The Alan Parsons Project

The Alan Parsons Project
Left to right: Eric Woolfson, Alan Parsons; the nucleus of the "Project"
Background information
Origin	Glasgow, Scotland, London, England
Genres	Progressive rock,progressive pop,soft rock
Years active	1975–1990
Labels	Charisma, Arista
Associated acts	Pilot, Lenny Zakatek, Keats
Past members	Alan Parsons Eric Woolfson

The Alan Parsons Project were a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson surrounded by a varying number of session musicians and some relatively consistent band members such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalist Lenny Zakatek.

Behind the revolving line-up and the regular sidemen, the true core of the Project was the duo of Parsons and Woolfson. Parsons was an audio engineer by profession, but also a musician and a composer. A songwriter by profession, Woolfson was also a composer, a pianist, and a singer. Almost all songs on the band's albums are credited to "Parsons/Woolfson".

Alan Parsons met Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in the summer of 1974. Parsons had already acted as Assistant Engineer on the Beatles' albums Abbey Road and Let It Be, had recently engineered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, and had produced several acts for EMI Records. Woolfson, a songwriter and composer, was working as a session pianist; he had also composed material for a concept album idea based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

When Parsons asked Woolfson to become his manager, he accepted and subsequently managed Parsons' career as a producer and engineer through a string of successes, including Pilot, Steve Harley, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and the Hollies. Parsons commented at the time that he felt frustrated in having to accommodate the views of some of the musicians, which he felt interfered with his production. Woolfson came up with the idea of making an album based on developments in the film industry, where directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick were the focal point of the film's promotion, rather than individual film stars. If the film industry was becoming a director's medium, Woolfson felt the music business might well become a producer's medium.