But since 1999 Parson has led the Alan Parsons Live Project, whose latest incarnation is captured on The Never Ending Show and next year's album from Tel Aviv, on which the group is joined by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. The Alan Parsons Project were a studio concern for their first 25 years. Otherwise it was just the same job, producing a hopefully perfect record each time." It felt like I was producing an album with songs that I helped to write - that was the main difference. But I left the virtuoso stuff to the people who did it best. I might've done a simple acoustic guitar part or a couple backing vocals or harmonies or stuff like that. "It was just a continuation of my role as a producer, really, and I performed very little. "I never real felt that I was an artist, per se," he adds. It paved the way for the sound that the Alan Parsons project would have in later years. "It just felt like a new thing, a new style, a new concept that the producer could be the artist, and I was very proud of that and got a lot of ideas off my chest in the making of that album. "It's still my favorite of the Alan Parsons Projects albums," he acknowledges. Parsons, now based in Santa Barbara, Calif., has an anniversary of his own coming up: Next year marks 45 years since Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the first release by the Alan Parsons Project, following his time at Abbey Road working on albums by Pink Floyd, Wings, the Hollies, Al Stewart, Ambrosia and others. "That's the definitive version as far as I'm concerned," he says of the latter. I'm sure the Peter Jackson version will be much more fun to watch."Īnd, in case you couldn't have guessed, Parsons considers himself "a firm supporter of the Naked version" of Let It Be as well as the original Glyn Johns mix included in the new Super Deluxe box set. maybe frustrated somewhat by the imperfection of actually playing all the songs live, with no overdubs, just them as a band. I think they were essentially enjoying the experience. "I don't think there was a genuinely bad vibe," Parsons says. Parsons expects that Get Back "is going to be a much happier experience than ," more accurately reflecting the sessions and the friendlier atmosphere in Apple's studio, with Billy Preston guesting on piano and organ. They were really having a good time on the rooftop." They performed so much better when there was an audience there to appreciate them than they did in the basement. "I already knew all the songs 'cause we'd been doing versions of them in the studio in the days leading up to the rooftop. He was positioned on the roof, tucked away near the gear but still caught by director Michael Lindsay-Hogg's film crew and photographers on the spot. "I was enjoying myself enormously," Parsons says. There was an array of cable running down the stairwell from the roof down to the basement where the main studio was." "I think it was only decided maybe the day before that we would run cables up to the rooftop and plug in all the mics. "It was a last-minute decision," Parsons says. The rooftop session was a highlight, he adds, despite the chaotic logistics surrounding it. And there I was, with the best job in the world, working with the greatest rock band in the world.
That's why Glyn Johns was brought in as an independent engineer and I was brought in as an independent second engineer. "They hadn't staffed their studio adequately yet. "I was in seventh heaven," he recalls now. A performing artist who put those ambitions aside to engineer at London's Abbey Road Studios, Parsons was drafted to help the Beatles during the January 1969 sessions that produced Let It Be once the group moved from Twickenham Film Studios to the basement of Apple Corps headquarters on Saville Road.