He is a sound engineer who worked on some of the greatest albums ever created such as "The Beatles" "Abbey Road" and "Pink Floyd's" "Atom Heart Mother" and "The Dark Side Of The Moon".
He is also a great producer who has contributed greatly to the result of masterful albums like Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat".
And if that's not enough, then he's also a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist singer, and leader of the British progressive rock band "The Alan Parsons Project".
(Photo: Alan Parsons Project "I, Robot" 1977 US Arista Records)
So here are some interesting facts about Alan Parsons:
1. He was born in London, England on December 20, 1948.
2. Parsons has been attracted to music from an early age and even as a child he took flute and piano lessons.
3. In his teens, Parsons switched to guitar and began playing several musical bands at school.
4. In October 1967, he was hired as a tape duplicator at the "EMI" record company. Already in his early days at "EMI", he got to duplicate the recording of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" album, which led him to the conclusion that he wanted to be a recording technician. He said he had to find out what was the secret behind the amazing sounds of this album.
5. In 1969, Parsons served as an assistant voice technician at Abbey Road Studios and even got to work on one of Rock's greatest albums - "Abbey Road" by "The Beatles". Parsons was also involved as an assistant technician on the band's "Let it Be" album.
6. No doubt working with the Fab Four has pushed Parsons' career forward and he has also served as a recording technician on other major albums, such as "Wild Life" and "Red Rose Speedway" by Paul McCartney and "Wings" and of course masterpieces such as "Atom Heart Mother" and "The Dark Side Of The Moon" by "Pink Floyd", for which he won a Grammy nomination.
7. Parsons later moved into the producer's position and influenced the way Al Stewart's album "Year of the Cat" sounded, by adding jazzy motifs and instruments such as a saxophone.
8. In 1975, Parsons decided that he was also interested in creating music and formed "The Alan Parsons Project" with the Scottish musician Eric Woolfson.
9. In accordance with the band's name, Parsons and Woolfson's collaboration was run as a project and was based on the production and arrangement talents of the two, who over the years were assisted by other musicians.
10. The band's first album called "Tales of Mystery and Imagination", was released in 1976 and featured other musicians, such as Arthur Brown and John Miles. The album was a success and "Arista" record company signed the duo on a contract to release several more albums.
11. Up until 1987, the band released no less than ten albums, the most successful of which were "The Turn of a Friendly Card" from 1980 and "Eye in the Sky" from 1982.
12. After the release of "Gaudi" in 1987, Parsons and Woolfson began work on their next album "Freudiana". Disagreements arose between the two, mainly due to Woolfson's desire to change the album's direction into a musical. The album was eventually produced and recorded, but by the time it was released in 1990 the band had already disbanded and the album was finally released under Woolfson's name with Parsons appearing as the producer.
13. In 1993, Parsons released his first solo album "Try Anything Once". He later released five more solo albums, the most recent of which was "From the New World" from 2022.
(Photo: Daniel Knighton)
14. In 2014, the "Alan Parsons Project" released "The Sicilian Defense" - an instrumental album that was recorded in 1979 but was not released.
15. Concurrent with his solo career, Parsons is leading his live band "Alan Parsons Live Project".
16. Along with this ensemble, Parsons performed in Israel in 2010 and 2015 in a show that featured Aviv Geffen, Avi Singolda, and Marina Maximilian.
17. Following this show the collaboration between Geffen and Parsons was intensified and thus Parsons produce the fifth album "Blackfield" - the band of Geffen and Steven Wilson. The album was released in 2017 and is called "Blackfield V".
18. By the way, Parsons also served as a sound engineer on Steven Wilson's excellent album "The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories").
19. Parsons will return to Israel in 2017 for two performances and two years later in June 2019 for two more live shows, this time in collaboration with the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra. These shows produced a double live album named "One Note Symphony: Live In Tel Aviv", released in 2022.
20. Finally, we will mention another Israeli connection to Parsons - the musician, producer, and creator Guy Erez, who since 2010 has been part of Alan Parsons' ensemble, and serves as his bass player.