Conquistador. Procol Harum. 1967. Deram.

 What begins as a critique of Western imperialism becomes, in an epiphanic flash, a disclosure of empathy. Conquistador generates real listener excitement from its outset, a four beat introduction leading to Gary Brooker’s interrogative vocal, the sort of imploring probe we apply to all historical documentation as it begins revealing its sonorous evidence of real time narratives. Keith Reid’s lyric opens with an unnamed narrator’s first glimpse of the titular war monument, along with the biased observation, “like some angel’s hallowed brow, you reek of purity.” The line suggests a candidly modern skepticism of archaic European explorers’ destiny, a humanist perspective of the pompous colonialist ideal. Together with Robin Trower’s rhythm guitar and Brooker’s piano, staccato rhythm propels the narrator’s tale as it drifts from the present to the distant past and back again, a through line from the conqueror’s quixotic mission-oriented drive to the narrator’s steely, clear-eyed historical perspective. Boiling over between verses, however, is the song’s true focal point, and the beating heart of the musical drama; Matthew Fisher’s iconic Hammond organ functions as a roiling sea storm charged with a ruthless ambition we recognize as our own, while Brooker repeats the chorus, “And though I hope for something to find, I can see no maze to unwind.” We, the human element in nature, are the turbulence, the song suggests—not history with its convoluted narratives, but our human minds, alive with the labyrinthine contortions of conspiracy and intrigue. Conquistador’s narrator, face to face with the sea-ruined visage of its titular agent, draws the succinct but challenging conclusion that humanity is singular; we is all; all is one. The contested sensibility at the root of this common truth struggled, among popular sixties musical artists, to rip the “roll” component out of rock and roll; relocating the rock and roll experience from full-bodied cultural expression to a fully intellectual engagement with music and self begins with Bob Dylan finding the middle ground between the Everly Brothers and Allen Ginsburg, thus exorcising Little Richard altogether. This is the rock music tradition that brought us Conquistador and its message of unilateral, historical destiny, a tradition built upon strict ideas and mental exercise, a tradition that usurped the rock and roll commitment to full bodied sensuality. The world is suspicious of these traditions whose achievements are plotted within the unseen parameters of the human skull, the shadow plans from invisible kingdoms governed by intellect alone. These traditions are ripe for conquest in the commercially zoned marketplace of brightly lit faces muttering secrets from dead and global wisdoms.

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