On a pop scene where quirky images often count for more than musical quality, the Alan Parsons Project has virtually no image at all. Most record buyers, in fact, have little or no idea what the group looks like.
Industry wisdom says that a band builds a following by taking its show on the road, but the Parsons Project has never toured. Even Parsons Project fans (or potential fans) curious to find out more about the band are out of luck. Project principals Alan Parsons and his longtime partner, Eric Woolfson, lead such low-profile, family-man lifestyles that their names turn up infrequently in gossip columns, and the pair`s recent interviews to promote their new album, ”Stereotomy,” were the first they had done in years. Nevertheless, the Parsons Project has managed to sell a hefty 28 million albums so far worldwide, and ”Stereotomy” is currently moving up the charts. The Parsons Project debuted a decade ago with ”Tales of Mystery and Imagination,” an adventurous concept album inspired by the writings of 19th- Century mystery/horror writer Edgar Allen Poe. The group`s latest release takes its title from a word that appears in Poe`s eerie short story, ”Murders in the Rue Morgue.” These guys aren`t obsessed with the macabre; other Parsons Project albums have been built around gambling (”The Turn of a Friendly Card”), the battle of the sexes (”Eve”), the loss of individualism (”Eye in the Sky”), science-fiction allegories (”I Robot”) and pop culture (”Vulture Culture”). But the Project`s continued success in the face of some decidedly offbeat circumstances constitutes a mystery worthy of the deductive powers of a Sherlock Holmes.
Even Woolfson readily admits that he has ”no idea, really” of who buys their albums.
”I think that our potential audience is the one that went out and bought Pink Floyd`s `The Wall` or `Dark Side of the Moon,` ” he speculates.
”There`s always room for quality, and the quality of our sound has always been the highest. But I also think that there is a very large group of people who might enjoy our music whom we haven`t succeeded in reaching. Maybe it has to do with marketing–or maybe we haven`t done enough to expose the product.” Woolfson, who was born in Scotland but moved to London in the middle 1960s and began his music career working as a songwriter for one-time Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham, is the Parsons Project`s idea man. He comes up with the concepts and writes most of the songs.
Parsons, who broke into the recording business in 1965 working at London`s Abbey Road Studios and engineered the Beatles` ”Abbey Road” album and Pink Floyd`s ”Dark Side of the Moon” before moving into producing artists such as Al Stewart and Paul McCartney, handles the technical details. Both play keyboards and do a bit of singing; Parsons also plays guitar. The rest of the Project`s lineup–which varies from album to album–consists of musicians assembled to execute the duo`s musical ideas (former Procol Harem lead singer Gary Brooker and guitarist John Miles are featured on the current album).
The pair conceived their unorthodox approach to making records after meeting at Abbey Road Studios in the late `60s. Initially Woolfson–who had tried his hand at production ”but didn`t really have what it took”–
suggested that he manage Parsons, who, he notes, ”was getting involved in some really awful business deals.” (Parsons received approximately $60 a week and a Grammy nomination for his work on ”Dark Side of the Moon,” now considered a rock classic, but receives no royalties on continued sales of the album, a situation about which he is resigned but admittedly bitter.) By the early 1970s, the business arrangement had become a creative partnership to develop one of Woolfson`s pet ideas–making a ”film producer” kind of record.
”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, rather than the actors,” Woolfson explains. ”We thought, `Oh, records are going to go that way, too.` It was logical, because record producers are the musical equivalent of those guys.” The pair put together a group, named it the Alan Parsons Project (Parsons being the better-known of the two because of his production work) and began making records, with Woolfson doing the writing and some of the keyboard and vocal work and Parsons in charge of engineering and production.
The group`s 1976 debut album, inspired by Woolfson`s admiration for Poe, wasn`t a best-seller, but 1977`s ”I Robot” was. The album made it into the Top 10, sold more than a million copies in the U.S., and brought the band a following in Europe. Most bands would have hit the road at that point to maximize sales and sharpen their profile, but the Parsons Project stayed home and played it low-key even after ”Robot” made it big.
