INTRODUCCION Y VISION PERSONAL
La creatividad de Eric Woolfson toma forma de la mano de Alan Parsons, y es pulida por Andrew Powell. Esta genial mezcla da como resultado la música de The Alan Parsons Project. Este grupo, nacido a mediados de los años 70, comienza cuando un creativo llamado Eric Woolfson está intentando dar forma a una ideas basadas en los cuentos de Edgar Allan Poe. Para plasmarlas en una grabación, busca la ayuda del ingeniero-productor Alan Parsons, persona de reconocido prestigio, que ha trabajado como ingeniero de sonido con los Beatlles, Pink Floyd (fue propuesto para el premio Grammy por las impresionantes mezclas del disco "The Dark Side of The Moon"), y ha producido canciones tan increíbles como "The year of the cat" de All Stewart. Los arreglos orquestales y corales vienen de la mano de los profundos conocimientos musicales de Andrew Powell. El resultado de todo esto es el lanzamiento al mercado del disco "Historias de Misterio e Imaginación", firmado por "The Alan Parsons Project", un nombre "provisional", según ellos. A este disco le siguió otro, y otro... hasta completar una decena larga de LP,s bajo este nombre.
La música de este grupo se puede clasificar como rock sinfónico en estado puro, ya que utilizan los instrumentos propios del rock y además añaden orquesta y coros, para conseguir un producto único en su género. Además, estos discos están impecablemente mezclados, siendo obras maestras de la ingeniería de sonido, que resisten el paso del tiempo, a pesar de las nuevas tecnologías de que se dispone hoy día.
Aunque quizás no son muy conocidos (o al menos no tan conocidos como otros grupos que se sitúan en su misma área), yo creo que no haya melómano que se precie de serlo que no tenga en casa algún disco de este grupo. De hecho, a lo largo de su dilatada carrera musical, las ventas de The Alan Parsons Project superan los 50 millones de discos.
Además, el tipo de
música que hace este grupo apenas tiene competencia. Mucha gente
encuadra, por ejemplo a Supertramp y similares en el mismo
grupo... pero los discos de Supertramp están menos orquestados
que los de The Alan Prsosns Project. Otra característica de este
grupo es que cada canción es cantada por un vocalista distinto;
no siempre canta el mismo... como sucede, por ejemplo, con Dire
Straits, donde siempre canta Mark Knopfler, al que precisamente
no le sobra voz...supongo que sus seguidores me contestarán -ni
falta que hace-; lo entiendo (que conste que para mi Mark
Knopfler es un genio), pero todo es mejorable. En fin, The Alan Parsons Project es un grupo
que merece la pena escuchar, y no es un producto prefabricado,
como las Spice Girls. Podrás encontrar todos (o casi todos) sus
discos en el mercado, depués de más de veinte años después de
haber aparecido.
Alan Parsons
After showing early promise as a musician - learning piano, guitar and flute as a child, Alan started to take on the role of listener rather than the player. Although still working as a musician in the late sixties he turned his attention to a career at the famous Abbey Road Studios in London, where he was fortunate enough to have participated in the last works of The Beatles. He was assistant engineer on "Let It Be" and the brilliant "Abbey Road" album.
A long association followed; both with the studio and Paul McCartney. When the Beatles split up, Alan went on to engineer such classics as Wings "Red Rose Speedway" album and the singles "Hi Hi HI" and "C Moon". He had a similar association with The Hollies on many hits including "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother", and "The Air That I Breathe".
This was only the beginning however; As the engineering mastermind behind Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album, Alan became highly sought after as one of the new breed of creative engineers.
His decision to enter into production resulted in immediate success. He clocked up several hits with Pilot, Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, John Miles, and Al Stewart.
With all this success, Alan found a very real need for management and business guidance. It was then that Eric Woolfson, with whom he had worked at Abbey Road, became actively involved in steering Alan towards becoming an artist in his own right. Although they started with a business venture, Eric was to use his songwriting talents to form a creative partnership with Alan.
In 1974 they started adapting selected works of Edgar Allen Poe to music. Two years, and thousands of feet of tape later, the Alan Parsons Project was born: The highly acclaimed "Tales Of Mystery And Imagination" album was the first in a series of award-winning albums - "I Robot", "Pyramid", "Eve", "The Turn Of A Friendly Card", "Eye In The Sky", "Ammonia Avenue", "Vulture Culture", Stereotomy", and "Gaudi". As well as receiving gold and platinum awards from nearly every country in the world, Alan has, to date, received ten Grammy nominations for engineering and production.
Alan still finds time to produce records for other artists: most recently albums for Colin Blunstone and Vitamin Z ,and the soundtrack of the film "Ladyhawke", directed by Richard Donner.
Alan started a company that is devoted to improving the sound quality of film and video. He has also turned his hand to directing music based TV programmes, his London Calling developed into a major series on MTV, and he was instrumental in the creation of Music Box, the European music cable service.
The Alan Parsons Project had never aspired to concert tours or live performances, but Alan and Eric were always aware of their concepts' suitability for theatre, film, and concert. To further this end they approached Brian Brolly and together with him have spent the last two years in Alan's studio creating and developing a work which is a logical continuation of their previous achievements: Freudiana, which is to premiered at the Theatre An Der Wein in Vienna, marks Alan's debut as a theatre sound designer. The Alan Parsons Project will also be making their debut live on stage at the Antwerp Proms this year.
