Parsons LP Promo Uses Non-Tour Trip
By Dick Nusser
NEW YORK - Would you sign an act that can't tour and spends four months
in the studio on one album?
You would if you were Clive Davis, president of Arista Records, and the
act was two Englishmen called the Alan Parsons Project.
Parsons, former staff engineer at Abbey Road studios in London, worked
on several Beatles' projects including "Abbey Road," Pink Floyd's
phenomenally successful "Dark Side Of The Moon" LP, as well as the Hollies
and Al ("Year Of The Cat") Stewart.
Partner and manager Eric Woolfson writes the words and music, plays most
of the keyboards, sings background vocals and is described as "the
architect" of the Alan Parsons Project, which now has two LPs to its
credit, "Tales Of Mystery And Imagination" (20th Century) and "I, Robot,"
its Arista debut.
Both are composed almost entirely of electronic machinations that can't
be duplicated in concert.
"Don't call them 'concept albums' either," says Woolfson. "They're
'thematic albums.'"
"They're albums," Parsons interjects, "not a collections of songs flung
together."
"'Synthesizer epics' is what we conceived them to be originally,"
Woolfson says. "That's accurate," Parsons says nodding.
Orchestras, choirs, banks of tape recorders and synthesizers,
sophisticated devices for controlling attack and decay, tape loops and
something called the "Projectron" which draws cosmic wind from a vacuum
cleaner blower all had something to do with "I, Robot."
"But how do you make contact with the public if you're not a touring
band?" Woolfson asks rhetorically.
How indeed?
"With a tour of 10 cities, where we staged listening parties for press
and merchandisers in the best available recording studios, put the tape
on, served drinks, turned the lights down, and hoped we were making
contact with America," he answers.
Since the release of the Arista LP, which the label views as a long-term
investment, sales have also picked up on the first Alan Parsons Project
LP, "Tales Of Mystery And Imagination," a musical interpretation of Edgar
Allen Poe's stories, initially misconstrued in the industry as a spoken
word record.
The "listening sessions" across American have proved valuable for other
reasons. "We've learned a tremendous amount meeting people and getting
their opinion on both records," Woolfson says.
Although the possibility for a visual accompaniment to a future Alan
Parsons project exists, Woolfson sees the current LPs as "non-visual
theatre" geared toward consumption in the quiet of one's room.
"On the visual angle, let me say something more," Parsons concludes.
"We're not anxious to produce something visual so we can tour like a band.
We feel the music we've constructed is enough right now. Film and visual
images of that sort can destroy a person's sense of the picture in their
mind."
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