Alan Parsons had acted as Assistant Engineer on The Beatles‘ albums Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), engineered Pink Floyd‘s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and produced several acts for EMI Records.
He met session musician and composer/songwriter Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in the summer of 1974, and the two formed what would be an enduring musical partnership.
Their first collaboration as The Alan Parsons Project was their Edgar Allen-Poe-inspired debut album Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was released by 20th Century Fox Records in 1976 and included contributions from all members of Pilot and Ambrosia. The LP was a success, reaching the Top 40 in the US Billboard 200 chart.
Clive Davis signed the duo to Arista, and the following year’s Isaac Asimov-themed I Robot chimed with the times. The title appealed to American audiences in thrall to R2-D2 and C-3PO, the cybernetic Laurel and Hardy from the new hit movie Star Wars.
The album went Top 10 in the US, enabled by the hit single I Wouldn’t Want To Be Like You, sung by Lenny Zakatek from British funk rockers Gonzalez.
For Pyramid (1978), Parsons, Woolfson and their core band of Ian Bairnson (guitar), David Paton (bass) and Stuart Elliott (drums) were joined by arranger Andrew Powell, vocalists Dean Ford, Colin Blunstone (from The Zombies), John Miles and the English Chorale Choir; an arsenal of pan pipes; church bells and a Finnish stringed instrument called a Kantele.
Spending 14 hours on a backing track wasn’t unusual, with Eric directing from his piano and Alan behind the mixing console. The album made the Top 30 in the US but didn’t quite scale the heights of I Robot.
Encouragement from Clive Davis to make a more commercial record led to Eye In The Sky (1980), and the duo continued to release music – including the albums Eve (1979), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), Eye in the Sky (1982), Ammonia Avenue (1984), Vulture Culture (1985) and Sterotomy (1985) – until Parsons and Woolfson’s creative difficulties derailed the partnership in 1990.
Gaudi (1987) – in honour of the famed Catalan architect and designer – was their last studio album.
Always intended as a studio-only venture, Parsons was eventually persuaded to take the Project’s music on the road for the first time in 1993
Eric Woolfson died from kidney cancer in London on 2 December 2009.
Alan Parsons
Keyboards, guitar Eric Woolfson
Keyboards, vocals
Video
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