Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, welcome back to the Bob left St podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is the one and only Alan Parsons. Alan,
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. Thanks, but it's
Speaker 1: great to be you. Thank you. So how's your back? Oh,
Speaker 1: you heard? Yeah, I've, I've had I've had some back
Speaker 1: problems over the years and my my doctor Orthopedist suggested
Speaker 1: that I do this procedure because it's suddenly fed up
Speaker 1: a month ago and sadly I had to cancel an
Speaker 1: entire European tour, but I got I got the I
Speaker 1: got the surgery it was. It's now been three weeks
Speaker 1: and I'm slowly getting better, but it's nice of you
Speaker 1: to ask. What was the surgery? It was called decompression
Speaker 1: of L two, l three and l three to l four.
Speaker 1: If that means anything, which does? Oh, it does. and
Speaker 1: Are you in pain now? Are you okay? Little, just
Speaker 1: a little bit? I'm not. I'm not using pain colors
Speaker 1: and I'm I'm fine when I'm like sitting down or
Speaker 1: lying down. But yeah, I'm comfortable, perfectly comfortable right now.
Speaker 1: So when might we see you back on the road?
Speaker 1: We have we have gigs in November. Uh, I don't
Speaker 1: think we're going to make anything happen before then, just
Speaker 1: to be safe. But plenty, plenty of going on in
Speaker 1: the in the new year as well. and Are you
Speaker 1: working now primarily just to have fun or do you
Speaker 1: need the money? Everybody needs the money. That's true. There's
Speaker 1: never enough money. Um, I've I've I've been keeping busy
Speaker 1: in the studio. Um, I just had delby atmos installed,
Speaker 1: installed in my studio, so I've been experimenting with that
Speaker 1: and hoping to do some remixing. I'm hoping that the
Speaker 1: I robot album we will be the next from the
Speaker 1: APP cattler. I'm also working with David Pack from Ambrosia.
Speaker 1: He wants a Delby atmos mix of his first two albums.
Speaker 1: And I've also been working with the drama of Lenny
Speaker 1: Kravitz's band. His name is Franklin Vanderbilt and I've done
Speaker 1: a whole album with him and we're just we've just
Speaker 1: got some touch ups to to do on that and
Speaker 1: then it will be finished. Tell me about your take
Speaker 1: on Dolby atmos. It's a little soon for me to
Speaker 1: say because I've literally only had it here a week
Speaker 1: now and I was I was pretty happy with with
Speaker 1: five point one and got got very used to it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just more speakers to think about. That's
Speaker 1: that's really what it's all about. I mean we've got
Speaker 1: to speakers and you've got four speakers in the ceiling
Speaker 1: and you know that that makes a difference, and two
Speaker 1: side speakers. I'm pointing right. We don't have a video,
Speaker 1: but you can see. You can see me that nobody
Speaker 1: else can. Yeah, we've got two four speakers and sitting
Speaker 1: on two new speakers at side. So I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: it's infinitely variable how you how you play sounds. Um,
Speaker 1: I I found that with five point one, you is,
Speaker 1: you quickly ran out of ideas about where to put things.
Speaker 1: You know, what you put in the back channels and
Speaker 1: what you'd keep in the front channels and so on.
Speaker 1: But I've I've come to enjoy, you know, multi channel
Speaker 1: sound generally. So I'm very hopeful that the atmos will
Speaker 1: work for me. Well. You know, if you listen to Apple,
Speaker 1: which most people are listening to to channel, the remixes
Speaker 1: so far sound in most cases radically different from the originals.
Speaker 1: Now I'm like, unlike with you, doesn't tend to be
Speaker 1: the same mixer that it was originally, but the vocals
Speaker 1: are down in the mix. I mean, we've lived through
Speaker 1: so many iterations of Saman Mono. Dysteria was a big jump,
Speaker 1: but quad and all these other things they never seem
Speaker 1: to ultimately gain holes. Will be interesting to see what
Speaker 1: happens with autmost. Yes, Um, I'm I mean it's the Buzzword.
Speaker 1: I mean everybody in the industry is talking about it.
Speaker 1: It seems to be the new the new the new
Speaker 1: fashion and, interestingly, I I'm curious to know why Americans
Speaker 1: call it at most, because you don't use the word atmosphere,
Speaker 1: you don't say at most fear. So I'm on. I'm
Speaker 1: on a a kind of a quest to get people
Speaker 1: to say atmost, not at most. You can, you can
Speaker 1: be the first, you can me the first, absolutely okay.
Speaker 1: So you have album. Repeat after me, atmos almos close.
Speaker 1: I'M gonna leave in it that. We'll see what the
Speaker 1: public decides on if they continue to use at wilser
Speaker 1: at Muss as sound irrelevant of the moniker and how
Speaker 1: you pronounce it. So you have a new album from
Speaker 1: the new world. It's entitled why Now? Why a new
Speaker 1: album now? Well, I was. I think I was reasonably
Speaker 1: overdue for it for another album, that the last album.
Speaker 1: The secret came out. I think it wast so three
Speaker 1: years Um and you know, frankly, the the the covid
Speaker 1: outbreak actually helped because, you know, everybody that I worked
Speaker 1: with on the new album was was, you know, fully
Speaker 1: vaccinated or had already got over Covid, and so I
Speaker 1: was able to work in person with the and so
Speaker 1: that that worked out, that we worked out really well, whereas,
Speaker 1: of course, we could not play live. That was absolutely
Speaker 1: to be in the particularly in one just was a
Speaker 1: disaster for everybody. It might might as well not have existed. Okay,
Speaker 1: reading the credit to the album. You know, multiple studios
Speaker 1: are used us, blackbird in Nashville. So did you actually
Speaker 1: go there or were these done remote? We we did
Speaker 1: the stuff in Nashville remote. There's this h great program
Speaker 1: called source connect, which allows us to interact as if
Speaker 1: they were in the room. All we have to do
Speaker 1: is send them the track and they control their own transport.
Speaker 1: But it works out really well and you know, we
Speaker 1: can point a camera at them on you know, do
Speaker 1: facetime on a phone whatever, but it's Um, it's great
Speaker 1: because you save. You Save on Holt Hotel rooms and
Speaker 1: and hotels, hotel rooms and their fairs. Sorry, and you
Speaker 1: know that they don't have to travel, so I think
Speaker 1: they're better off for it. But you're traditionally an analog
Speaker 1: guy and that's inherently digital. So how do you feel
Speaker 1: about that? What do you say? I'm a inherently analog guy.
Speaker 1: I've been supporting digital ever since ceed first started. Um,
Speaker 1: I went from you know, mixing in in in digital too, uh,
Speaker 1: Sony Twenty four track digital, which became Sony Forty eight
Speaker 1: track digital. No, I've I've been recording essentially digitally for
Speaker 1: quite a while now. Um. But, having said that, my
Speaker 1: studio now is although of course I use pro tools
Speaker 1: like most people, which is a digital recording format. It's
Speaker 1: very high very high resolution digital format, but I use
Speaker 1: an analog console and that's that's a joy for me
Speaker 1: just to just to do everything like it used to be,
Speaker 1: you know, setting up mikes and having each each mic
Speaker 1: on its own analog channel and then then committing it
Speaker 1: to pro tools. And when did you stop, or did
Speaker 1: you ever stop, using tape? Oh, yeah, I think we
Speaker 1: I think a valid path would have been the first
Speaker 1: time there was not a tape machine inside, even a
Speaker 1: digital tape machine. But yes, that that was a good
Speaker 1: while ago. That was ninety four. So I haven't seen
Speaker 1: a tape machine basically since ninety four. And what's the
Speaker 1: difference between your knee analyze, so I'm told? Sorry, I
Speaker 1: mean two thousand four, not that sounded pretty early very
Speaker 1: much right. Was Two four. So it was a practical matter.
Speaker 1: What's the difference between your analog Nive and a digital board?
Speaker 1: It's Um, you know, it's just a little more tactile.
Speaker 1: Every every channel has its own controls, its own sands,
Speaker 1: its own accues and whereas digital tend to digital consoles
Speaker 1: tend to group things together and you have to hit
Speaker 1: a button to to go to a particular channel that
Speaker 1: you want to modify, whereas on a on an analog board,
Speaker 1: it's not so much a control surface, but it's a
Speaker 1: it's a it's an information giver. It tells you what
Speaker 1: you're doing at a glance, whereas it on a digital
Speaker 1: console that's almost impossible to assess. What what every every
Speaker 1: channel is doing at the same time. And what about
Speaker 1: the quality of the sound? Well, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: digital audio is still in its infancy and it gets
Speaker 1: better every day. Analog to digital converters, digital to analog
Speaker 1: converters get better every day. Um. And you know, I think,
Speaker 1: I truly believe, one day we will just look back
Speaker 1: on analog tape recording as as a piece of history
Speaker 1: because we can duplicate it exactly in digital and we'll
Speaker 1: say what, what, what was? What was wrong with digital
Speaker 1: in the first place? But it did get better, it
Speaker 1: really did get better. And what's your take on the
Speaker 1: vinyl renaissance? It's that's that's really interesting. I mean that
Speaker 1: that's clearly a move towards the public favoring uh, a pure,
Speaker 1: pure signal path to to to the to their systems. Um.
