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Music

Alan Parsons' pop secret

By SEAN DALY
Published April 9, 2006

He helped pave Abbey Road.

He helped motivate Michael Jordan. 

He helped stoners everywhere waste great chunks of life trying to synch up Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with The Wizard of Oz. 

And heck, when name-checked by both Homer Simpson and Dr. Evil, he even helped The Simpsons and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me make some pretty good jokes. 

The "he" in question is Alan Parsons, who brings his namesake Alan Parsons Project to Clearwater's Ruth Eckerd Hall Friday. * And at the risk of insulting his smarts - talking on the phone from his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., he is very brainy, very dry, very British - the 57-year-old prog-rock pioneer has had a Forrest Gumpian knack for being in the middle of major pop-culture moments.

Now, now, I know what you're thinking: In these days of EZ-Bake pop hits, such horrid hyphenates as "prog-rock" and "art-rock" are sleeper holds, conversation killers, bo-ring.

But Parsons made prog- and art-rock palatable, bridging the gap between indecipherable babble and genuine melodious goodness.

Even more, his lush-'n'-synthy signature sound, featured on hits by Al Stewart, the Hollies and his own band, was one of the great influences on '70s and '80s British pop - and the Chicago Bulls.

* * *

About those Beatles:

After realizing that his childhood fantasy of folk-rock stardom wasn't going to pan out - he was an ace on guitar, piano and flute, but a questionable singer - a teenage Parsons finagled an apprentice job at the EMI record label, and it was a doozy:

A tape operator at Abbey Road Studios.

Where he'd be working for the Beatles.

Who'd be working on 1969's Abbey Road.

Gulp.

"A tape op's job is to keep his mouth shut and speak when he's spoken to," says Parsons. "I was just there, in awe, watching it all happen, communicating more with (producer) George Martin and Geoff Emerick, the engineer, than with the band."

To this day, his memory of working with the Fab Four is sprinkled in fantasy dust. Ask him about his greatest contribution to one of the best albums of all time and he chuckles, "Not erasing anything!"

(He also fetched the lads tea. "Especially late at night," he says, "when the canteen staff had gone home.")

The Abbey Road credit allowed Parsons to jump from tape operator to engineer, a role he'd play on two Paul McCartney solo albums and several hits by the Hollies, including the incandescently wooshy The Air That I Breathe.

With his rep as a sonic genius growing, Parsons soon landed the gig that would earn him his first Grammy nomination: engineer on Pink Floyd's 1972 art-rock space-out Dark Side of the Moon, also concocted at Abbey Road Studios. Without the high-tech equipment found in today's studios, Parsons improvised, using 8- and 16-track recording machines to layer voices, instruments and echo effects.

All to help make Pink Floyd sound like Pink Floyd.

"The traditional role of the engineer is more technical," says Parsons, who would soon use his Floyd cred to elevate himself to producer. "You know, choice of mikes, plugging everything in, getting a good balance. Whereas the producer is more responsible for performance, choice of material, arrangement. As soon as I became producer, I took on the engineering role as well. I've always engineered everything I've produced.

"You could interpret (being both producer and engineer) as a lust for power," he adds. "But it's actually just a practicality. It's easier not to have to convey a concept to an engineer when you can just do it yourself."

The signature Parsons sound is not unlike Floyd's: clean and tight, ethereal, dreamy but distant. Whereas most proggy bands want listeners to tune in and drop out, Parsons also wants people to sing along. Listen to a soft-rock station on the way to work, and chances are good Parsons' lush, airy sound will find you. He produced and engineered Al Stewart's Year of the Cat and Time Passages, and Pilot's Magic (Sing along: "Oh, oh, oh, it's magic! You know, never believe it's not so.")

And then, of course, there's his own collective. Sure, the Alan Parsons Project did some nutty stuff - 1975 debut disc Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a sonic salute to Edgar Allan Poe - but under the guidance of their guru, they also uncorked some of the most delicious art-pop hits of the '70s and '80s: Games People Play (Sing along: "Where do we go from here, now that all other children are growin' up?"), Time, and Don't Answer Me.

In 1984, Parsons had his biggest album, Eye in the Sky, and his biggest hit, the Top 10 title track. The extended version of Eye in the Sky features a tingly, slow-building instrumental preface called Sirius - or, if you're from the Windy City, it's known as the Chicago Bulls intro music during the Jordan-led championships in the '90s.

A knob-twiddling Brit and a high-flying NBA guard make for strange bedfellows, but Sirius' place in Jordanian history certainly begs the question: Hey, Alan, don't you feel partially responsible for His Airness' royal reign?

"Yes, I do," Parsons says with a laugh. "I met Jordan once . . . He's very tall. It was at a press conference. I tried to say who I was. And he went 'Oh great, man. Nice to meet you.' I really don't think it sunk in.

"By the way," he adds, "The reason I mention he's very tall is 'cause I'm very tall, too. I'm 6 foot 5."

At the upcoming Clearwater show, Parsons will use 36 musicians to uncork a whopper version of Sirius- that is, a six-piece band and a 30-piece orchestra. He says the Project will perform several cuts from Parsons' 2004 "solo" disc, A Valid Path. But rest assured: "We do all the hits, too. That's what they're there for."

Parsons, who never sang lead on any of the Project's hits, doled out vocal responsibilities to such Project regulars as Eric Woolfson, Lenny Zakatek and David Paton. He no longer works with most of his old mates, however, so these days, new frontman P.J. Olsson takes "the bulk of the songs." The man himself might even croon a tune or two. "I've come out of the closet," he laughs.

Parsons says that "there was a rumor floating around that we'd be playing Pink Floyd songs on this tour." That's not on the agenda, he adds, but that won't stop certain fans from asking.

Nor will it stop them from grilling him about The Oz Myth.

Ah yes: Over the years, select Floyd fans have insisted that, when played over The Wizard of Oz, Dark Side of the Moon obliquely tells the story of the Tin Man & Co.'s trek to Emerald City. For instance, during On The Run, Toto wags his tail in time to the song's "clicking" sound effect, plus the pooch's ears perk up at the explosion at song's end.

And so on.

Before I can even finish asking the question - were you guys huge fans of Dorothy? - Parsons cuts me off.

"It's not The Wizard of Oz," he chuckles about Dark Side's source material. "It's Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."

Sean Daly can be reached at sdaly@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8467. His blog is at www.sptimes.com/blogs/popmusic.

PREVIEW
Alan Parsons Project performs
at 8 p.m. Friday at Ruth Eckerd Hall, 1111 McMullen-Booth Road, Clearwater. $37.50-$60.
(727) 791-7400 or (813) 287-8844
or (727) 898-2100.
 

[Last modified April 8, 2006, 23:09:01]