”We never really saw the need to publicize ourselves,” says Woolfson.
”It wasn`t necessary to take a high profile. And we aren`t stage oriented at all. Perhaps we are too shy, or perhaps we aren`t as insecure as some other people who constantly need to see themselves in the limelight. But I never have felt the need to get out into the spotlight.
”We haven`t ruled out touring,” he adds. ”You never say never. But I like things the way they are, where we have the financial benefits of success without the intrusion into your private life. I seem to have trouble conveying this to people, though. They say, `Oh, my goodness, you have a chance to be a public figure, why not seize this opportunity with both hands so that you can be famous?` Personally, I would much rather have people say, `Who the hell is he?` instead of `Oh, look, it`s so-and-so.`
”Actually, I consider people who are obsessed with getting adulation and applause from an audience to have a personality disorder.”
Parsons sees things a little differently. ”I think that anybody who says that they wouldn`t like to stand in front of a worshipful audience is probably lying through their teeth,” he says. ”If I honestly felt that I was capable of doing it and was an adequate enough musician to get up onstage and play, then I would love to do it. Actually, I got pretty close to that scene when I went on the road with Pink Floyd, handling their sound. I got a feel for what it was like to go on the road, and I loved it.
”The idea of touring crops up constantly, but we have a problem with time,” adds Parsons. ”Putting a show together is very time-consuming. The other problem is building an identity and an image that would make going to see a concert by the Alan Parsons Project an attractive proposition. All we could do was to stick a bunch of faceless people onstage and have them play the tunes, and I`m not sure that is a particularly attractive idea. If we could develop it further, great. But we are busy enough making records.”
Parsons and Woolfson see ”Stereotomy” as superior to their efforts of the past few years.
”We definitely have a core following,” says Parsons, ”and I would say that we possibly disappointed them with our last few albums. They were too poppy and commercial. I think that we were led in slightly the wrong direction on those albums. Our core audience considers us to be a rock outfit, not a pop band. Now we`re back on the right road.”
”I think that we also had gotten a bit lazy and had been using the same people too often (on albums),” adds Woolfson. ”We`ve introduced some new blood in `Stereotomy,` like Gary Brooker, from the old days of Procol Harum. It was a turning point in music when (Procol Harum`s) `A Whiter Shade of Pale` came out, and it was really a high for me to be able to get someone like Gary in the studio singing one of my songs.”
Woolfson`s initial inspiration for the current album came while he was re-reading Poe`s ”Murders in the Rue Morgue,” in which the word stereotomy
(which refers to stonecutting or the cutting of solids) appears. A longtime fan of Poe, Woolfson was struck by the fact that the writer was using ”what seemed to be a very high-tech, modern-sounding word” in the 1840s.
”I thought, that`s a rock and roll word,” says the songwriter. ”It`s got edge and overtones, and musically that translates very well. Poe was born out of his time, I think. He was unconventional at a time when it was very difficult to be nonconventional; he would have been much more at home in the 1950s, with the Timothy Learys of the world and the Beat Generation. I felt an enormous sympathy for him.”
Though ”Stereotomy” has just been released, the pair is already at work on the next album, this one inspired by the work of eccentric Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi. ”He died around 1926, so he straddles the beginning of the century,” explains Woolfson. ”He did a lot of wonderful work in Barcelona, Spain, which I find very inspirational.
”But it`s not like I just get an idea and hand Alan the songs on a plate,” adds Woolfson. ”I come up with concepts that he rejects all the time. We never throw an idea out completely, though. Have you ever seen a potter making a pot? After about five seconds, you can see the outline of the pot, and then the potter squashes it down and builds it up again and keeps repeating that process. Musically, we work much the same way. There are always ideas being thrown in, and nothing is abandoned. Alan never says an idea is rubbish and discards it completely. But he certainly works very hard sometimes at turning an idea into something good.”