Speaker 1: Vinyl is Um, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's the
Speaker 1: thing you hold in your hand and you can read
Speaker 1: the cover notes and and but the sound is great,
Speaker 1: especially the the mastering that's been going on at tough
Speaker 1: speed to improve the quality. Yet again, I'm all in
Speaker 1: favor of it and I I just came recently came back,
Speaker 1: before I went into hospital, from Munich in Germany, where
Speaker 1: there is clearly a move towards the final the game.
Speaker 1: I mean I was looking at looking at vinyl turntables
Speaker 1: costing a hundred and sixty thousand euros. I mean it's
Speaker 1: just unbelievable. Let's be very specific. If the path is
Speaker 1: a digital path and you end up with a digital master,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about old stuff for sixties and seven
Speaker 1: it's not modern stuff. What's the logic in cutting it
Speaker 1: in vinyl? That's a very good question. I mean, Um,
Speaker 1: I think it's just that people are getting back to
Speaker 1: having a really good stereo system in their homes and,
Speaker 1: you know, a good a good turntable is part of that.
Speaker 1: Out of that equation, I think. I mean they might,
Speaker 1: they might have a CD player as well, but audiophiles
Speaker 1: are definitely sort of moving towards finyl. There's no question. Well,
Speaker 1: as an engineer and an expert here, Um, although I
Speaker 1: still have all my vinyl, I have multiple turntables, etcetera. It.
Speaker 1: I talked to the professional community and they say inherently
Speaker 1: there's distortion and the record for no other reason, the
Speaker 1: needle moves from the outer groove to the inner groove
Speaker 1: and it's more of an affectation than the sound being
Speaker 1: better than digital today standards. Your take on that? You
Speaker 1: say it's just a fashion thing. Let's go back in
Speaker 1: the early days of digital and you heard. I mean.
Speaker 1: I use this example. I remember having the original back
Speaker 1: in black, a C D, C C D, and I
Speaker 1: have a lot of power. I never want to hit
Speaker 1: the storeship in my system and I turned it up
Speaker 1: and my ears would bleed. I put on Thet I
Speaker 1: put on the vinyl and you could feel it in
Speaker 1: the house would shake. Okay, people, people might say that
Speaker 1: was distortion, but it was palpable. But now when I
Speaker 1: listen to things, you know resolution certainly of nineties six,
Speaker 1: never mind CD quality. All the experts say that. You
Speaker 1: know that. I talked to said you like the sound
Speaker 1: a vinyl, great, but it's not more accurate and the
Speaker 1: digital original is actually better. But I'm asking you that
Speaker 1: question for your take. If if the digital original was
Speaker 1: done at High Ras, like K or o high or
Speaker 1: even Um, yes, I would argue that that that's the
Speaker 1: that's the highest quotity you're gonna get. Uh, but uh,
Speaker 1: for you know, for older recordings, I think I think final.
Speaker 1: I think the final wins out, despite the pulps and crackles.
Speaker 1: You know, we can, we can put up with us.
Speaker 1: I agree. If it's if it's kind of analog to
Speaker 1: begin with. That's a whole different thing. Yeah, but a
Speaker 1: lot of people buying vinyl today, or younger people, were
Speaker 1: just buying something cutting digital that's been, you know, transferred
Speaker 1: to vinyl. I don't get it. Yeah, that that is
Speaker 1: a bit that is a bit weird. But needless to say,
Speaker 1: the landscape is different in the recording industry than it
Speaker 1: used to be. I'm talking about the commercial and the
Speaker 1: marketing and we used to have a major label. There're
Speaker 1: a limited number of albums out there. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of older acts it's a disincentive. They don't even
Speaker 1: record new music anymore because they're fearful it won't reach
Speaker 1: their customers. Is that something that interduce your brain? Very
Speaker 1: much so. But I'm pleased, I'm very pleased that I
Speaker 1: seem to have enough lasting power to to at least
Speaker 1: make albums. I don't sell albums anything like how I
Speaker 1: used to. I mean all the Alam Passer's project albums
Speaker 1: went to at least gold, most amount platinum or even
Speaker 1: double platinum. But you know, I'm still here. I'm still
Speaker 1: supporting the Alan Parsons Project by playing live, UH and
Speaker 1: enjoying it very much. So, I mean it's it is
Speaker 1: a warrior. I mean there's a lot of British bands
Speaker 1: in particular who who just are terrified to put out
Speaker 1: another album in case it completely stiff h but I've
Speaker 1: done okay in that respect and the playing live really
Speaker 1: really does help keep the name, the name alive, even
Speaker 1: though we don't call it the Alan passons project. We
Speaker 1: call it the Alan Parsons Live Project, Um, which is
Speaker 1: kind of a salute to Eric Wilson, who who was
Speaker 1: the other half of the Alan Passon's project. It was
Speaker 1: just just the two of US really. So how do
Speaker 1: you plan to market the records so your people are
Speaker 1: aware of it and we'll hear it? I'm much reliant
Speaker 1: on the label, which is frontiers, frontiers records out of
Speaker 1: out of Italy. Um, they have a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of rock acts on their on their roster. Um.
Speaker 1: I'm also very aware of the power of social media
Speaker 1: these days. I mean if if if we post on
Speaker 1: on our own facebook site, you know it'll get it
Speaker 1: will get some attention and we can make it reach
Speaker 1: other other websites as well. That that that's great. You
Speaker 1: know that that that's the way to promote something these days.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's all. It's all about the Internet. And
Speaker 1: to what degree you personally active? You have other people
Speaker 1: do it for you. I do most of the time.
Speaker 1: I have other people do it, okay, one of one
Speaker 1: of whom is my wife, one of whom is my
Speaker 1: son in law. So you have this album with the
Speaker 1: Italian company. Did they pay for the record? Did you
Speaker 1: pay for the record? Um, they paid me an advance
Speaker 1: and I paid for it. And at the end of
Speaker 1: the day you're going to be in the black or
Speaker 1: the red on the record. That remains to be seen.
Speaker 1: I haven't done the accounts yet. I'm I'm hoping it
Speaker 1: will be close to break even at least. And what
Speaker 1: about your royalty stream? How's that doing? Really good. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, the the analysis project catalog, both both for
Speaker 1: sound recording and publishing, is very much alive and doing
Speaker 1: well and it's become it's become something I rely upon. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's strong, it's great. Do you still own your
Speaker 1: own publishing? I never did. I never did. It was
Speaker 1: assigned to two publishers and of course I I own
Speaker 1: rights to receive royalties on those, on those entities. But
Speaker 1: know that that I don't own any of my copyrights.
Speaker 1: So if there's a hundred cents in the dollar, how
Speaker 1: much that it goes to you? Mm Hmm U. based
Speaker 1: on a record sale? No, no, no, based on based
Speaker 1: on a song. If there's a hundred, uh, freak. You know,
Speaker 1: an artist might own their publishing, paid administrators somewhere between
Speaker 1: three and ten percent, the other nineties them. Uh. An
Speaker 1: artist may have a deal with a publisher and the
Speaker 1: publisher owns the copyright. They take fifty, the artist who
Speaker 1: wrote a gift fift also, if they co wrote it.
Speaker 1: They ends up with so in the in this publishing
Speaker 1: and a song, how much do you ultimately get in
Speaker 1: the revenue drink? I think we're I'm publishing. Okay, so
Speaker 1: that's good. That's a good number. How about the issue
Speaker 1: of regaining the Copyright of your Alan Parsons Projects Records?
Speaker 1: If you go on that road, we've we've done it.
Speaker 1: We've done what what is called termination, which means that
Speaker 1: we we we ultimately get get rights to it at
Speaker 1: a certain point. But I don't think I'll ever literally
Speaker 1: clawback that all the copyrights. I don't I don't think
Speaker 1: that's going to happen. But I know it's fashionable to
Speaker 1: to sell one's one's rights these days. I mean everybody's
Speaker 1: doing it and I've been thinking about it. But no, no,
Speaker 1: no firm decisions yet. What would be your motivation to
Speaker 1: do it or not to it? Well, it's that it's
Speaker 1: that big m word again. I mean it's it's money
Speaker 1: in your pocket. You know. Um, I'm living very comfortably,
Speaker 1: you know, now, with with the current live shows and
Speaker 1: the current record sales. But you know, there's a if
Speaker 1: there's a way of uh supplementing that income overnight, that
Speaker 1: would be very nice. I'm not getting any younger either.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm seventy three. A Nice little
Speaker 1: a nice little few million dollars, you know, back in
Speaker 1: the bank would would be very nice. I might consider
Speaker 1: buying a second home or something, although, of course, if
Speaker 1: you'd sold them uh recently and invested the proceeds, with
Speaker 1: the market crash, you know, that would have worked against you.
Speaker 1: But okay, so let's go back to the beginning. What
Speaker 1: were you growing up? Circumstances like? I I was an
Speaker 1: only child. Both my parents were musical. My My dad
Speaker 1: played piano and flute and my mother played a Celtic
Speaker 1: up and there was always it was always music in
Speaker 1: my household. My Dad was always playing classical music, which
Speaker 1: is why my knowledge of classical music is is pretty good.
