The Prodigal Stranger
Procol Harum studio album
The Prodigal Stranger is the tenth studio album by Procol Harum, released in 1991. Recorded after a 14-year break, it met with an underwhelming response from listeners but served to kick off a largely successful reunion for the band.
Background
The album is dedicated to the memory of B. J. Wilson, who had been the drummer on all of the group's previous albums, but not on The Prodigal Stranger. The Procol Harum reformation began with just Gary Brooker and Keith Reid working together to write songs, only later giving serious consideration to involving other members of Procol Harum.
Although Matthew Fisher hadn't played with the band since 1969's A Salty Dog, he stated at the time "I felt that I just sort of slotted back into it, like it had only been like the day before ... so it's not so much déjà vu as just carrying on where we left off."
The song "A Dream in Ev'ry Home" started with a riff which Fisher thought up at home and put a bass line and drum part on with a sequencer.
Reid said of the song "The Truth Won't Fade Away", "I saw it as being about civilisations like the Inca civilisation and other ancient civilisations, growing and being there and being wiped out and new ones taking over from them. I saw it as a movie in my mind."
The reunion of the surviving four original members did not last long. Robin Trower performed on the album and co-wrote the music for "All Our Dreams are Sold", but he declined to join the group on the following tour and was replaced by Tim Renwick. The tour to promote the album was well received and attended in both Europe and the United States, reflecting the respect and status of the group, but was not reflected in album sales.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 8, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2272643. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1991 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Prodigal Stranger” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.