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The Best of the Alan Parsons Project
Revised and Expanded Edition
Songbook - Piano/Vocal/Chords

From Page 2

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Eye In The Sky, which follows the most successful project of their career -- The Turn Of A Friendly Card, a platinum album that yielded two hit singles ("Time" and "Games People Play") and stayed on the charts for more than a year -- unfolds with the broad range of musical styles that has come to be associated with Parsons Project LPs. There are intense rock songs ("You're Gonna Get Your Fingers Burned"), sweeping orchestral arrangements on tracks such as "Old And Wise," ethereal harmonies ("Gemini"), infectious pop tunes ("Psychobabble"), and driving instrumentals ("Sirius," "Mammagamma").

Well before I Robot (and before Tales Of Mystery And Imagination) brought Alan Parsons to the public's attention, he was involved in making of scores of brilliant records, using production and engineering techniques to turn a recording studio into the aural equivalent of the movie soundstage. Parsons says, "Even though I had an electronic and music background, I didn't realize that the recording studio was where I was going to end up. It was a sudden realization when I was about 17 that I could combine these interests."

Parsons entered the music industry -- in a tape duplication department -- during a period when the potential for expression and innovation on pop albums was being expanded as never before. It was 1967, and Parsons had early access to the music on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. As he put it, "I just couldn't believe my ears, I said, 'How on earth did they get some of those sounds?' At that point, I decided to go and find out how it's all done."

It is appropriate that Abbey Road Studios in London should be home base for the expeditions of the Parsons Project, since the beginning of Alan's record-making career came during the sessions for the Beatles' Abbey Road album. He served as assistant engineer on the record, starting a long association with the studio and with Paul McCartney. After the break-up of the Beatles, Parsons went on to engineer McCartney's Wings albums Wildlife and Red Rose Speedway, as well as their hit singles "Hi, Hi, Hi" and "C Moon." In addition to his work with McCartney, Parsons worked with The Hollies on five of their LPs and was a instrumental factor on two of the group's biggest single successes, "He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother" and "The Air That I Breathe."

But the group that provided the greatest scope for Parsons' inventive style of engineering was Pink Floyd, and his contributions to the legendary Dark Side Of The Moon earned him a Grammy nomination. Parsons then became a producer, and among the artists he's steered to acclaim in that capacity have been Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Pilot, Al Stewart, John Miles and Ambrosia.

"I was working at EMI," Parsons has recounted, "around the time that I'd produced Cockney Rebel, Psychomodo was a top ten album, and 'Judy Teen' was a hit single. Eric showed a lot of faith in me and offered to manage me. It started as a business arrangement and moved into a creative one." Woolfson had had the idea of creating an album around the word of Edgar Allen (sic) Poe, and when he met Parsons he felt that "here was somebody I might well be able to collaborate with in achieving the realization of this project."

In the spring of 1976, the first Alan Parsons Project album appeared. Titled Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the record, which took two years to produce, was a musical interpretation of the classic stories and poems of Poe. The best-selling LP achieved worldwide accolades, including a Grammy nomination, gold records from such countries as Canada and New Zealand, and numerous engineering and technical awards for sound. Together Woolfson and Parsons went on to an even grander album in concept and execution, I Robot, on Arista. The album, a haunting science-fiction vision and a remarkable sonic achievement, was launched in spectacular fashion, with a playback preview tour in major U.S. cities and a promotional fleet of robots scattered around the country. I Robot went on to sell well over a million copies in America and top charts all over the world.

I Robot, a look at today through the eyes of tomorrow, was phase one of an ambitions series of albums being planned by Alan and Eric, with each step logically and carefully planned and each album used as a basis for the next until all the facts of Parsons's (sic) musical imagination and capability have been taken to the limit. Pyramid was the inevitable second stop on the journey: a look at yesterday through the eyes of today, and another international multi-million selling album. Eve, which followed was, Parsons says, "more elusive. If I were to be pinned down and asked what the album is about, I'd have to say it's simply about women."

"The Turn Of A Friendly Card was, Woolfson says, "a reflection of something that was going on in my subconscious. It's tied up with Monte Carlo, gambling there and taking risks generally." This captivating exploration of the power of choice and the psychology of people who yoke their lives to the spin of the wheel became a giant success. Eye In The Sky, which assembles the usual stellar cast of voices and instrumentalists -- including Woolfson on keyboards and vocals, singers Colin Blunstone, Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow, guitarist Ian Bairnston (sic), bassist-vocalist David Paton and Drummer Stuart Elliot -- is another amazing Parsons Project journey.

"The Alan Parsons Project was to be just that," its namesake has said. "One project. But it soon became apparent that there was scope to develop, and then it became the name of an artist. I feel as enthusiastic about it now as ever." And as The Alan Parsons Project looks toward video projects that are as technically and artistically ambitions as their series of albums, the adventurousness will continue to lead to exciting new areas in creative expression.