Speaker 1: And you know, I I went to good schools in London,
Speaker 1: prep school called the hall and went on to what
Speaker 1: the English would call a public school. Uh, but it's
Speaker 1: very it's very much a private school. That was Westminster,
Speaker 1: Westminster School, which was adjacent to Westminster Abbey in London,
Speaker 1: so very sort of prestigious location. But I left. I
Speaker 1: left at sixteen. I was considered by a vocational guidance
Speaker 1: person to be unsuitable to to continue to the age
Speaker 1: of eighteen in order to go to college or anything.
Speaker 1: So I left at sixteen, went went to well, before
Speaker 1: you go there, what'd your parents say when the guy
Speaker 1: we got into said get out of here? I think,
Speaker 1: I think they're supported me on it. When my my
Speaker 1: school reports were dreadful. You know, he he has no
Speaker 1: interest in this subject. You know he's he's slacking, he
Speaker 1: will not, will not do his homework and all that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. So yeah, it was. It was. It
Speaker 1: surprised me. I thought, Oh my God, Oh my God,
Speaker 1: I'm going to be hating school for at least another
Speaker 1: two years. But I really hadn't considered the option of
Speaker 1: leaving school. And I mean Americans use the expression high
Speaker 1: school dropout. I suppose. I suppose that's what I was
Speaker 1: really but I was a dropout from a public school,
Speaker 1: prestigious English Public School, you know, right up there amongst Eaton, Harrow,
Speaker 1: St Paul's, or big public schools as we call them. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was an unusual was an unusual dropout. What
Speaker 1: kind of kid were you growing up? Popular, unpopular, loner,
Speaker 1: into your own things. Usually single kids have their own
Speaker 1: unique perspective in life. I had a good childhood. I
Speaker 1: wasn't bullied at school, if that's what you mean, but
Speaker 1: I I mentioned I was. I wasn't an only child
Speaker 1: and I had lots of friends. I did okay. We,
Speaker 1: my my parents, lived in in an area of London
Speaker 1: which was was fairly upper middle class, actually a very
Speaker 1: Jewish area. I'm not Jewish myself, but we lived in
Speaker 1: a substantially Jewish area and I generally had a good childhood.
Speaker 1: I I enjoyed my my my father had a sort
Speaker 1: of passion for gadgetry and building things and I think
Speaker 1: that's kind of rubbed rubbed off on me as well,
Speaker 1: and I I learned. I learned a great deal from him.
Speaker 1: Needles to say, music was revolutionized with the Beatles in
Speaker 1: the British invasion. To what degree were you growing up
Speaker 1: paying attention to popular music and what was your experience?
Speaker 1: I was very, very into part music. I started taking
Speaker 1: a really interesting about Ah. Distinctly remember a friend of
Speaker 1: Mine Picking Up Oh Carol by Neil Sadaka, whatever year
Speaker 1: that is. I think that's probably around that time. I
Speaker 1: was a huge fan of cliff and the shadows, Richard,
Speaker 1: that is Um and in terms of American music, I
Speaker 1: was listening to Chat Berry, Buddy Holly, of course. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I was there. I was there at the beginning of
Speaker 1: at the beginning of Pop and, to what you know,
Speaker 1: it was a seismic event when the Beatles came to America.
Speaker 1: What was your experience in the UK? I was still
Speaker 1: at school. Um, I mean I was the biggest beatle
Speaker 1: fan you could you could ever imagine. I really was very, very,
Speaker 1: very into their music right right from the beginning, right
Speaker 1: from from me to you and love me do through
Speaker 1: to the through to their ultimate breakup. So did you
Speaker 1: play a musical instrument growing up? Uh, I took piano lessons.
Speaker 1: I didn't particularly enjoy learning, learning piano from a teacher,
Speaker 1: I was I was more interested in playing by here
Speaker 1: and I did the same for the flute. The good
Speaker 1: thing about it is it taught me musical notation which
Speaker 1: I was I might not have been able to to
Speaker 1: use in later life. I mean I use musical musical
Speaker 1: notation now to substantial degree, especially for orchestral arrangements and
Speaker 1: so on. But yeah, it was it was a good
Speaker 1: thing that I did. I did have piano and flute lessons.
Speaker 1: Played in an orchestra at school as well. Um Plenty of,
Speaker 1: plenty of musical events going on in my chilter. So
Speaker 1: you pushed out of school at Sixteen and one level
Speaker 1: your thrilled you don't have to go two more years.
Speaker 1: What goes from your head then? What you'RE gonna do?
Speaker 1: I somehow knew that I would be in the entertainment
Speaker 1: industry somewhere. I given consideration to sound. You know, I
Speaker 1: didn't really know what what a recording engineer was back then,
Speaker 1: but I said I to work with sound and I
Speaker 1: also considered television. I I actually filled in forms for
Speaker 1: the BBC, you know, to become a TV cameraman, you know,
Speaker 1: to be trained as a TV cameraman. But that that,
Speaker 1: that just went by the wayside and I did a
Speaker 1: similar thing with e m I that I knew em.
Speaker 1: I was a big record company. So my first job
Speaker 1: after leaving school was with the M I was. that
Speaker 1: a hard job to get because from the outside, you know,
Speaker 1: people are salivating for jobs like that. It was actually
Speaker 1: an apprenticeship scheme, it wasn't you know. I started in
Speaker 1: a in a research lab which was making television camera tubes,
Speaker 1: a very technical job. I learned how to do glass blowing,
Speaker 1: which was interesting, and that that that, you know, just
Speaker 1: taught me what industry was like. I mean every everybody
Speaker 1: else in the in the department, that TV Camera Tube Department,
Speaker 1: was at least ten years older than me. So I
Speaker 1: was the youngster, you know, but I got on well,
Speaker 1: I got on all right. And how did you get
Speaker 1: from there to the studio? Well, there are two more stages.
Speaker 1: That the the TV research lab was was in haze
Speaker 1: in Middlesex, which is west of London, about fifteen miles
Speaker 1: west of central Lona. Um. I then transferred to a
Speaker 1: to a department called tape records, which was which was
Speaker 1: great as far as I was concerned. They were they
Speaker 1: were they were, you know, very involved with listening to
Speaker 1: EMMI product, duplicating EMI product. Um. The Department is actually
Speaker 1: devoted to manufacturing mono versions of the of their their
Speaker 1: product on tape on the little three inch or five
Speaker 1: and little five inch plastic schools, and they were actually
Speaker 1: very good sounding, very good sounding products. But I worked
Speaker 1: in that department, you know, helping to maintain tape machines
Speaker 1: and so on. But then I got into a copying
Speaker 1: room where Abbey road would send there the latest efforts
Speaker 1: down to us to be duplicated for foreign countries. So
Speaker 1: I was literally one of the very first people to
Speaker 1: hear sergeant pepper from the master tape, before anybody in
Speaker 1: the great wide world had had ever even heard of it,
Speaker 1: and alone listen to it. So how do you end
Speaker 1: up in the studio? Well, the studio was, thankfully, Um
Speaker 1: a department associated with this tape records department. That where
Speaker 1: I was working, and I simply wrote to the manager
Speaker 1: said I've been working for em I since I'm now
Speaker 1: in tape records. I would very much appreciate a visit
Speaker 1: to Abbey Road to see what see what goes on
Speaker 1: and if, if there were any vacancies, I'd be very interested.
Speaker 1: That same week he received a letter. I was invited
Speaker 1: to an interview and two weeks later I went walked
Speaker 1: up those steps for the first time and I became
Speaker 1: a trainee, trainee engineer at happy with the studios. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, as time went on that was the first
Speaker 1: step in most studios was the tea boy, but you
Speaker 1: were part of a larger system. What was you? What
Speaker 1: were your duties? into what degree were the instructing you
Speaker 1: when store in there? I, like most of the bureaud engineers,
Speaker 1: I started in the tape library, literally just logging in
Speaker 1: tapes that derived and logging out tapes that people ask for.
Speaker 1: Fairly mundane tasks, but it taught me the importance of
Speaker 1: of correctly identifying what's what's on on the on the
Speaker 1: tape box, what's on the tape, because it's it's terrifying
Speaker 1: sometimes to see how how little detail goes into marking
Speaker 1: up a tape box and I actually ended up writing
Speaker 1: a book called the Master Tapebook, which which emphasized that
Speaker 1: that particular importance. So literally, probably only a month in
Speaker 1: the in the in the tape in the tape library.
Speaker 1: Then I was allowed to be a fly on the wall.
Speaker 1: will fly on the wall for sessions. The Very First
Speaker 1: Session and I sat in on, was a band called
Speaker 1: the gods, and musicologists will tell you that, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: the gods, that was Ken Ken Hensley's first band, which
Speaker 1: it was, but he was a keyboard player, not a
Speaker 1: not a guitarist, as he was in your eye heat.
Speaker 1: So how long was it before you got to touch anything? Oh,
Speaker 1: quite quite a while. Um. Well, no, actually I mean
Speaker 1: you say touching the I was allowed on to touch
Speaker 1: a tape machine because that's essentially what I was training for,
Speaker 1: to be a tape operator, assistant engineer. So I got
Speaker 1: to know, you know, the workings of a of the
Speaker 1: studio four track machines. Most most sessions were four track.
