Alan Parsons EXCLUSIVE: Legend reveals what The Beatles and Pink Floyd were REALLY like

He is the go-to producer for established artists who crave his authentic, warm and detailed sound on their recordings.

This is no surprise given that he learned his trade under the tutelage of the late, great Sir George Martin.

He is famous for his deft influence on the sound of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon and The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be albums. 

Parsons and his songwriting partner Eric Woolfson achieved major success in the own right with The Alan Parsons Project, selling more than 60 million albums.

And with the 35th-anniversary release of The Alan Parsons Project seminal album Eye In The Sky, Parsons grants Express.co.uk a rare and exclusive interview.

Parsons vividly remembers how lady luck played her part with him landing a job at Abbey Road studios.

He recalls: “It was incredibly good fortune. I had started at an associated department of EMI making reel to reel tapes from which Abbey Road would make the masters. In that job, I heard all the new recordings before their general public release. I remember being one of the first to hear Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd. After a short time there, I wrote a letter to the then boss of Abbey Road and he was impressed by what I did and gave me a job. Literally six months later I was working on The Beatles’ Let It Be.”

It was whilst working at Abbey Road studios that Parsons met and assisted Sir George Martin on various recordings.

He said: “I remember working with George on many projects, not just the Beatles. We worked with Cilla and I remember The Goons. I never met Peter Sellers, sadly. George was very diverse. He was the true ambassador for The Beatles and they both had a great respect for one another.”

The Alan Parsons Project albums contain many songs enhanced with lush orchestral arrangements by Andrew Powell. Something that rubbed off from Alan’s time working with Sir George Martin.

Parsons remembers: “Maybe, George’s work with The Beatles was influential. Not a lot of prog rockers, when we started out, used much orchestration. There was a lot of early synths. The Moody Blues were the kings of mellotron. I always thought that the sound was compromised by the use of mellotron over orchestration.

It’s clear that after a few minutes talking with this giant of music production, his warmth and attention to detail is as apparent in person as in his legendary trademark sound recordings.

In particular, his production of sound on Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon album.

Parsons explains: “Nick Mason was always very supportive of me and my role. I feel comfortable in the knowledge that Dark Side would have been different without me and my contributions.

“It was my idea to put the clocks on the song Time and to have Clare Torry sing on Great Gig In The Sky. Those two elements alone would not have happened if it were not for me. As you may know, Clare ended up agreeing on an out of court settlement with Pink Floyd for her contribution to that song. She is now credited as a joint composer; nobody knows what that settlement was. I have been in touch with her to ask, but she won’t tell me.

It was at this point in his career that Parsons struck up a partnership that changed both his working life and fortunes.

With Eric Woolfson, he created The Alan Parsons Project. Nominally a studio-based band, this influential partnership released ten very successful albums. And it all started in an unusual way.

Parsons describes: “Eric was a songwriter and producer and we bumped into each other on sessions at Abbey Road. I told him about my early production works, as I just made an album with Cockney Rebel. l also had a hit with a song called Magic by Pilot, which did incredibly well. Eric gave me some valuable management guidance. He asked if I had been paid for some of these Number Ones that I had produced. I said ‘no’.”

“So, saying that he was my manager, Eric went marching into EMI Records, in Manchester Square, to get some money for me. And he did. Then after a few weeks, he came up with the Edgar Allen Poe idea for which he said that I could contribute as a writer. We started Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, our first album together, in a small Islington studio called Pathway. It was a very good partnership. He was always the principal songwriter and I was always the principal instrumental writer. We did genuinely collaborate and that is why all The Alan Parsons Project songs are credited to Woolfson/ Parsons.”

There are many top-selling international artists that have contributed stellar performances to The Alan Parsons Project albums.

From Steve Harley, Lenny Zakatek, Alan Clarke, Colin Blunstone and the superb John Miles for whom Parsons produced his epic hit song Music.

As he recalls: ” We would make the tracks without a singer in mind. Then Eric and I would think, mmm, maybe Colin, Alan, Lenny or John Miles would be right to sing this track. By some miracle we always chose keys that the singers could sing in; it could have gone terribly wrong. I do remember on ‘Don’t Hold Back’, from the ‘Eve’ album, we thought that it would be a male song. It ended up with Clare Torry singing it, from the Dark Side Of The Moon album, so we had to alter the melody a little to do that.

Parsons recalls the pleasure of producing Al Stewart’s timeless The Year Of The Cat album.

He explains: “I didn’t have a different set of production values for working with other artists. Al Stewart and The Year Of The Cat was a big one for me in the States. Al would walk in and play the songs. He wrote The Year Of The Cat with the keyboard player, so the piano riff already existed. What didn’t exist was the structure of the song, where the solos come in and how many verses there should be. When we laid down the track, we anticipated that there would be lots of guitar solos.” 

Parsons reveals: “Frankly, I thought there were too many guitar solos. So I suggested that one of them be a sax solo. I remember Al throwing up his hands in horror saying ‘sax solo? it’s meant to be a folk-rock song, not a jazz song’. But, in the end, he loved it.”

The album and its title song was a worldwide hit. It also propelled both Alan and his band The Alan Parsons Project into super-stardom releasing a run of albums that were the acme of production and performance. 

Parsons has been working on a new box set of one of these albums: Eye In The Sky. It’s a treasure trove of associated recordings and song mixes across 4 CDs and vinyl, too. The painstaking research into compiling this has been a labour of love for Alan and Eric’s widow Sally.

Parsons said: “Both Sally Woolfson and I spent a lot of time looking for the demos and various mixes. A bonus for the box set is Sally’s work. She painstakingly researched Eric’s demo cassettes and you can hear the songs from inception to the final product as they developed. It’s literally the scratch pad of Eric coming up with the ideas for the songs and it’s very interesting.”

Parsons had to piece together the final product as he explains: “I had to make some fairly drastic speed corrections as the tape cassettes were running fast and slow. It was a feat in itself to find all the master track tapes because, over the years, they tend to go to different libraries and record labels. We did eventually find everything and it was a real joy to mix them at both my current home studio and at Capital Records. I love surround sound and I was in heaven working with surround on this record.”

Parsons has many fond memories working with the prog man of the moment Steven Wilson on the latter’s The Raven That Refused To Sing album. Wilson, himself, also specialises in mixing other artists recordings into surround sound. 

Parsons jokes: “He’s getting all the work that I would love to be getting. I would have loved to have done the remix of Tears For Fears Songs From The Big Chair album, he did such a good job on that. And, you know, there are still quite a few classic albums out there to be mixed into surround sound. For his Raven album, Steven wanted an old-school engineer like myself and we made a very good team. It worked very well.”

Parsons declared that he would like to work with both Coldplay and Radiohead, should the opportunity present itself in the future. 

In the meantime, he is a very busy man with multiple projects on the go.

He opens: “I have a new album coming out and it will be a combination of a blast from the past musicians with very modern rock artists playing on it, too. We are looking to release it in May 2018. Also, I’m building a full-blown home studio of my own in an outbuilding on my property. We live on a 40-acre avocado farm in Santa Barbara, so there is lots of space and it’s nearing completion. Before this, I’m going to play gigs in Israel and the Netherlands in November. It’s been fun to play the I Robot album in its entirety at the shows we have been playing this year. 

As producer, engineer, arranger, composer and musician this polymath of production and sound has many hats to wear, but it’s all one job and a labour of love for Alan.

• The 35th Anniversary Collector’s Edition of The Alan Parsons Project’s Eye In The Sky is released by Sony Legacy on Dec 1st.