 Alan Parsons’ music is taking a new contemporary direction
into the world of electronica. His new album, A Valid Path, features a number of
notables in the genre including The Crystal Method, Shpongle and Uberzone. The
album also features a guest appearance by Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour.
Alan Parsons says, “The industry is changing and I feel the need to capture a
different kind of audience while still keeping my identity. Electronic music is
the fastest growing music category right now and I’m enjoying working with new
people and new technology”.
Born in Britain on December 20, 1948, Alan Parsons soon found
that his interests lay in music. He studied piano and flute as a child and was
always intrigued by gadgetry. He picked up the guitar in his early teens and
played as a soloist as well as with various bands at school.
One of his first jobs was at an EMI tape duplication facility
in West London. At this time he was fortunate enough to experience the master
tape of the Beatles Sgt. Pepper album and that boosted his determination to
become a recording engineer. Says Alan Parsons, "I couldn't wait to find out the
secrets behind the album. It left me totally in awe of the talent of The Beatles
themselves of course, but also the work behind the scenes in the studio". His
timing was perfect. He landed a post at the then not-so-celebrated Abbey Road
Studios and garnered significant experience on the Beatles' Let It Be album, and
actively participated in the famous Apple rooftop session. The Abbey Road album
(released before Let It Be but recorded later) helped Alan to make his mark with
the Fab Four, although he was only an assistant engineer at that time. Still, it
resulted in Alan Parsons going on to work as a full-blown engineer with Paul
McCartney on McCartney, Wings Wild Life and Red Rose Speedway, including the
singles “Hi Hi Hi” and “C Moon”. Alan Parsons adds "I couldn't have asked for a
better grounding in recording - after all, not many engineers got to work with
the greatest Rock act of all time". He also helped out on George Harrison's All
Things Must Pass album both as an assistant and as a mix engineer.
After the experience of working with The Beatles, Alan
Parsons worked on a number of hits with The Hollies including “He Ain't Heavy
He's My Brother” and “The Air That I Breathe”. However, his reputation was
totally solidified with his engineering work on Pink Floyd's legendary Dark Side
Of The Moon, which earned him the first of many Grammy nominations.
Alan Parsons soon ventured into production with the British
band Pilot and scored immediate success with the hit single “Magic” (you know -
"Oh Ho Ho It's Magic!!"). Other hits followed with Cockney Rebel and John Miles.
Alan Parsons made three albums with Al Stewart, spawning the hit singles “Year
Of The Cat” and “Time Passages”.
Along with songwriter/manager Eric Woolfson, Alan Parsons
decided to begin creating his own thematic records and founded the Alan Parsons
Project. Although he occasionally played keyboards and infrequently sang on his
records, the Project was designed primarily as a forum for a revolving
collection of vocalists and session players - among them Arthur Brown, ex-Zombie
Colin Blunstone, Cockney Rebel's Steve Harley, the Hollies' Allan Clarke and
guitarist Ian Bairnson -- to interpret and perform Parsons and Woolfson's
conceptually-linked, lushly arranged and orchestrated music.
The Project debuted in 1976 with Tales of Mystery and
Imagination, a collection inspired by the work of Edgar Allen Poe. Similarly,
the science fiction of Isaac Asimov served as the raw material for 1977's
follow-up I Robot. After the further success of Pyramid in 1978, he moved to
Monaco - an event that clearly influenced The Turn of a Friendly Card, a
meditation on gambling, recorded in Paris in 1980. The Alan Parsons Project
scored two Top 20 hits from this album, “Games People Play” and “Time”. Having
resettled back home in England, 1982's “Eye in the Sky”, was their most
successful effort to date, and notched a Top Three hit with its title track.
More successes followed - Ammonia Avenue (1984), Vulture Culture (1985),
Stereotomy (1986) and Gaudi (1987). A brief venture into musical theatre
resulted in Freudiana in 1990.The show ran for over
a year in the historic Theater An Der Wien in Vienna, Austria.
Eric and Alan then went separate ways. Eric devoted his
career to the musical theatre while Alan Parsons brought his music to the live
concert stage and continued to record conceptual symphonic rock music. With his
long-standing previous collaborators, guitarist Ian Bairnson and drummer Stuart
Elliott, Alan Parsons dropped the "Project" identity for Try Anything Once in
1994. The partnership continued for On Air in 1996 and The Time Machine in 1999.
During this time the "Alan Parsons Live Project" toured to sell-out audiences
throughout the globe. Alan Parsons has also played various live shows with Ringo
Starr, Jon Anderson, Alice Cooper, John Entwistle and Ann Wilson.
One of the most familiar Project tracks is “Sirius”, perhaps
best known as the Chicago Bulls theme and featured at countless NBA games.
P.Diddy (Puff Daddy) also chose “Sirius” as the backbone for the title track of
his platinum-selling CD, The Saga Continues. In 2000, “Sirius” was featured in
an IMAX documentary movie about Michael Jordan. A long-standing fan of Alan's
music, Mike Myers as Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me decided to name his
Dr Evil character's Death Ray "The Alan Parsons Project". Alan has written
extensively for the Pro-Audio press and is an acknowledged expert in 5.1
Surround Sound recording. He has often lectured at Recording conferences and
Schools of Recording and was the keynote speaker at The
Audio Engineering Society convention in 1998.
Alan Parsons now lives in Santa Barbara, California with his
wife Lisa and her two teenage daughters, Tabitha and Brittni, four cats, four
Guinea pigs, a lop-eared rabbit and a giant Labrador called Harrow.
Contact Grabow for more information or to book Alan Parsons
for your next corporate or private event.
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