Speaker 1: When I first arrived, the Beatles were there doing the
Speaker 1: white album, just as I right, some of which was
Speaker 1: eight track. But it was very, very much a lash
Speaker 1: up too to use an eight track machine with a
Speaker 1: four track console. But I got I got to I
Speaker 1: didn't really get to see any of that. Um, it
Speaker 1: was sometime later that that I actually got to a
Speaker 1: record record with Paul McCartney. That was that was years later.
Speaker 1: But the Um the experience of of of of training
Speaker 1: under you know, great engineers like Jeff emeric and Petere Vince,
Speaker 1: Peter Bawn, Peter Mu Ken Scott who, of course, you
Speaker 1: will know, went on to be a very successful producer
Speaker 1: with David Bowie. Um, just just watching, just watching them.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, I was let loose probably probably
Speaker 1: two and a half years into my employment at at
Speaker 1: at Abbey Road with the hollies. I've done a bunch
Speaker 1: of sessions with the hollies as as their tape operator,
Speaker 1: as their second engineer, but their engineer was double booked
Speaker 1: and they offered me the job for the first time,
Speaker 1: you know, my first real engineering, engineering GIG, and it
Speaker 1: went okay. I mean I I listened back to it
Speaker 1: now and I think, Oh, if only, if only, if only,
Speaker 1: if only. But it came out pretty good. And were
Speaker 1: you thrilled just to be in the belly of the beast?
Speaker 1: Are Very quickly did that fall away and you were
Speaker 1: just doing a job? Oh, no, I was. I was
Speaker 1: totally totally into I know it didn't feel like a
Speaker 1: job as well at all. I was very, very much
Speaker 1: into what I was doing and I would I would work,
Speaker 1: you know, crazy hours in order to just just to
Speaker 1: enjoy myself. It was the best job in the world.
Speaker 1: And had anyone taught you how to use the border?
Speaker 1: You just observed and when the other guy who's double
Speaker 1: book you, sat down to do it. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I I had a pretty good idea how how the
Speaker 1: console effectively worked. But the Abbey road engineers used to
Speaker 1: be known as balance engineers, and that's that's really what
Speaker 1: what the balance engineers did? They deal with the mix
Speaker 1: between instruments. So it was right to use the word balance.
Speaker 1: But I yeah, my my, my first ventures into engineering
Speaker 1: all came from the experience of watching others. Okay, I
Speaker 1: have a question. You know, when the Beatle CDs first
Speaker 1: came out in the eighties, the early albums, everyone was
Speaker 1: shocked how good they sound, but if you look at
Speaker 1: the equipment it seems so primitive. Why was the sound
Speaker 1: so good? Good, good engineering, just solid, good engineering. That's
Speaker 1: that's what it was all about. I mean it's it's
Speaker 1: extraordinary that those early albums were done on four track
Speaker 1: at at best. I think the first album was done,
Speaker 1: done to track. So they would record, you know, a
Speaker 1: backing track based drums, guitars and then they would add
Speaker 1: the vocals and that was it. That was the that
Speaker 1: was the master tape. And I'm sure you've heard the
Speaker 1: so called Stereo versions, early Stereo versions of those albums.
Speaker 1: All the music is on the left on the vocals
Speaker 1: are on the right and they call it stereo crazy.
Speaker 1: So what happened after the hollies? Well, I started to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, get more, more work with the hollies, plenty
Speaker 1: of work with with them, Um, and it was wasn't
Speaker 1: really very long until H I had until, you know,
Speaker 1: the dark side of the moon sessions. Really, that was
Speaker 1: that was pretty pretty soon after that period. Um. But
Speaker 1: you know, the the the important, the important step that
Speaker 1: happened between me being a tape up and being an
Speaker 1: engineer was was being sent down to the Beatles studio
Speaker 1: in Savo row to tape up for them. So that
Speaker 1: was the that was the first Beatles experience, Um, and
Speaker 1: I was, of course, on the roof for the for
Speaker 1: the rooftop session, which was magnucent day. I will never,
Speaker 1: never forget that, um. So I continued after that. I
Speaker 1: was I was. I spent a period engineering and and
Speaker 1: tape hopping. You know I did. I wasn't considered a
Speaker 1: fully fledged engineer really until probably until until that Sut
Speaker 1: the moon. That's when it that's when it all came together. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're there at the Beatles studio. We just had
Speaker 1: this exhaustive get back movie. To what degree did you
Speaker 1: like it, not like it, and did it conform with
Speaker 1: your remembrance of what happened there? UH, the the letter
Speaker 1: B movie was was. I found it really sort of depressing. UH, I.
Speaker 1: I don't think it rep entered what what was going
Speaker 1: on very well. But I think Peter Jackson's movies is
Speaker 1: it's not only complete, but it's uh, it gives a
Speaker 1: much brighter picture of of what went on during that period.
Speaker 1: And I'm in it. I'm in get back. You see
Speaker 1: me credited on screen as Alan Parsons, tape operator. Um.
Speaker 1: So I was very, very pleased about that. I actually
Speaker 1: met Peter Jackson a few months before the release and
Speaker 1: he showed me a couple of clips. It was great.
Speaker 1: He's he's a lovely guy and very talented and you
Speaker 1: can't believe the the improvement in quality that he managed
Speaker 1: to get between the the sixteen mill film and what
Speaker 1: you see in the in the get back series. And
Speaker 1: what was your involvement with the Abbey Road? UH, at
Speaker 1: the time of the Getty Road, the Abbey road album
Speaker 1: by the Beatles. Oh, I see, Um, I was tape up. Um,
Speaker 1: there were two two main engineers, Jeff emeric and Phil McDonald. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, I was there interacting with the band occasionally.
Speaker 1: You know, uh, Paul or John might you know, say
Speaker 1: can you play that again, or whatever. So I wouldn't
Speaker 1: call it establishing a huge friendship, but we we, we
Speaker 1: were business associate, but a great experience to watch them
Speaker 1: at work, see how their their minds worked and what
Speaker 1: they what they could achieve. It was actually interesting that
Speaker 1: on on Abbey road they weren't often all there together.
Speaker 1: In tended to be a one, one beetle at a time,
Speaker 1: coming into Polish off their own their own compositions, and
Speaker 1: they would have they would have had to be there
Speaker 1: together to do the backing tracks. But all the well,
Speaker 1: the later overdos tended to be solistry, experiences by experiences
Speaker 1: by one beatle alone. Diesles to say, these are legendary
Speaker 1: records that the audiences contemplated literally for decades, half a century,
Speaker 1: and you watch the get back movie and they seem
Speaker 1: to be so fanciful just writing in the studio and
Speaker 1: we'll see what goes on. What was your experience of
Speaker 1: the creative process? Well, you know, I didn't really see
Speaker 1: them songwriting. I mean I don't know what their process
Speaker 1: was for the songwriting. I mean I think it was
Speaker 1: well established by by Abbey Road that that John was
Speaker 1: writing his songs and Paul was writing his songs. It
Speaker 1: wasn't was no longer a genuine Lennon McCartney situation, even
Speaker 1: though the credits continued to say Lennon McCartney. Um. So
Speaker 1: I can't really answer what they uh, what, you know,
Speaker 1: the processes they went through to to write a song.
Speaker 1: But I certainly got to see, uh, you know, the
Speaker 1: ideas they had to make each song different, or two, two,
Speaker 1: you know too, to make it sound, you know, as
Speaker 1: good as it does on the on the final mix.
Speaker 1: I mean there was a lot of work, a lot
Speaker 1: of work after the basic tracks, on on on everything,
Speaker 1: including a orchestra for the first time. I think they've
Speaker 1: never had a really full size orchestra perform on their
Speaker 1: music before. So how did you get the GIG on
Speaker 1: dark side of the Moon? I had been previously working
Speaker 1: with them on atom up mother. I tape opped the
Speaker 1: whole the whole thing, until it was mixing time. Um
Speaker 1: Peter Bawn, their engineer again, very very great engineer. He
Speaker 1: was unable to do mixing sessions and they very graciously
Speaker 1: just said, Alan, would you like to have a go
Speaker 1: at it because you know, you know the music, which
Speaker 1: I did. You know, I knew, I knew every every note.
Speaker 1: If they've brought in one of the other engineers it
Speaker 1: might have been a more complicated process. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: mixed it. They were happy with it and that ultimately
Speaker 1: led to me getting the GIG for dark side of
Speaker 1: the Moon. Okay, they were had singles, hits. Originally Sidbart
Speaker 1: was in the band. That didn't translate to America. Then
Speaker 1: they had all these records on harvest, M A, Gumma,
Speaker 1: Adam Hart mother. From a outside perspective it seemed the
Speaker 1: dark side of the moon was definitely a different direction.
Speaker 1: was that the perception in the studio? Was this just
Speaker 1: another pink floyd album? It turned out to be such
Speaker 1: a Gargagean success. I think everybody recognized it was. It
Speaker 1: was different and I think at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: everybody thought it was, without a doubt, their best work today. Um.
