Alan Parsons Project

Vinyl Discography:

Biography:

Englishman Alan Parsons met Scot Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in the summer of 1974. Parsons had already assisted as an engineer on the Beatles' Abbey Road and Let It Be, had recently engineered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, and had produced several acts for EMI Records. Woolfson, a songwriter and composer, was working as a session pianist; he also composed material for a concept album based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe.

Parsons asked Woolfson to be his manager, and Woolfson guided Parsons' career as a producer and engineer through a string of successes, including Pilot, Steve Harley, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and The Hollies. Parsons noted at the time that he had become frustrated at having to accommodate the views of some artists, who he felt were getting in the way of his output. Woolfson came up with the idea of making an album based on developments in the film business, where directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were the focus of film promotion, rather than individual film stars. If the film business was becoming a medium for directors, Woolfson felt that the music business could become a medium for producers.

Woolfson remembered his earlier Edgar Allan Poe material and saw a way to combine his and Parsons' talents. Parsons would produce and engineer the two, and the Alan Parsons Project was born. Their first album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, featuring major contributions from all members of Pilot, was a success. The song "The Raven" features actor Leonard Whiting and was, according to the album's 2007 remastered liner notes, the first rock song ever to use a digital vocoder, with Alan Parsons narrating the lyrics.

Arista Records subsequently signed The Alan Parsons Project for further albums. The group's popularity continued to grow throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s (although they were consistently more popular in North America and Continental Europe than in their home country, and never achieved a UK Top 40 single or Top 20 album), with singles such as "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You", "Games People Play", "Time" (Woolfson's first lead vocal) and "Eye in the Sky" making notable impacts on the pop charts. However, following the latter's #3 success in the US (and #6 in Canada), the group began to fade from view. There were fewer hit singles and album sales were declining. 1987's Gaudi would be The Project's final release, although they did not realise it at the time, and they planned to follow it up with an album called Freudiana.

Although the studio version of Freudiana was produced by Alan Parsons (and featured the regular Project musicians, making it an "unofficial" Project album), it was Eric Woolfson's idea to turn it into a musical in the first place. This eventually led to a rift between the two artists. While Alan Parsons pursued his own solo career and took many of the Project members on a successful worldwide tour for the first time, Eric Woolfson went on to produce pieces influenced by the Project's music. Freudiana, Gaudi and Gambler were three musicals that featured some Project songs such as "Eye in the Sky", "Time", "Inside Looking Out" and "Limelight". The live score for Gambler was only distributed at the performance venue (in Moenchengladbach, Germany).

In 1981, Parsons/Woolfson and their record company Arista were in a deadlock in contract negotiations when the two submitted an all-instrumental atonal album tentatively titled “The Sicilian Defence” (the name of an aggressive chess opening move) on March 5, claiming they wanted out of their contract. Arista’s refusal to release the album had two well-known consequences: the negotiations led to a renewed contract, and the album remains unreleased to this day.

“The Sicilian Defense” was our attempt to quickly fulfill our contractual obligation after I Robot, Pyramid and Eve were delivered. The album was rejected by Arista, not surprisingly, and we renegotiated our deal for the future and the next album, “The Turn of a Friendly Card”. The Sicilian Defense album was never released and never will be, if I have anything to do with it. I haven’t heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes don’t exist anymore.” However, Alan Parsons announced in recent interviews that Woolfson planned to release one track from the never-released “Sicilian” album, which did appear as a bonus track on a 2008 CD reissue of the Eve album. Parsons released titles under his name (Try Anything Once, On Air, The Time Machine and A Valid Path), while Woolfson made concept albums called Freudiana (about Sigmund Freud's work on psychology) and Poe – More Tales of Mystery and Imagination (an extension of the Alan Parsons Project's first album about the literature of Edgar Allan Poe). Tales of Mystery and Imagination was first remixed in 1987 for CD release, and included the Orson Welles story that had been recorded in 1975 but was too late to make it onto the original album. On the 2007 Deluxe Edition, it is revealed that portions of this tape were used for the launch of the original album in 1976 at Griffith Park Planetarium, the 1987 remix, and various radio spots, all of which are included as bonus material.