Brooker.

In quite a few cases, we have been unable to establish the precise venue for a gig — the information may be lacking entirely or there may be a conflict between different sources. In addition, there are cases where a venue changed name, or was known to punters by a nickname. In fact the large multi-artist gig lists often use the present-day name for all gigs which took place there, no matter what the name was on the date of the gig (for the sound reason that this allows them to be grouped together).

Finally, of course, we have no idea how many gigs are missing. Particularly for some of the North American tours, there are gaps in the known schedule suggesting that, if the band was not actually having a holiday, there are probably some undiscovered gigs.

On a more positive note: since 2003 the webmasters at Beyond the Pale have been directly supplied with information about every gig by Procol's management as soon as the contract was confirmed, and any subsequent cancellation (such as one necessitated by the pandemic) is noted there. Information for the last seventeen years of the band's career should, therefore, be very accurate.

Set Lists

For almost half of the gigs, we have a set list (sometimes incomplete).

Inevitably set lists for the first ten years of the band's career (the "Old Testament") are more sparse than those for the reformed band (the "New Testament") For 1967–1977 we have set lists for about 25% of the gigs, for the period since 1991 almost 86%. In fact, from 1997, the year which saw the Redhill Reunion Concert and the launching of Beyond the Pale, the figure is 96%.

The set lists on this site are almost entirely derived from the listings at Beyond the Pale and Setlist.fm

With the exception of a few well-documented gigs that were recorded or where the band's own set list is available, these set lists are almost entirely fan submissions and usually based on a single source. We have endeavoured to make song titles consistent and identify puzzling entries.

Needless to say, pointers to additional set lists will be very welcome!

Notes

"Also on the bill" doesn't distinguish between bands for whom Procol Harum were support and those who were the support for Procol Harum. For festivals, no attempt has been made to include every other artist on the bill.

Where there were two shows at a venue on a particular day, each has its own entry, as the two gigs may have had different set lists.

Gigs which did not take place or might not have taken place are indicated in the listings:

• C — The eight gigs for which tickets were issued but at which the band did not in fact appear are indentified by 'C'. Clicking on more will provide basic information about the circumstances, usually described in more depth at Beyond the Pale.
• ? — Twenty-two gigs are marked with a single ?, which indicates there is uncertainty about some aspect of gig, usually the exact venue. Please look at our list of Unknown Venues in case there are some you can help with.
• ?? — The seventeen gigs marked ?? are mostly those where there are gigs in different venues on the same day, or there are alternative dates given in different sources. The gig might be a genuine performance but on a different day, or an error in our source(s). For half a dozen gigs we haven't got the full date, just a year, or month and year. If you might be able to help with these please look at our list of Unknown Dates.
• ??? —The seven gigs marked ??? are very doubtful; there is something wrong, or at least highly implausible, about the information given in our source(s).

In all the above cases, further information will be found by clicking on the link to more.

Finally, for technical reasons related to sorting, not all Polish characters display correctly: Ł, ł, and ń are shown as L, l, and n.

Help Us

If you spot an error or omission in any of the listings, please get in touch by e-mailing Peter Christian.

Pointers to published information are particularly welcome.