Speaker 1: But I didn't, I don't think any of us, myself included,
Speaker 1: I thought that would still be talking about it fifty
Speaker 1: years later. I mean it's it's really unbelievable. And other
Speaker 1: than operating the board, what were your contributions? Well, Um,
Speaker 1: a few bits and pieces. I I came up with
Speaker 1: the clock's idea for for time because I had previously
Speaker 1: recorded the clocks in a in an antique shop not
Speaker 1: far from the studios, Um, which was ostensibly for a
Speaker 1: sound effects record which which I think got released but
Speaker 1: sold about ten copies. Um. So that, yeah, we we
Speaker 1: took all these chiming clocks and ticking clocks and synchronized
Speaker 1: them all together. Each each clock was recorded separately and
Speaker 1: just literally pressingly play buttonet at a particular moment to
Speaker 1: make them synchronize, um striking at the same time. So
Speaker 1: that was one little contribution which, yeah, fairly major, fairly
Speaker 1: fairly memorable section of the album. Um, the the loop
Speaker 1: on the loop on money was quite painstaking. The assembled
Speaker 1: we we amassed a number of sounds like dropped, dropping
Speaker 1: a bag of coins on the on the on the
Speaker 1: wooden floor in number two studio, tearing up paper the
Speaker 1: Cash Register, of course. And we we made these continuous loops,
Speaker 1: but they sounded when the first couple of loops we
Speaker 1: tried sounded terrible. There was no sort of rhythm to
Speaker 1: it and we discovered that the only way to make
Speaker 1: it rhythmically correct was to actually take a ruler and
Speaker 1: measure a precise length of tape that would be spliced
Speaker 1: on to the next similarly measured splicing tape. That's what
Speaker 1: that's how it ended up. What you hear on the
Speaker 1: intro and ultimately what they played to. They played to that, that,
Speaker 1: that that loop. There was no there was no click
Speaker 1: track or anything or any metronome. They literally just played
Speaker 1: to that, to that loop, although it faded out um
Speaker 1: soon after the intro. They then went free form. Now,
Speaker 1: if you go online there's pushed back from Roger Water
Speaker 1: is relative to your contribution by the same talk and
Speaker 1: he pushes back on everything. Yeah, I mean, you have
Speaker 1: any thoughts about that? What's saying? Saying that actually saying
Speaker 1: that my my contribution was was limited or ill or
Speaker 1: or or essentially that you were just doing what you're
Speaker 1: doing would have been successful with anybody. It was really
Speaker 1: much is about them and that you've been treading on
Speaker 1: your work there thereafter. Yeah, that's that's that's Roger. Um,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, I can safely say that David and
Speaker 1: David and Nick have always been very supportive of of
Speaker 1: my my various exploits. They've always they've always maintained that
Speaker 1: I did a nice job on that side man, and
Speaker 1: so much so that David actually played on a on
Speaker 1: a one of my on my first solo album. So
Speaker 1: what was the experience of being involved in such a
Speaker 1: successful record? You're a guy who's unknown and then all
Speaker 1: of a sudden you have the biggest album in the world,
Speaker 1: and how did that affect your career? Oh, it was
Speaker 1: very positive on my career. I I was actually offered
Speaker 1: a job. I mean I had been when the when
Speaker 1: the album came out, I was on the road with him.
Speaker 1: I was doing their lives sound as well as occasional
Speaker 1: studio sessions. We went back into the studio to do
Speaker 1: the famous household objects album, which never happened, which never
Speaker 1: never really went anywhere. But yes, I the phone started
Speaker 1: to ring. People wanted to work with me and I
Speaker 1: was getting into production at at that time seventies, early
Speaker 1: early seventy, so not not long after the success of
Speaker 1: dark siloment and thankfully my my earliest productions met with
Speaker 1: considerable success, and that that was that was the path
Speaker 1: to producing further acts and ultimately the Alan Pasmer's project.
Speaker 1: And how did you end up working with McCartney on
Speaker 1: red rose speed? Yeah, that was just essentially a an
Speaker 1: extension of you know, we knew each other from from
Speaker 1: an Abbey road he he knew of my my work
Speaker 1: with with Pink Floyd. I think, although I'm not I'm
Speaker 1: not very good on on comparing dates, but I think,
Speaker 1: I think I'd probably already done a dark siderment by
Speaker 1: the time I started working with him. But we were
Speaker 1: we always got on well. Well, like on Red Rose Speed,
Speaker 1: with big barn bed etcetera. To what degree? Because this
Speaker 1: is a guy who cut records totally by himself. So
Speaker 1: what was your role on those records? He he, he
Speaker 1: looked towards his engineers. You know, he worked them hard,
Speaker 1: or any engineer that's worked with ball will tell him.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you this. You know he'll he'll he's not
Speaker 1: particularly technical. He can't, you can't describe in technical terms
Speaker 1: what he's looking for. He would just say, Oh, let's
Speaker 1: let's make the snare drum sound better and how I
Speaker 1: would have moved the MIC. Try a different MIC, try
Speaker 1: a different Eq, you know. And Yeah, I think ultimately
Speaker 1: he probably got the result he wanted. But yeah, he
Speaker 1: was pretty demanding, pretty pretty you know, working his working
Speaker 1: his engineers hard. So how did you meet Eric Wiles?
Speaker 1: Eric had been coming in and out of Abbey Road
Speaker 1: as a UM as a producer. He, uh, he, and
Speaker 1: I I mean I worked on a couple of sessions
Speaker 1: he was involved with and I sensed his great expertise
Speaker 1: on the music business and we got chatting and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, what you need is a manager, and I went, oh, really,
Speaker 1: I didn't know engineers had or producers even had had managers.
Speaker 1: But yes, he, he, I was. I became one of
Speaker 1: the first engineer producers to be to have a manager.
Speaker 1: So that's that's how it all started. And then literally
Speaker 1: in no time after we signed the management deal. Ah,
Speaker 1: we were looking towards making an album of a gland
Speaker 1: post stories. A little bit slower heart you okay, you're
Speaker 1: making managery deal. How do you end up making an
Speaker 1: album about Edgar Allan Pole story? Where does that come from?
Speaker 1: It was it was very much Eric's idea where he
Speaker 1: had had a passion for for the work of Poe
Speaker 1: as as a child, as as had I, I mean
Speaker 1: I i. I read it a whole bunch of his
Speaker 1: short stories myself and I thought it was a great
Speaker 1: idea to to make a concept album based on the
Speaker 1: work of Po Um. We we really didn't anticipate at
Speaker 1: the time that it would be known as the Alan
Speaker 1: Pasta's project. The Alan Pastor project was literally just a
Speaker 1: descriptive term for what, for the album we were making.
Speaker 1: I didn't, I honestly didn't think it would become the
Speaker 1: name of the act. But that's what that's that's what
Speaker 1: Russ Reagan, the president at the American label, he said. No,
Speaker 1: I think the act is the Alan paster's project. We're
Speaker 1: gonna we're going to call it tells a mystery imagination,
Speaker 1: the Alan paster's project. Yeah, and what did Eric say
Speaker 1: about that? Well, he in later life he said that
Speaker 1: was the the best, best decision he ever made to
Speaker 1: put my name as the as the artist and he
Speaker 1: also said it was the worst decision because he he
Speaker 1: didn't get the the attention or the accolade that that
Speaker 1: I did. But yes, he often said that in interview.
Speaker 1: It was my best decision, also my wifet decision. so
Speaker 1: you decide to make a record. I think it's on
Speaker 1: flying careers metal label in U K. It's on twentieth
Speaker 1: century in uh the US. Twenty Century was not a
Speaker 1: good label. How did you end up on twentieth century? Um?
Speaker 1: That was because the band Ambrosia had had signed with
Speaker 1: Twentie Um. There was also another connection. Twentie signed Carl Douglas,
Speaker 1: who was the Kung Fu fighting guy. Uh So, essentially,
Speaker 1: ambrosia Carl Douglas and Eric going to talk to the
Speaker 1: president at the label and he that was that was
Speaker 1: good enough for him to to to sign sign us
Speaker 1: for for the for the first album. Yeah, hits with
Speaker 1: Carl Douglas, hits with Ambrosia. Okay, so you were involved
Speaker 1: with the Ambrosia before the tales of mystery in the
Speaker 1: marriage nature. How did you get involved with the Ambrosia? Um?
Speaker 1: That's an interesting story. The the the first I knew
Speaker 1: of Ambrosia was was a phone call from a guy
Speaker 1: called Gordon Parry who had been there sort of protege Um.
Speaker 1: He was a classical music engineer at Decca and I
Speaker 1: just happened to be passing the telephone at the commissionaire's desk,
Speaker 1: the Security Guy's desk, and I picked up the phone
Speaker 1: said Abro Studios Canna help you, and this voice from
Speaker 1: Gordon Perry said I'd like to speak to Alem pass
Speaker 1: and he said yeah, this is ourn and ended up
Speaker 1: being a fifteen minute conversation, that he would invite me
Speaker 1: to come down, come over to to Los Angeles to
Speaker 1: work with this band. And it just so happened that
Speaker 1: that phone call came when I was already booked to
Speaker 1: go to l a for the grammys because I've been
Speaker 1: nominated for the dark side of the Moon Uh to
Speaker 1: get an engineering grammy, and during during my visit, I
Speaker 1: want to hear their album and I love liked it
Speaker 1: very much, and then the offer came into not not
Speaker 1: to stay on and mix. Mixed their album. Then it
Speaker 1: was a few months later that it was still working
Speaker 1: progress at that time, but I loved it and mixing
Speaker 1: their first album led to my producing their second album.
