Parsons, Alan (January 2000)

Tales Of Mystery ... And Alan Parsons!

Talking to a living legend. It sounds like a dream, but it really happened when I spoke to the great Alan Parsons. Parsons is mainly known as the ace technician from the famous Abbey Road Studios where he worked together with George Martin on the Abbey Road and Let It Be albums of The Beatles. The icing on the cake came when he became the technician during the recording of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon. Parsons earned exactly ?35 a week during these sessions. Doesn't he get a little bit angry knowing he put so much energy into this record for a measly £35 a week whilst Pink Floyd sold many millions of copies? "Not really no. I was then paid as 'staff engineer' at Abbey Road. That was my job and I got paid a vast amount to do that job. Looking back at it all, I did benefit from that album in my own career. Dark Side Of The Moon became my calling card for recordings with [The] Hollies, Pilot, Cockney Rebel, John Miles and of course my very own Alan Parsons Project.

The story of the Alan Parsons Project begins in 1976 with the release of Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, the first collaboration between Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. Soon the big 'hits' started to arrive. Who doesn't remember those immortal tunes such as "Games People Play," "Old & Wise," "Eye In The Sky" and "Don't Answer Me"? Due to the bad response and sales of Freudiana in 1990, the collaboration between Parsons and Woolfson ended. From now on the word Project would no longer be seen, thus all all further albums released under the name of Alan Parsons. The life of Parsons is built around this huge passion to produce whether it is his own music or being a part of the MPG, the Music Producer's Guild (formerly known as RePro). Not so long ago Alan worked on a book called The Mastertape Book. Have people started to treat Mastertapes with more respect lately? "It's about time I started to rewrite the book because the business changes very quickly. The original idea was to have a useful guide for the young people who just entered 'our' business. Regarding Dark Side Of The Moon I can say that they release a new version almost every week! The best version can be found in the Shine On box set. I was able to work on the remastering myself, so that helps. I also worked on the new CD version of my own Tales Of Mystery And Imagination yet here it was remixing, adding extra instruments, working on the intonation and especially adding the wonderful voice of Orson Welles. Finally the album sounds like it has been sounding in my head for all those years.

Has Parsons had the time to listen to the "new" version of Yellow Submarine "I heard a couple of tracks and I find it all so very respectable, very conservative. If I could've worked on the album I would have done things differently. Now it sounds very tame. The 'Surround Sound 5.1' which they have been telling so much about, I had been using on my album On Air in '96 ... without all the fuss. New and interesting things are invented every day. Samples for one thing are very interesting although some of the analogue recordings sound much better. There are very good samples of a Hammond organ, yet I prefer to use a real Lesley cabinet. Normally organ sounds are easy to digitalize yet the most difficult thing remains to sample a real orchestra. Because with a real orchestra, believe it or not, there will always be someone who's slightly out of tune or out of rhythm. It's exactly those little mistakes which create the real sound of an orchestra. Even if you have yourself prepared for 200% there's always that little mistake happening which obviously with digital techniques doesn't happen. Those little mistakes do create the extra warmth that is needed to create the REAL sound of an orchestra. It may sound rather silly but that's the way it goes."

Parsons was one of the most important people during the recording of Dark Side Of The Moon. Does his collaboration with Hipgnosis date from his stint with Pink Floyd? "The sleeve for Atom Heart Mother I thought was splendid, sheer genius. Just that gaze of the cows was very revolutionary for that time. I immediately fell in love with the artistic approach of both Hipgnosis and Storm Thorgerson. You simply have to love Storm because, although he's a very nice guy, you have to bear in mind that, regardless of what you say, he will always do as he pleases! Yet the images which he proposed for the Alan Parsons Project are almost exactly what we're looking for. During my new tour the stage has been designed by Roger Dean so I have two of the world's best designers working for me!"

If you listen to the latest Time Machine album you get to hear a very contemporary sound. Is it an advantage for any dad to be surrounded by two sons who are mad about music? "Without any doubt! It is rather 'normal' that both Jeremy and Daniel got interested in music and yes they 'dare' to let me hear some of their musical finds. Of course this can be interesting. That's why Jeremy already played guitar on 'I'm Talking To You' on the Try Anything Once album, whilst he has done a trance mix of 'Dr Evil' from the new album which can be found on the single. In fact, the instrumental track 'The Time Machine' is a find of my drummer Stuart Elliott."

Regardless of which Alan Parsons album you play, it becomes very obvious that it's an Alan Parsons record. But what is the "Alan Parsons recipe"? "There is a saying which says 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder'. I really don't know. People also say that the last album is 'typical Alan Parsons', yet I have been trying to figure out all of my life what 'typical Alan Parsons' really means. Every album I work on, I put body and soul into it, and every time the melody comes first. Everything depends on the availability of the musicians or the mood I'm in, or the weather, yet time after time I start the recording of a new album out of a spontaneous impulse, without looking for a strict formula. Over the years I have built a team around me, a bunch of guys I can fully trust. Ian Bairnson, Stuart Elliott, John Giblin, Andrew Powell - they are like an extension of myself!"

