The APP was not a band in the traditional sense, it was the collaboration of two people - Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. After the success of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, they were signed by Clive Davis to create a further nine Alan Parsons Project albums for Arista Records. The Alan Parsons Project was born.Įric put a proposal to 20th Century Records on these lines calling it 'The Alan Parsons Project' and the record company immediately went for the idea and decided that the proposal looked like a good group name. Recalling his earlier Edgar Allan Poe material, Eric saw a way to combine their respective talents:Īlan - engineer/ producer.

If the film business was becoming a director's medium, Eric felt the music business might well become a producer's medium. Eric came up with the idea of making an album based on developments in the film business, where directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were the focal point of the film's promotion, rather than individual film stars. Alan commented at the time that he felt frustrated in having to accommodate the views of some of the artists which he felt interfered with his production. On that day, Eric had been working as a session pianist but was also a songwriter and had already composed material for a concept album idea based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.Īlan asked Eric to become his manager and Eric managed Alan's career as a producer/ engineer through a string of successes including Pilot, Steve Harley, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and The Hollies. Alan had recently engineered Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon and had already produced a number of acts for EMI Records. During the Summer of 1974, Alan Parsons met Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios.

Alan parsons edgar allan poe