Speaker 1: Somewhere I never traveled. So the first album again, I
Speaker 1: think that's their best work, the iconic song of course,
Speaker 1: just holding on too, holding onto yesterday. What did you
Speaker 1: do in the mix to make you know, to make
Speaker 1: it sound so good? Yeah, I I give credit to
Speaker 1: the engineers that recorded it. I mean I think it's
Speaker 1: a nicely, nicely executed mix. Um, I I really can't
Speaker 1: tell you in tangible expressions what what I actually did.
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't have any magic magic buttons or
Speaker 1: magic equipment. The equipment was still fairly primitive in those days.
Speaker 1: Digital delays and so I'm still still hadn't really hit
Speaker 1: the hit the market, but it was, it was. It
Speaker 1: was a nice recording. You know, the violin part it's
Speaker 1: lovely and David Pack did a great vocal. so you
Speaker 1: decide to make this record with Eric Wilson about Edgar
Speaker 1: Allan Poe. What are the next steps in terms of
Speaker 1: creation of the music, getting a record deal, casting the record?
Speaker 1: Walk me through that. Well, we, uh, we did the
Speaker 1: deal with with Rassrigan of Twentieth Century at the Music
Speaker 1: Conference in Cannes in France, which is called me dam,
Speaker 1: and essentially we had we had a meeting with Russ
Speaker 1: and told him, told him that we had this idea
Speaker 1: to make a record based on ground post stories, and
Speaker 1: he loved the idea and essentially said yeah, off you go,
Speaker 1: here's a check, which is great, and it's it's, it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting when he when he first heard the album,
Speaker 1: I think he was which we also did in France,
Speaker 1: that was in Paris. He he actually used the words
Speaker 1: I like it, but I don't love it, but that
Speaker 1: was that was on the first hearing. And then after
Speaker 1: hearing it a few more times, he said, Oh my God,
Speaker 1: this is the best albumue best album I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: You know, he totally changed his stance on that. I
Speaker 1: did one and half the album of being instrumental, on
Speaker 1: the other album being a traditional slam based rock record. Um,
Speaker 1: that was probably more of my my influence than anything else.
Speaker 1: I mean, historically I've I've been, you know, much more
Speaker 1: responsible for for instrumental tracks than than vocal tracks. But
Speaker 1: of course a lot of a lot of that time
Speaker 1: is taken up by the fall of the House of Usha,
Speaker 1: which is a purely orchestral piece. Um, that's that's something
Speaker 1: I I really enjoyed, you know, putting a classical org
Speaker 1: strip together for music I'm I'm responsible for. So that
Speaker 1: was that was really that was a big moment Um. Yes,
Speaker 1: you know there there are various orchestral and instrumental interludes
Speaker 1: in the album which, in commercial terms, they they're not
Speaker 1: they're not considered necessary in commercial terms. And when we
Speaker 1: eventually signed with Clive Davis, he was always looking for
Speaker 1: hit songs. You know, you were never of considered an
Speaker 1: instrumental track for a single. But yeah, I think in
Speaker 1: the early, early periods of the APP tells Mry I
Speaker 1: robot pyramid, I did make a a more substantial contribution
Speaker 1: as a as a as a composer, particularly for the
Speaker 1: for the instrumental tracks. And on that album you have
Speaker 1: Arthur Brown, of the crazy world of Arthur Brown. How
Speaker 1: does he end up singing? A partner of a business
Speaker 1: partner of Eric's, knew him. Um It was. It was
Speaker 1: a great, great afternoon when he came into to sing
Speaker 1: the tell tale heart he uh, we played we played
Speaker 1: him Eric's guide vocal, which is incredibly simple. That you
Speaker 1: should have seen him running it alone. But then the
Speaker 1: night you know, and he heard it and it's very
Speaker 1: down to earth and so yeah, I think, I think
Speaker 1: I've got it, goes into the studio, goes onto the mic,
Speaker 1: we played the track and then suddenly it's wow, it was.
Speaker 1: We were really worried that he wouldn't he wouldn't find himself,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't find his crazy world for our track, but
Speaker 1: he very much did and I think it's a standout,
Speaker 1: standout track on the first album. Love it. And then
Speaker 1: how did you end up using John Miles? He'd have
Speaker 1: a pre existing relationship with him. I did. Yes, we
Speaker 1: had a big success with his his first two singles
Speaker 1: and his first album. UH, sadly not in America, but
Speaker 1: we did incredibly well with John and in the UK
Speaker 1: and the rest of Europe. Incredibly talented his singing. Sadly
Speaker 1: we lost him a few months ago. He died of
Speaker 1: cancer just, Oh, I don't know, three or four months ago, um.
Speaker 1: But I always regarded him as a great singer and
Speaker 1: that's why I invited him back on several occasions to
Speaker 1: sing other songs and tell me about the use of
Speaker 1: the vote order on the Raven. The vote Codea was
Speaker 1: actually an e m I creation. Um, there was a
Speaker 1: big audio research department at as where I where I
Speaker 1: worked had worked earlier, um in that TV camera department. Um,
Speaker 1: they they came up with this box that we had
Speaker 1: kind of asked for. We said, how can we, how
Speaker 1: can we add a vocal to an instrument and make
Speaker 1: it sound like it's one thing, and there was this Um,
Speaker 1: there was a series of stories on on record. That
Speaker 1: was called sparky's magic piano. I don't know if you
Speaker 1: I don't know that one, though it was it was
Speaker 1: an American productive, but there was literally a talking piano.
Speaker 1: It's very it's very cleverly done and I think we,
Speaker 1: we all hoped that that that's what it would achieve.
Speaker 1: But in the end it it just made a voice
Speaker 1: sound very electronic and it worked well for the Raven.
Speaker 1: I mean we we spent a long time touring and
Speaker 1: throwing trying different buttons, different settings and so on. But Um,
Speaker 1: I think it I think it was pretty much the first,
Speaker 1: first foe CODA used on a on a on a record.
Speaker 1: So you have this very extensive cover, hypnosis, cover, uh,
Speaker 1: in the UK. In America, I don't think there's a
Speaker 1: gatefold at all, and then shortly thereafter the album just
Speaker 1: says a cover of you on it. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: was furious about that. That really was. And when when
Speaker 1: people give me that set, that second simplified sleeve, to sign,
Speaker 1: I I kind of go a grunt, grunt my disapproval.
Speaker 1: You know that you should have the original cover, not
Speaker 1: this cover. But no, that the the the gate, the
Speaker 1: gate field did exist, I think, worldwide. It was very extravagant,
Speaker 1: chasing paper between pages and stuff, and it wasn't it
Speaker 1: a very lavish package, but it was great. I loved it. Okay,
Speaker 1: I love that album. I bought it originally as a
Speaker 1: Provo and they had an unlimited supply at my store
Speaker 1: and I would buy them for other people. Huh, what
Speaker 1: was the perception of success on that first album for
Speaker 1: your from your viewpoint? I mean I was I was
Speaker 1: amazed and I thought it, you know, we thought the
Speaker 1: album was good, but we thought it literally fall by
Speaker 1: the wayside, you know. But you know, we're a new act.
Speaker 1: We have high hopes and but the success of tales
Speaker 1: of mystery and the sect, the continued success of the
Speaker 1: act through, you know, several other albums with with Arista,
Speaker 1: I I have never ceased to be amazed at the
Speaker 1: success and was always slightly trepidacious shall we say, but
Speaker 1: it was always great news that, you know, it was
Speaker 1: getting on playlists and that it was it was, you know,
Speaker 1: actually shifting copies out of record stores. It was always
Speaker 1: it was always a great relief and and you know,
Speaker 1: I was proud. I was very proud. So you have
Speaker 1: one record on twentieth century. How do you end up
Speaker 1: bouncing from there to Aosta? Well, the first album deal
Speaker 1: much too much to Russ Reagan's Chagra, I think, was Um.
Speaker 1: It was just a single album deal. So we were
Speaker 1: we were free to go go to anyone. Um. You
Speaker 1: know you don't, you don't, you don't take a called
Speaker 1: meeting with Clive Davis Likely, but that's what happened. He
Speaker 1: invited us to dinner in London, famous, famous restaurant called Lorenzo's,
Speaker 1: and essentially he he said he wanted to sign us
Speaker 1: for a multi album deal and not soon after that meeting,
Speaker 1: I think, Eric flew to New York and did the
Speaker 1: business and there we were. We were signed to Aristair
Speaker 1: for our for our second album, I robu so. At
Speaker 1: the time he Arista was still just starting. He had
Speaker 1: Patty Smith. There was a lot of goodwill, even though
Speaker 1: he gotten fired he'd written his book, but his time
Speaker 1: went on. As you referenced earlier, he was all about
Speaker 1: hits and he was famous for meddling with the music
Speaker 1: of artists. Now ultimately ended up being with, you know,
Speaker 1: top forty artists who may not have even written the songs.
Speaker 1: What was your experience working with Clive Davis? He he
Speaker 1: always wanted to, you know, a single of every album.
Speaker 1: He want wanted to make sure that it was commercial
Speaker 1: in his eyes. He would always suggest edits. He would
Speaker 1: he would even have his own people do do edits,
Speaker 1: some of which worked well, some of which sounded absolutely horrible.
