Early life and career Fisher was born and grew up in
Addiscombe,
Croydon. He attended
Selhurst Grammar School. He started playing in bands in his teens, initially playing
bass guitar, but around 1964, after hearing
The Animals and
Georgie Fame, he decided that he would prefer to be an
organist instead. He briefly considered a career as a music teacher. He enrolled for
classical training at the
Guildhall School of Music, but after a year he dropped out, obtained two
Vox Continental organs, and used them on tour with The Gamblers, the backing band to
Billy Fury. After The Gamblers, he played with various local groups before joining Peter Jay and the Jaywalkers in 1966.
Procol Harum was a distinctive part of the early
Procol Harum sound. Fisher joined Procol Harum at the start of 1967 though he kept touring with Sutch for a brief while. While all the band had experience in other groups, Fisher was the only one with formal music training. He recalls that "
A Whiter Shade of Pale" was originally four verses and ten minutes long, with solos improvised in between by Fisher and Brooker. When it came to recording the song it was cut to two verses and it was decided that Fisher should do all the solos. Furthermore, he felt, after seeing the sheet music to "A Whiter Shade of Pale", that he deserved a co-composition credit for coming up with the well-known introduction and solo passages throughout the song. Brooker and Reid, who had composed the basic structure of the song before recruiting Fisher, refused. Nevertheless, in response to his lack of co-writing credits (particularly over "A Whiter Shade of Pale"), being at odds with Brooker, Trower and Wilson (who had all grown up together in
Southend-on-Sea and previously played in
The Paramounts), and still suffering from the death of his father in 1965, Fisher wanted to leave Procol Harum. Despite being talked out of it, he would continue to attempt to leave the band on several occasions over the next two and a half years until finally departing at the end of 1969. Although no longer involved directly in recording and touring, Fisher continued as a producer for the group. After Trower left in 1971 for a solo career, he briefly rejoined the band, with bandmate
Chris Copping moving full-time onto bass. He was unhappy with the financial situation of the band, and with Trower's replacement,
Dave Ball, and so he left again, this time acrimoniously, to become a full-time producer for CBS.
Authorship lawsuit In 2006, the High Court found Fisher to be joint-author and co-owner of Procol Harum's song "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by virtue of his contribution to the song in the form of his organ solo, despite waiting nearly 40 years since its release to make a claim. Fisher won the case on 20 December 2006 but was awarded 40% of the composers' share of the music copyright, rather than the 50% he was seeking and was not granted royalties prior to 2005. In 2008, the Court of Appeal agreed Fisher was the song's co-author, but said he should receive no money from past or future royalties because he waited too long to make his claim, but in 2009, judges in the House of Lords reinstated the High Court decision, saying there was no time limit on copyright claims in English law.
Production In addition to his work with Procol Harum, he was producer to
Robin Trower,
James Dewar and
Tir Na Nog (among others); and enjoyed a solo career, being especially popular in Greece, where his 1980 song "Why'd I Have to Fall in Love with You" is considered a classic. His solo albums include ''Journey's End
(1973), I'll Be There
(1974), Matthew Fisher
(1980), Strange Days
(1981) and A Salty Dog Returns'' (1990). Two of the albums he produced for Trower,
Bridge of Sighs (1974) and
For Earth Below (1975), have been certified
gold by the
RIAA, – with
Bridge going platinum two times eventually – whilst "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has enjoyed multi-
platinum status. Fisher's Hammond organ playing on pianist
David Lanz's
instrumental version of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" from his 1988 CD, ''
Cristofori's Dream,'' helped that album go gold as well. The year before, Fisher produced (for Primitive Records) and performed on the 12" single "All Washed Up" by Northampton Band 'Magnolia Siege' (singer Richard Jones or Rik Ramjet), playing honky-tonk piano on the B-side end of record reprise. Fisher co-wrote and performed on the soundtrack of the 1968 avant-garde film,
Separation, which was released on DVD in the UK in July 2009 and in the US in March 2010. Fisher's
instrumental "Theme From Separation" on his album ''Journey's End'' is from that film, and the soundtrack also included an alternate arrangement of the piece for Hammond, bass and harpsichord. Fisher co-produced an album by the group
Prairie Madness in 1972, on which he also played organ and
harpsichord. This was a piano-guitar
duo with an accompanying band, but it achieved limited success. He has also played keyboards for
Screaming Lord Sutch on his 1972 album,
Hands of Jack the Ripper and played piano on
David Bowie's tour in June and July 1972, with
The Spiders from Mars. Fisher also appeared on the Roderick Falconer Album "New Nation" (1976) which he produced and arranged as well as playing keyboards.
Later career Fisher quit Procol Harum in 1969 after the release of their third album,
A Salty Dog, which he also produced. He rejoined the band in 1991 for the album
The Prodigal Stranger and released two more albums with them,
One More Time – Live in Utrecht 1992 and ''
The Well's on Fire. In addition he appeared on two concert DVDs, Live in Copenhagen
and Live at the Union Chapel'', but quit the band again in 2004. Having studied
computer programming at
Wolfson College, Cambridge and graduating in 1995, Fisher became a full-time computer programmer, writing databases. ==Solo discography==