the alan parsons project edgar allan poe

Parsons and Woolfson quietly completed their songs, while casting a rotating group of musicians – in the fashion of a big-budget film – to bring Tales of Mystery and Imagination to life. 'We called everything by fake song titles, so that nobody would know what the real subject matter was.' 'I remember being petrified that Pink Floyd would get hold of the idea,' he said in 2010's Mountains Come Out of the Sky: The Illustrated History of Prog Rock. I never had the patience to read a book.'Īs they dove into the sessions, however, Woolfson became stricken with worry. 'It was Eric's idea ,” Parsons told the Democrat.

That inspiration helped their ambitions take shape on a project that would emerge on May 1, 1976, as the band's Poe-themed debut Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Meanwhile, Woolfson had become fascinated with the macabre writings of Edgar Allan Poe as a child. I think our audience wanted that to dim the lights and play an album from start to finish.' 'It is all very well to have a four-minute hot-single playable commercial hit, but my musical tastes are a bit beyond that. Parsons took a shared passion for long-form ideas with him: 'It was deliberate ploy to break the rules, to do what our instincts told us to do,' Parsons told The Florida Times-Union in 2016. Listen to the Alan Parsons Project's 'Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether'

Forced to choose, Parsons decided to cast his lot with Woolfson. But after The Dark Side of the Moon's rocket ride to success, the band asked Parsons to record their follow-up. Pink Floyd's burgeoning success with widescreen album projects only bolstered their nascent dream.

'We thought, 'Oh, records are going to go that way, too.' It was logical because record producers are the musical equivalent of those guys.' 'Alan and I looked to the film industry and saw that directors like Steven Spielberg and George Lucas had become the real stars of their movies,' the late Woolfson told the Chicago Tribune in 1986. Woolfson quickly developed a grandiose vision for the still-unnamed act, one based on auteur-like musicianship built around decidedly literary conceits. But with his songwriting background, that didn't last long. 'I was arguably the first producer with a manager. 'Eric made the bold suggestion that he become my manager,' Parsons told the Tallahassee Democrat in 2014.

The alan parsons project edgar allan poe