Speaker 1: But he yes, he liked he he liked to be
Speaker 1: close to the music. You know, really, you know, identify
Speaker 1: buying the structure of a song and saying, you know,
Speaker 1: the the chorus, the chorus doesn't happen until a minute
Speaker 1: and a half in. We needed to happen less than
Speaker 1: a minute in, and stuff like that. But you know,
Speaker 1: you can't, you can't argue. He knew what he was doing.
Speaker 1: He had he had the ear for hits. You ready
Speaker 1: do so you would listen to him, you would change
Speaker 1: the songs. will be okay with that. It was usually
Speaker 1: a compromise. I never, I never put anything out that
Speaker 1: I was actually, you know, actually unhappy with. No, we, we, we, we, I.
Speaker 1: I don't know what's how to put this really we. Uh. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think we just kept each other happy. I mean we,
Speaker 1: we would come if they were compromise was necessarily on
Speaker 1: a on an edit or. Uh. He never, never sought
Speaker 1: to have US Remix, which, of course, labels are famous
Speaker 1: for telling acts to remix their songs, but he never
Speaker 1: did that. Just just the structure, just, you know, when
Speaker 1: the chorus happens, when the Solo. We had a long solo,
Speaker 1: for example, on Games people play, and we cut that
Speaker 1: down and I was I was fine with that and
Speaker 1: it was. Yeah, it was mutual decisions on on the
Speaker 1: edits and I think both of us were happy in
Speaker 1: the end. I don't think. I never put anything out
Speaker 1: that I was seriously unhappy with. Now, it wasn't like
Speaker 1: every album I had hits on it. There were ups,
Speaker 1: there were downs. was He ever angry with you or
Speaker 1: lost faith in you or you felt like a second
Speaker 1: or third class citizen? No, no, I always had a
Speaker 1: great relationship with client. H Never, never a harsh word. Okay,
Speaker 1: and then ultimately serious becomes the Chicago Bulls the anthem,
Speaker 1: it becomes sports the anthem. Did that happen totally independent
Speaker 1: of you? And what did you think of that? I
Speaker 1: had absolutely no idea. It certainly wasn't written as a
Speaker 1: as a sports team. It was. It was written on
Speaker 1: a fairlight computer instrument which was very high tech back
Speaker 1: in the early eighties, Um, and it was just an
Speaker 1: intro to tow eye in the sky. Ah, that somebody
Speaker 1: at the at the Chicago Bulls said this will this
Speaker 1: will make great walk on music for Michael Jordan. And
Speaker 1: if that happened and several other sports teams followed, it
Speaker 1: baffles me. I mean I think I think it works great,
Speaker 1: but it certainly was not the last thing on my
Speaker 1: mind that it would be used for sports. But it
Speaker 1: continues to be used to this day. It is that lucrative.
Speaker 1: The fact they do. It's lucrative in terms of TV advertising,
Speaker 1: use on TV shows. American idol, for example, use it occasionally, um,
Speaker 1: but sadly when it's used in in sports games, in
Speaker 1: stadiums and so on, no, there is no there is
Speaker 1: no record of it, there's no there's no money change
Speaker 1: hands because it just goes into a big pot which
Speaker 1: is shared by all, all musicians and writers. No, B
Speaker 1: M I as cap so on, um C sack, which
Speaker 1: is the society I'm with. They would be angry if
Speaker 1: I hadn't mentioned that. Um, yeah, it's just just goes
Speaker 1: into this general pot. It's not considered a a sink license.
Speaker 1: That's what that's what's valuable to to a writer and
Speaker 1: a musical act to get what is known as a
Speaker 1: sync license. That means pictures. The sound has to be
Speaker 1: licensed to go with a picture and considering that the
Speaker 1: you know, ball game really is all about the people
Speaker 1: on the court, not not, not, not a video. So
Speaker 1: you're making all these records. They come on under the
Speaker 1: moniker Alan Parsons Project. What do you do and what
Speaker 1: does Eric Do? Well, we we both. We both came
Speaker 1: to the studio in the early stages of each album
Speaker 1: with with what we worked on on our own leading
Speaker 1: up to that first day. Um Eric would usually usually
Speaker 1: have a cassette with a rough version of the song
Speaker 1: as he saw it at the time. Um, I also
Speaker 1: made demos. By the time, by the time I and
Speaker 1: the sky came along, I was I was back in London,
Speaker 1: having lived in Monaco for a couple of years. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: we just came in and sort of say here's what
Speaker 1: I've got, what have you got? And then we would
Speaker 1: collaborate and I was famous for changing the structures of
Speaker 1: his of his songs, you know, or changing the key
Speaker 1: or changing the temple or whatever. Um. That's sort sort
Speaker 1: of borne out by the recent releases of box sets
Speaker 1: which include Eric's songwriting diaries, as we call very sort
Speaker 1: of basic piano and vocal versions of songs, almost bearing
Speaker 1: no relationship to the final products sometimes. So would one
Speaker 1: say that he essentially wrote all the songs? I'm slightly
Speaker 1: reluctant to say that he wrote all the songs because
Speaker 1: there were there were occasions when I made very definite
Speaker 1: co Co writing compositions, Co writing contributions. But yes, I
Speaker 1: mean he was. He was a talented songwriters, he um,
Speaker 1: and part of that talent as a songwriter was the
Speaker 1: the ability to write lyrics. I wasn't strong lyrics. So
Speaker 1: I would I would say that, if you want to
Speaker 1: break down the music and the lyrics into proportions, I
Speaker 1: would say Eric was, you know, maybe the musical composer.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe the musical composer but of the lyrics would
Speaker 1: would be composed by him. I probably contributed one line
Speaker 1: or two during during the course of ten albums. So
Speaker 1: like when you talked about the first album, you talked
Speaker 1: about the instrumental second side. That was your thing. Did
Speaker 1: you actually compose that, or did he compose that, or
Speaker 1: did you do it together? It was I think I
Speaker 1: could give Andrew Powell who. Who? Who actually orchestrated it
Speaker 1: and made it, made it performable. It was designed to be.
Speaker 1: It was designed to echo a piece by Claude Debussy,
Speaker 1: who had written a piece called the House based on
Speaker 1: the same story on the foot of the house of us.
Speaker 1: I think it was unfinished and we we kind of
Speaker 1: borrowed from from Debussy in a couple of places and
Speaker 1: I think it's magical. I think it's a it's very debussy,
Speaker 1: if you if you know, if you know his music. Um,
Speaker 1: but it was we took a risk. Were, you know,
Speaker 1: seven or eight minutes of orchestral music opening the second
Speaker 1: side of an album. That that was pretty risky. I think. Now,
Speaker 1: ultimately there's a dispute with Erasta and you deliver a
Speaker 1: quick album to get out of the contract, which ultimately
Speaker 1: doesn't come out at that time. What went down around then? Um,
Speaker 1: Eric was always, always the businessman and you know, I
Speaker 1: I told you I never had a harsh word with
Speaker 1: Clive Davis, but I think, I think carrick probably did
Speaker 1: with Clive and with the business affairs people, and that
Speaker 1: the relationship went somewhat sour after the after the EV album,
Speaker 1: and the guy probably the gaudy album as well, and
Speaker 1: we just made an instrumental contractual obligation album and that
Speaker 1: ultimately resulted in a lawsuit which got settled out of
Speaker 1: court and we resigned. So there was a happy ending
Speaker 1: to it. But the album in question, the Sicilian Defense,
Speaker 1: is quite definitely my least favorite album of all time
Speaker 1: by any artist. Okay, so you make tales of mystery
Speaker 1: and imagination. To what degree you are you still getting
Speaker 1: calls to produce an engineer, and how do you handle those?
Speaker 1: I get get a lot of calls. I get I
Speaker 1: get sent, you know, CDs or sometimes a little memory
Speaker 1: six with people's music. All the time. There's there's no
Speaker 1: shortage of work for me. It should should I choose
Speaker 1: to take people up on it, but I keep busy
Speaker 1: with just the things I generate and but even back
Speaker 1: in the seventies, same thing. You were making the transition. Um, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I was. Yes, I I had a couple of production
Speaker 1: acts that I was successful with. Pilot was one John Miles,
Speaker 1: who we've already mentioned. I also did the three albums
Speaker 1: with El Stewart, which did very well. So I kept busy.
Speaker 1: I was never, never board. But you weren't saying now
Speaker 1: I'm an act, I don't want to produce records anymore,
Speaker 1: or did you eventually say that? Oh No, no, no,
Speaker 1: I was always even with the Alan Passon's project, I
Speaker 1: was the producer and that that was that was a given.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about third parties, third parties. Yeah, I was,
Speaker 1: I was. I was happy to be to take on
Speaker 1: production work with with other artists, but I couldn't take
Speaker 1: on everything that was offered, clearly because the project kept
Speaker 1: me busy and things like pilot, John Miles and Al
Speaker 1: Stewart took up a lot, a lot of my time. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we hit the twenty first century, you end up
Speaker 1: releasing a course for engineers. How does that come together
Speaker 1: and what exactly is it? It's called the arts and
Speaker 1: science of sound recording. We spent two years assembling a
Speaker 1: DVD course. The DVD was the was the format of
Speaker 1: choice as we prepared this, this series of videos. Um.
Speaker 1: It stemmed from a similar project that my partner in
Speaker 1: the in the venture, a British guy called Julian Kolbeck,
Speaker 1: who who I first met as a as a musician
Speaker 1: on a session for a band I was working with.