This biography was written for the "Freudiana"
press kit in 1992. For more details about the life and work of
Alan Parsons, read the "Tales Of..." section in each
issue of The Avenue newsletter.
Born in Glasgow, Scotland in 1945, Eric Woolfson has been a successful songwriter for more than twenty years.
He was first signed as a writer, aged eighteen, by Andrew Loog Oldham the legendary producer of the Rolling Stones.
Before 1975 and the advent of the Alan Parsons Project, Eric's songs had been covered by more than one hundred artistes, including such names as: Marianne Faithful, Frank Ifield, Joe Dassin, The Tremeloes, Marmalade, Dave Berry, Peter Noone, and the US group Music Explosion. Eric's song "Baby Make It Soon", sung by Chris Farlowe, was Mick Jagger's first production and the French artist Marie's recording of his composition "Soleil" won the Antibes Song Festival in 1971 and reached number one in the French charts.
As a record producer, Eric's credits included artists such as The Equals, Freddy Garrity (of The Dreamers), The Tremeloes, Dave Berry, and Graham Gouldman of 10cc.
In the early seventies, Eric turned his hand to management and was instantly successful. His first two signings were Carl Douglas, (whose record "Kung Fu Fighting" was one of the biggest selling hits of all time) and engineer/record producer Alan Parsons.
Eric devised and formed The Alan Parsons Project and the collaboration with Alan became a creative as well as business one.
During the last fifteen years, Eric has conceived and written all ten Alan Parsons Project albums, which have achieved world-wide sales in excess of forty million. In addition, Eric is the pianist on Alan Parsons Project albums and has sung on many of the hit singles including "Eye In The Sky" and "Time", both of which have achieved awards for million plus performances in America alone.
Eric has always found musical inspirations in great creative minds. These have been as diverse as the writer Edgar Allan Poe and the architect Antonio Gaudi. In 1985 he hit upon the idea of researching the works of Sigmund Freud, undoubtedly one of the greatest of creative minds.
The result of the last five years of intensive research, writing and recording is Eric's most ambitious venture to date... Freudiana.
This biography was written for the "Freudiana"
press kit in 1992. Catch the latest Eric Woolfson musical
"Gambler", now running in Germany.
Andrew Powell's name is synonymous with some of the finest contemporary albums released in the UK over the last two decades. Studying music at King's College, Cambridge, Powell was determined that his route was to get involved in contemporary electronic music and while still at Cambridge he was a founding member together with Roger Smalley and Tim Souster, of the live electronic group Intermodulation, which gave several performances in the UK of works by Stockhausen.
He subsequently played with several London orchestras, including Covent Garden, the London Symphony Orchestra, The London Philharmonic Orchestra and, mainly, the BBC Symphony Orchestra with Peter Boulez, while also working as a session player. Powell made his first mark in contemporary rock when he was employed as arranger of Cockney Rebel's debut album, and subsequently met Alan Parsons when he produced their second album! He subsequently played on albums by Leo Sayer, Donovan, John Miles (the fantastic orchestral score on "Music" is his!), Cliff Richard, Pilot, Al Stewart, Mick Fleetwood, Chris Rea and Muenchener Freiheit among many others. As a producer, he took the credits on Kate Bush's first two albums, "The Kick Inside" and "Lionheart". He also produced Elaine Paige, Chris DeBurgh, rock band Kansas, Tim Rice, Mari Wilson and Judi Collins.
A busy man, he has scored and produced many film soundtracks, including Caravan To Vaccares, Ladyhawke and Rocket Gibraltar.
And, of course, he had been an integral part
of the success of Alan Parsons since day one!
This biography was written for the "Alan
Parsons Live" tour programme in 1994. For more details about
the life and work of Andrew Powell, read the interview in Issue
Two of The Avenue newsletter.
Aquí podrás encontrar
posiblemente la discografía más detallada disponible, con todos los discos de la banda y relacionados.
En esta sección, se pone a disposición de quien lo desee, muestras de la música de The Alan Parsons Project, en dos formatos diferentes:
a) Colección de archivos MIDI. Servirían tan sólo como introducción, y sería imprescindible disponer de una tarjeta de sonido con síntesis por tabla de ondas para una escucha mínimamente decente. Además, estos archivos a veces no se ajustan a la canción... en fin, descarga la colección de archivos MIDI (se va actualizando periódicamente)
b) Muestras reales. Es complicado escoger algo en concreto de este grupo, ya que su discografía es larga y no tiene desperdicio. Por ello, se ha elaborado un MIX cronológico, con una canción de cada uno de sus discos en orden de aparición (desde su primer disco hasta el final de la primera etapa, con el "Gaudí"). El problema es el de siempre: El enorme espacio que ocupan los sonidos digitalizados. El MIX se ha realizado por via enteramente digital, con una resolución de 16 bits y una frecuencia de muestreo de 44,1 KHz. Después, se ha procedido a comprimirlo en formato MPEG 1 Layer III (MP3). El resultado es sonido digital de altísima calidad y "solo" 6 megas de tamaño. Merece la pena escucharlo. El MIX ha sido realizado por el tío Miguel.