Alan Parsons gave the Delhi audience a taste of the 70s progressive rock music recently. He spoke to I Kaur
He is known as the man with the golden touch and is often remembered for his work with The Beatles on let It Be and Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. But Alan Parsons prefers himself to be referred to as the man who still creates the “then fashionable concept album.” He was in the Capital recently on his live Project 2013 tour at the Johnnie Walker: The Journey Festival. Talking about how he got onto starting his own The Alan Parsons Project, he said, “It was just an effort to start an album with no particular artist involved entirely. It was probably the first-of-its-kind and we took on a large number of different singers. So it was a band with no front man as such. I think it was heavily influenced by the fashionability of concept albums in the 70s. It is less fashionable now (laughs).”
At the concert, Alan was seen playing some of his hits of the past. According to him, if “we didn’t play Eye In The Sky, the audience would have probably asked for their money back.” However, he did play the Project’s new single which was recently released in Europe, Fragile. “We played a total of 20 songs for about an hour and 40 minutes,” he added.
Apart from the single, Alan’s mystery album, The Sicillian Defence is, too, set to release as a part of their Box Set. Alan feels that people should not expect much from it. “This album will release in March. I hate to say it but I’m not hugely proud of it. It is interesting though and is in good academic interest of fans. But it is in the Box Set because it makes it complete. I’ve made sure it’s not a separate album because it is largely instrumental and more like demo material. We have much better work,” he said.
Alan also worked with Steven Wilson recently on The Raven that Refused to Sing. He elaborated, “He is one of the last remaining genuine progressive rock artistes we have today. He approached me because he wanted to record in the 70s style and I was delighted to do that. The album did well and I hope to work with him again.”
Being a sound engineer, Alan doesn’t like the way the world has evolved into using audio formats like MP3. He shared, “We just released a single in Europe but we live in an age of downloads now so I don’t think it will be a physical single, people will just download it. I’m not a big fan of that. We seem to have lost the word high-fi today. It’s dropped out of our vocabulary when it comes to music because people are always in a hurry to download and they want a song in 10 seconds. That is such bad quality music. I think the days of MP3s are numbered. People will soon realise that they have been missing so much because the quality of music is much better.”
Alan is fond of Indian classical music, too, he said. “I’m only familiar with Pandit Ravi Shankar and classical music. I love the sitar and the tanpura. In fact, I took a set of tabla home with me last time. I can’t play it but it looks nice in my studio,” he added. Recently, the sound star has become interested in acting. “I’m hoping that before I die I get a small part in a film,” he signed off.