Do you remember Progressive Rock? How about Dark Side Of The Moon? There’s a connection here…
The first time I ever heard this “project” was around 1982. I was listening to some of my cousin Norm Bentley’s fabulous record collection. We used to get together with his roommate Dan at their pad on a Saturday night and really get into some cool vinyl.
Here is a signature tune that sticks out as being pivotal in my appreciation of this brand of music.
“The Alan Parsons Project” emerged from the collaboration of two very creative musicians whos minds were percolating outside the box of traditional recording business.
- composer, audio engineer and producer Alan Parsons +
- pianist, singer-songwriter, manager Eric Woolfson.
This duo released eleven studio albums in 15 years, the most successful being I Robot (1977), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980) and Eye in the Sky (1982).
VIDEOS
Eric Woolfson / Time
[Verse 1: Eric Woolfson]
Time, flowin’ like a river
Time, beckoning me
Who knows when we shall meet again?
If ever
But time keeps flowin’ like a river
To the sea[Verse 2: Eric Woolfson]
Goodbye, my love
Maybe for forever
Goodbye, my love
The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again?
If ever
But time keeps flowin’ like a river (On and on)
To the sea, to the sea[Chorus: Eric Woolfson]
‘Til it’s gone forever
Gone forever
Gone forevermore[Verse 3]
Goodbye, my friends
(Goodbye, my love; now I’m asleep)
Maybe for forever
Goodbye, my friends
(Who knows where we shall meet again?)
The stars wait for me
Who knows where we shall meet again?
If ever
But time keeps flowin’ like a river (On and on)
To the sea, to the sea
Alan Parsons / Nothing To Lose
The Inspired Duo
Eric Norman Woolfson (18 Mar 1945 – 2 Dec 2009) was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist who also pursued a career in musical theatre.
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Alan Parsons OBE (born 20 Dec 1948) is an English audio engineer, songwriter, musician and record producer. He was the sound engineer on many albums including the Beatles’ Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and the eponymous debut album by Ambrosia in 1975.
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The Connection
In 1974, Eric Woolfson met Alan Parsons in the canteen of London’s Abbey Road Studios. Both chaps were working on different projects: Parsons as an Assistant Engineer at Abbey Road; Woolfson as a songwriter session pianist at Abbey Road while composing material for his own concept album based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.
At that time, Woolfson was branching out into artist management, and Parsons, who had just completed work for Pink Floyd on “Dark Side of the Moon,” asked Woolfson to become his manager. They worked together with a number of successful bands and artists, including Pilot, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and the Hollies.
A Focus on The Music Producer
Before long the pair began discussing ideas about a new kind of recording that could emphasize the roles of the recording engineer and the producer, rather than featuring musicians. In 1975 they formed the “Alan Parsons Project“, the name originally being intended as just a working title for their collaborative work, and merely a studio entity that would have no permanent members, other than its two founders.
Project Albums
From 1976 to 1987 as the “Alan Parsons Project“, Woolfson and Parsons collaborated on the conception, lyrics, music, and production for 11 studio albums, each album having a different theme. Collectively, these works have achieved worldwide sales in excess of 50 million.
On each album, Woolfson would sing vocal guide tracks, which eventual lead vocalists would use as a reference. Some of these tracks can be heard on the new remastered editions of various Project albums released in 2007.
With his pure vocal range and great intonation, Woolfson himself soon prevailed as the actual singer on some of the Project’s biggest hits such as “Time”, “Don’t Answer Me“, “Prime Time” as well as their signature tune “Eye in the Sky“, which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 on 16–30 Oct 1982.
1976 – Tales of Mystery and Imagination
The Project’s first album was released by 20th Century Fox Records. It included major contributions by all members of Pilot and Ambrosia and was a big success, reaching the Top 40 in the US Billboard 200 chart.
Musicians featured on the album include vocalists Arthur Brown of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on “The Tell Tale Heart“, John Miles on “The Cask of Amontillado” and “(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether“, and Terry Sylvester of The Hollies on “To One in Paradise“. The complete line-up of bands Ambrosia and Pilot played on the record, along with keyboardist Francis Monkman of Curved Air and Sky.
The song “The Raven” featured lead vocals by British actor Leonard Whiting. According to the 2007 re-mastered album liner notes, this was the first rock song to use a vocoder, with Alan Parsons speaking lyrics through it, although other artists such as Bruce Haack had pioneered this field in the previous decade.
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Following the success of their debut album, Arista Records lured them away from 20th Century Fox and signed the Alan Parsons Project for further recordings.
1977 – I Robot
I Robot was their second studio album, released on 8 July 1977 by Arista Records. Perhaps ahead of it’s time, it was based conceptually on author Isaac Asimov’s science fiction Robot stories, exploring philosophical themes regarding artificial intelligence.
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1978 – Pyramids
This album centred on the pyramids of Giza. At the time of its conception, interest in pyramids and so-called “pyramid power” was all the rage. There were stories in the newspapers about the supposed magical properties of pyramids. A pyramid could be found on the back of a dollar bill, and on the album cover of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
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1980 – The Turn Of Friendly Card
a concept album with its theme focused on the gambling industry and the fate of gamblers, with more than one reference to Las Vegas (e.g. “there’s a sign in the desert that lies to west” from the title piece). Musically it’s a more melodic and accessible album than its predecessors.