Speaker 1: Um He had done a similar um educational project on
Speaker 1: on VHS tape, probably probably a full ten twelve years
Speaker 1: earlier and he just came to me and said would
Speaker 1: you like to make a you know, a video recording course,
Speaker 1: and I said Yeah, I'd love to do that. He said,
Speaker 1: I don't think it'll take very long. We'll probably we'll
Speaker 1: get an advance from somebody and it will take about
Speaker 1: three months to put together. We didn't realize that it
Speaker 1: would be two years and nine hours of of educational stuff,
Speaker 1: but it was fun to do and it's still very
Speaker 1: much alive. It's still being used not only by interested
Speaker 1: individuals but by bye by schools, colleges you know, that
Speaker 1: have engineering courses. So if one watches it, what will
Speaker 1: they take from it? Hopefully, um give them a better
Speaker 1: idea of what goes on in a recording studio. Uh,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think a lot of people think the
Speaker 1: recording studio is this mysterious place where you you go
Speaker 1: and play your song and then out pops a CD
Speaker 1: out of a slot, you know, at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the studio equipment. You know, people, people just don't really
Speaker 1: don't really understand what goes on. Uh, it's it's very
Speaker 1: difficult to represent a recording session in such a way
Speaker 1: that it's that. It's but it's interesting. I mean, being
Speaker 1: a fly on the wall in a in a studio
Speaker 1: recording is it's incredibly uninteresting. It's it just seems that
Speaker 1: the tape keeps rolling and everything sounds the same and
Speaker 1: it goes on and on and on. But we we
Speaker 1: try in this series, I think, to to you know,
Speaker 1: to take to lift the veil and show people and
Speaker 1: what really happens. You know, how how a vocal is
Speaker 1: recorded and compiled, how you achieve certain drum sounds, keyboard sounds,
Speaker 1: guitar sounds, um it's and it's it's designed to be
Speaker 1: useful to two novices as well as experience engineers. So
Speaker 1: we we, we, we worked quite hard to try and
Speaker 1: make it entertaining as well as informative. How did you
Speaker 1: end up living in the United States? When did you
Speaker 1: come here and how did you end up in Santa Barbara?
Speaker 1: I had bought a house in Montesito, which is a
Speaker 1: adjunct to to Santa Barbara, back in the nineties, with
Speaker 1: my ex wife and my two sons. Um It became
Speaker 1: clear that my ex wife was not was not comfortable
Speaker 1: in America, so we went back to the UK. Yeah, AH, then,
Speaker 1: and soon, soon after uh, we got back. I I
Speaker 1: met Lisa, my my my now wife, and we I
Speaker 1: decided I wanted to to live with her and she
Speaker 1: had to two daughters and she came to she came
Speaker 1: to the UK for a while. We we lived in
Speaker 1: a house just outside London. You met you met her were.
Speaker 1: I met her in Maryland. Maryland, a big shard there
Speaker 1: in Mary Maryland. I'm trying to think of the name.
Speaker 1: It merryweather post. Merryweather Post, you got it, that's the one.
Speaker 1: That's where we met. And so when we decided we
Speaker 1: were going to live together, we we considered all the options.
Speaker 1: I think we all said California was the most likely
Speaker 1: and because of my previous experience in Santa Barbara, I
Speaker 1: really liked. I really liked Santa Barbara and and do
Speaker 1: to this day. So in two thousand and three we
Speaker 1: got married and the rest is history. And how did
Speaker 1: you end up deciding to build a studio? I really
Speaker 1: did not build a studio to the same specification as
Speaker 1: the one I now have. Until until I did build
Speaker 1: this one, I I was just working in rooms in
Speaker 1: a in our in our house. A valid path was
Speaker 1: just literally done in a two adjacent bedrooms and I
Speaker 1: think I resisted because I knew, I knew how expensive,
Speaker 1: you know, building a studio is, and the one I'm
Speaker 1: speaking from now is, no exceptions, cost a great deal
Speaker 1: of money. But I'm I'm really glad that I did
Speaker 1: do it because the the work that I did in
Speaker 1: the early, early years of my solo careers Um I think,
Speaker 1: suffered through not having a decent studio. But I'm really,
Speaker 1: really delighted with the results I'm getting in this in
Speaker 1: this new studio. Now, if one goes online there's a
Speaker 1: whole website for the studio. It seems like it's in
Speaker 1: the middle of nowhere in Santa Barbara. How did you
Speaker 1: end up with that property? Is a continuous with your
Speaker 1: home property what's the story there? Um, the home studios
Speaker 1: have always has always been. Yeah, Home Studios Really, really
Speaker 1: not very not very extravagant equipment wise at all. If
Speaker 1: I if I, if I needed a proper studio, I would,
Speaker 1: I would go go to a commercial studio to work.
Speaker 1: So it became it was more of a sort of
Speaker 1: environment to listen to stuff, composed stuff. Um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really glad that I made the decision a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago to build, to build this new studio.
Speaker 1: I'm very, very, very happy with it and it's now
Speaker 1: state of the art because I've put this new system
Speaker 1: which everybody in the industry is talking about, Delby atmos. Okay,
Speaker 1: but the property. That's fun. Did you already own that property? Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: we bought. We bought this House in Oh five and
Speaker 1: we've been been there here ever since. But seventeen years
Speaker 1: in the same house. I've never done that before. The
Speaker 1: studio is not attached to the house you live in. Correct, correct,
Speaker 1: it's it's an outbuilding. You know, if you go online,
Speaker 1: it seems, and I've got another email, seems like you're
Speaker 1: looking for third parties to book your studio. Are you
Speaker 1: into what degree or people using it and I regarded
Speaker 1: as being fairly, fairly new as a as a commercial studio. Um.
Speaker 1: I've I've had one or two clients in here, um
Speaker 1: that seemed to enjoy themselves. It's Um, I I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't let anybody in. I like to meet them
Speaker 1: and talk to them and find out what they want
Speaker 1: to do rather than just do it on a on
Speaker 1: a strictly business basis. I won't do that and I'll
Speaker 1: only I'll only have clients in here, if you can
Speaker 1: call them clients, when I know that I'm not not
Speaker 1: in need of studio time myself. Now, you know, so
Speaker 1: many studios have gone out of business. There's not only
Speaker 1: the song costs of the building and equipment. You have
Speaker 1: to continue to update the equipment. There's ongoing equipment costs.
Speaker 1: Has that been your experience? How you know you have
Speaker 1: to budget for that? Yes, I mean it's not just
Speaker 1: recording equipment, it's musical equipment. There's always a new scent,
Speaker 1: there's always a new microphones to check out, which baffles
Speaker 1: me because you know I've I've been making perfectly good,
Speaker 1: good recordings with with my existing mic collection. I really
Speaker 1: don't need any new ones. Because they're they're never substantially
Speaker 1: different from the best microphones in my in my cupboard. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a certain need to budget for new stuff,
Speaker 1: but I'm just as likely to buy a new scent
Speaker 1: or a new guitar as I am to buy a
Speaker 1: new preempt for the studio. So, prior to the Internet era,
Speaker 1: the business was cohesive. There were a limited number of labels.
Speaker 1: If you were on a major label you were far
Speaker 1: down the food chain. So at this point in time,
Speaker 1: do you feel part of the larger business or you
Speaker 1: really just in the Alan Parsons Business? MHM, I've I've
Speaker 1: kind of lost touch with the industry. I Um, when
Speaker 1: I was making albums with Ariston, we were constantly in
Speaker 1: touch with press people, marketing people, so on and so Um.
Speaker 1: Having said that, I'm I'm doing the occasional interview to
Speaker 1: promote the album which comes out this week. Um, but
Speaker 1: really it's not not, not a strong relationship with with
Speaker 1: labels anymore. Of course, for live shows I have to
Speaker 1: deal with agents, promoters and that kind of stuff, but
Speaker 1: in terms of the recording industry, not, not, not very
Speaker 1: in tune with it, with what's going on. Don't don't
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time listening to modern music and
Speaker 1: you keep in touch with all the people from the past,
Speaker 1: or you're pretty much a homebody just doing your own thing.
Speaker 1: I tried to. I try to stay in touch the
Speaker 1: people I've worked with in the past. John, of course,
Speaker 1: I've already mentioned, died sadly a few months ago. We
Speaker 1: were we were always good friends, always in touch with
Speaker 1: each other. Um, David Pat from Ambrogier has been a
Speaker 1: good friend ever since the ever since the first album,
Speaker 1: or my first album and his first album, which were
Speaker 1: released close to each other. Colin Blunt Stone, I bumped
Speaker 1: bump into now and again. Last time I saw him
Speaker 1: was on a cruise, you know, music cruise. Um, I
Speaker 1: never saw Arthur Brown again after after tales of mystery,
Speaker 1: but there we are. Um, yeah, I mean I I
Speaker 1: try to try to keep in touch with people who
Speaker 1: are ultimately responsible in part to my success. So I
Speaker 1: would always be grateful for that. Well, you have this
Speaker 1: new album, Alan. I wish you continued success and thanks
Speaker 1: so much for taking the time to talk to me.
Speaker 1: You're very welcome, Bob. Thank you. Look forward to hearing
Speaker 1: this on the you bet. Until next time, this is
Speaker 1: Bob leftslet's h