For those of you who have some of Parsons work at home, you know that Alan uses most of the musicians over and over again, yet where vocals are concerned, he tends to use several singers in order to make the album more interesting. How does he go about 'recruiting' those voices? "During the recording process of a song, a name of a vocalist automatically flashes before my eyes. There is no need to think over and over again. Of course, it has happened that certain singers were not interested to collaborate; this happened more than once, yet I am not in a position to tell you those names. The budget has never been a problem. Even if someone would ask $100,000 to sing just one song and I would really like to have that artist to sing that particular song, then I would pay up. For live gigs however, I do only use Neil Lockwood because he's a very versatile singer." Alan Parsons did produce the album Rebel by John Miles, and of course he also did the world hit "Music." Just like John Miles, Parsons has been a guest during the Night of the Proms in Belgium and Germany, an evening where popular artists mingle with a huge classical orchestra and choir. Parsons and Miles were probably asked because their music tends to have several classical references. Has Parsons ever thought what would have happened to the song "Music" if someone else had produced it? "That's something you can't predict. What had happened to Dark Side Of The Moon if I hadn't been involved? 'Music' is a milestone in the history of popular music, and John Miles is one of my favourite singers, and I am honoured that I have been able to put my mark onto his great music, yet you shouldn't put all of the credits in my direction alone."

He remains the pure gentleman, our Alan Parsons. Not one single moment can you make him say something 'naughty' about a fellow musician or the industry in general. Parsons, the humble butler of pop music. "I find myself in an extremely interesting position. I am a pop musician, I sell millions of albums all over the world, yet no one knows who I am! I leave home and no one's waiting to get my autograph. It's an enormous privilege and I'd like to keep it that way. It also enables me to work with the latest technologies. A few years ago, I said that Minidisc wouldn't be around very long because of the bad technique they used to compress the sounds. Also MP3 is not [of a] very good quality, but as a means to send demos over the Internet, I think it's pretty cool. From a quality perspective I would bet all of my money on DVD in the future. At last a format which will be the same all over the world!" Ah, but here Alan hasn't been thinking about the various codes that will be given to certain territories so you won't be able to use American DVD software on European hardware and vice versa! "I own a machine which Panasonic developed ... without those codes. I have to admit they made this machine especially for me so I can use it in the studio and tell them what I think of it. However the biggest setback in the industry surely is making illegal copies. As long as it concerns small quantities, I don't mind, but I feel that every artist is entitled to his or her royalties so he/she can make a living out of his/her talent."

We start talking about radio. Radio no longer is what it used to be and that's something Parsons agrees about. "We urgently need to look at programming again, plus we have to get new deejays with a personal style and vision. Today all of these so-called deejays simply rattle their text whilst the music is served in an identical way. When you look at radio today and you compare it with the days of pirate radio, then something has to change real fast. I don't see radio through Internet becoming something interesting. As always, it will be a matter of money. He who has the most money will be able to set up the biggest radio station which, once again, will play the worst rubbish in the history of pop music. Quality music is and will remain a question of 'word of mouth' and that, for any artist, is the most important thing."

Parsons climbs aboard his own "time machine" for a while and loudly imagines how it would be to work with Jimi Hendrix with the techniques of today, or to get into one of the current top notch studios with John Lennon. "Lennon was a marvelous being. Sometimes I get very nostalgic about the period I worked with him. I also have a lot of admiration for someone like Roger Daltrey. Because of things that I really can't tell, I will never be able to work with Roger Daltrey. Sad, because my favourite albums are the ones by The Who and the solo output of Pete Townshend."

Few people know about Alan Parsons' passion for magic. Whenever he has some spare time, he reads books about magic or tries to learn some of the most difficult tricks in the book. Although he will never be as good as David Copperfield, we can clearly say that Alan Parsons is the sound-magician of the last thirty years, someone who has left his personal mark on tons of timeless recordings. By means of The Time Machine he has once again given the world his incredible talent, a world that, together with his music and the person Alan Parsons, can only become a much better world!

l to r: Vocalist Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet), John "Bo Bo"
Bollenberg, and Alan Parsons.
Discography:
Alan Parsons Project:
Tales of Mystery and Imagination - Edgar Alan Poe (1975)
I Robot (1977/2001)
Pyramid (1978)
Eve (1979)
Turn of A Friendly Card (1980)
Eye In The Sky (1982)
The Best of... (1983)
Ammonia Avenue (1984)
Vulture Culture (1985)
Sterotomy (1985)
Gaudi (1987)
The Best of... Vol 2 (1988)
The Instrumental Works (1988)
Anthology (1996)

Alan Parsons Band:
Try Anything Once (1993)
The Very Best live (1995)
On Air (1996)
The Time Machine (1999)
A Valid Path (2004)
Eye 2 Eye: Live In Madrid (2010)
Livespan (2013)

A ton of comps and 2-on-1 reissues, most recently:
The Very Best Of The Alan Parsons Project (2009)
X2: I Robot/Eye In The Sky (2011)