The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. (Jump down to Binge Section to hear this entire album.)
The Turn of a Friendly Card spawned the hits “Games People Play” and “Time“, the latter of which was Eric Woolfson’s debut lead vocal appearance.
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1982 – Eye In The Sky
Eye in the Sky was the sixth studio album released in May 1982 by Arista Records.
From retrospective reviews, Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic stated that “this is a soft rock album through and through, one that’s about melodic hooks and texture,” noting that “with the exception of those instrumentals and the galloping suite “Silence and I,” all the artiness was part of the idea of this album was pushed into the lyrics, so the album plays as soft pop album—and a very, very good one at that […] it adds up to arguably the most consistent Alan Parsons Project album—perhaps not in terms of concept, but in terms of music they never were as satisfying as they were here.“
The title track (previewed in Videos section) with lead vocals by Eric Woolfson. became the Project’s biggest hit, (Audio is at the opening of this post).
The album itself was a major success, reaching the top 10 (and sometimes the number one slot) in numerous countries.
At the 25th Annual Grammy Awards in 1983, Eye in the Sky was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Engineered Album. In 2019, the album won the Grammy Award for Best Immersive Audio Album at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.
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Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Project’s popularity continued to grow. Ironically, the Project was always more popular in North America, Ibero-America, and Continental Europe than in Parsons’ home country, never achieving a UK Top 40 single or Top 20 album.
The singles “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You“, “Games People Play“, “Damned If I Do“, “Time” (the first single to feature Woolfson’s lead vocal) and “Eye in the Sky” had a notable impact on the Billboard Hot 100. “Don’t Answer Me” became the Project’s last successful single in the United States; it reached the top 15 on the American charts in 1984.
After successes of the 1970s and early 1980s, the Project began to fade from view. There were fewer hit singles, and declining album sales. 1987’s Gaudi was the Project’s final release, though it had planned to record an album called Freudiana (1990) next.
The musical Freudiana
Even though the studio version of Freudiana was produced by Parsons (and featured the regular Project session musicians, making it an ‘unofficial’ Project album), it was primarily Woolfson’s idea to turn it into a musical.
While Parsons pursued his own solo career and took many session players of the Project on the road for the first time in a successful worldwide tour,
Woolfson went on to produce musical plays influenced by the Project’s music. Freudiana, Gaudi, and Gambler were three musicals that included some Project songs like “Eye in the Sky“, “Time“, “Inside Looking Out“, and “Limelight“. The live music from Gambler was only distributed at the performance site in Mönchengladbach, Germany.
The Sicilian Defence
In 1979, Parsons, Woolfson, and their record label Arista, had been stalled in contract renegotiations when the two submitted an all-instrumental album tentatively titled The Sicilian Defence, named after an aggressive opening move in chess, arguably to get out of their recording contract. Arista’s refusal to release the album had two known effects: the negotiations led to a renewed contract, and the album was not released at that time.
The Sicilian Defence was our attempt at quickly fulfilling our contractual obligation after I Robot, Pyramid, and Eve had been delivered. The album was rejected by Arista, not surprisingly, and we then renegotiated our deal for the future and the next album, The Turn of a Friendly Card. The Sicilian Defence album was never released and never will be, if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.
— Alan Parsons
Woolfson died from kidney cancer in London on the 2nd day of December 2009. He was survived by his wife, daughters Sally Seddon and Lorna Covington and four grandchildren. He is buried in Cathcart Cemetery near Glasgow.
In interviews Woolfson gave before his death in 2009, he said he planned to release one track from the “Sicilian” album, which in 2008 appeared as a bonus track on a CD re-issue of the Eve album.
Sometime later, after surviving partner Parsons he had relocated the original tapes, he reluctantly agreed to release the album, announcing that it would finally be included on an upcoming Project box set called The Complete Albums Collection in 2014 for the first time as a bonus disc.
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BINGE SECTION
Live Concert (one hour, 35 minutes)
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The Turn of a Friendly Card – full concept album
Tracklist:
- 01. May Be a Price to Pay 00:00
- 02. Games People Play 05:04
- 03. Time 09:26
- 04. I Don’t Wanna Go Home 15:11
- 05. The Gold Bug 19:37
- 06. The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part One) 24:10
- 07. Snake Eyes 26:50
- 08. The Ace of Swords 30:09
- 09. Nothing Left to Lose 33:08
- 10. The Turn of a Friendly Card (Part Two) 37:15
Discography
The Alan Parsons Project discography
- Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976)
- I Robot (1977)
- Pyramid (1978)
- Eve (1979)
- The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980)
- Eye in the Sky (1982)
- Ammonia Avenue (1984)
- Vulture Culture (1985)
- Stereotomy (1985)
- Gaudi (1987)
- Freudiana (1990 – Austrian Original Cast Musical Soundtrack, virtually a solo Woolfson project)
- The Sicilian Defence (2014, recorded in 1979)
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All about the MUSIC 