The album reached No 38 in the Billboard chart and earned the duo a contract with Arista Records. "It did well, and it paved the way for the future." "Everything about it was right," said Parsons. It had taken nearly two years to complete, and established a blueprint for the Alan Parsons Project with its lush orchestral passages and piano-based compositions. In 1976 this was released as Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Woolfson perceived that the two of them could combine their skills, and for their first endeavour they took an idea Woolfson had been developing for some time, an album based on the stories of Edgar Allan Poe. He had a shrewd eye for talent: his first clients were Carl Douglas of Kung Fu Fighting fame and Parsons.Ī protege of George Martin, Parsons had worked as an engineer and producer at Abbey Road with the Beatles, the solo Paul McCartney and Pink Floyd, earning a Grammy nomination for his work on Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. Woolfson also tried his hand at record production, then branched into management. Oldham offered him a publishing contract with his label Immediate Records, which led to Woolfson's songs being recorded by artists including Marianne Faithfull, Chris Farlowe and Frank Ifield. He found work as a pianist on the session circuit and was spotted by the Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham.
He never underwent any formal musical training.Īn attempt to become a chartered accountant ended when one of his superiors told him he would be "better off as an apprentice in the circus", whereupon Woolfson decamped to London and set his sights on the music business. One of his uncles was a classical pianist, which inspired Woolfson, but after finding music lessons baffling, he carried on playing by ear. Born into a Jewish family, near Glasgow's Charing Cross station, he was brought up in the city's Pollokshields district.
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