Alan Parsons (Credit - Simon Lowery)
In this segment of a new Strange Brew interview, Alan Parsons takes us back to the formative years of his career at Abbey Road Studios. Parsons recounts his firsthand experiences working with the Beatles during their Let It Be and Abbey Road sessions. He also shares insights into his key role as an engineer on Pink Floyd’s groundbreaking album The Dark Side of the Moon, reflecting on the innovative approaches that contributed to one of the most influential records in music history.
What do you think were your greatest lessons working in that early period as a tape-op and engineer at Abbey Road?
Just watching the talent that existed in the engineers and producers. I worked with the greatest, with Geoff Emerick, the engineer of Sgt Pepper and Abbey Road. And George Martin, I kind of modelled myself on the way he worked. As well as the Beatles he had Cilla Black, Matt Monroe, various others. But he was always respected by all those artists. And that respect worked in both directions. He respected them. They respected him.
I tried to not be a dictator, not be a guy screaming and shouting that it wasn’t right or the part was wrong, whatever. I was always receptive to incoming ideas. I used to joke that you would get the band or the artists to have the impression that they thought of all the good ideas, even if it was your idea or my idea, is what I’m saying.
Did watching Peter Jackson’s Get Back change your perception of that period? Did it bring any memories back?
It did, actually. I was so, so grateful to Peter Jackson. We actually met a few months before the movie came out. He showed me some of the clips that he’d rescued, which did not feature in the original Let It Be movie. Not only did he find clips, but he was kind enough to put my name on the screen, saying Alan Parsons – tape operator. I’m very proud of that. I said to myself, at last, living proof that I was there. The original movie didn’t make that clear.
Given that you became familiar with the setup for the Beatles recording process, do you have any observations of what the technical challenges were for the rooftop concert?
It was very challenging. The control room was in the basement of the building. So the mic cables were tremendously long from roof to the basement. So we had to run cables up the stairwell. And that was quite an effort. But thankfully, EMI, the company behind Abbey Road Studios, had a mobile unit where often the hall where the orchestra or the soloist was playing would be quite a distance from wherever they were monitoring.
So those cables existed and we got them to work. Everything worked out. But it was an exciting day. The Beatles seemed much happier than they had been stuck in the studio, trying to get good takes of the same songs in a more controlled environment. They just seemed to shine when they were up on the roof. And that adrenaline that came out from that session was very evident. They were enjoying it, for sure.
EMI, in a way, seemed to have the perfect apprenticeship. You were able to build up, working the tape library to be a tape operator to be assistant engineer, engineer. It seems to be the perfect way for you to get a grounding of how the studio works.
Yeah, it was actually an unusual request on the part of George Martin and Glyn Johns. They were short staffed at the Apple Studio. So they called me and asked who was available and I was one of them. Down I went and started tape opping, recording every moment of every song, changing reels as fast as I could when the tape ran out. And then the rooftop session itself, I was up there just making sure that nothing broke down. We were fortunate, nothing actually broke as far as I remember during the rooftop session. There I was watching the Beatles play live for the first time, it was quite an experience.
By the time of the Abbey Road album, you stepped up to be an engineer, how much you were involved in those sessions.
No, Abbey Road, I was still very junior. It was just the summer after. I’d originally started in October and the Let It Be sessions were, I think, January of 69. So I’d just turned 19 at that point. When the Abbey Road sessions came along that was the following summer, I was still a tape op. Can’t make any claim to be an engineer. Until later, I went on to engineer for Paul, of course, with Wings and did a number of records for him, ‘Hi Hi Hi’, ‘C Moon’, the Red Rose Speedway album.
In later years, we were actually neighbours. I had a place in Kent and his farm was no more than 10 miles away. So we socialised on occasion as well as working with each other professionally.
The sound effects and non -musical elements of The Dark Side of the Moon work so well. How did you and the group decide on each of those particular elements and then incorporate them into the final mix?
Most people remember the clocks, which introduced the song ‘Time’. I recorded those clocks in a local shop quite close to Abbey Road, an antique shop. It had a really good selection and I just got the boss of the shop to stop all the clocks. Then I recorded each one of them separately, both ticking and chiming. And then back in the studio, we put them on multitrack and made them all tick together, and then finally strike at the same time. It’s easy to do on a multitrack session, but it would have been even easier in today’s workstation world to just take each sound and line it up to happen at the same time. There were a number of other effects.
In fact the loop effect on ‘Money’. We just gathered a few different sounds, dropping a bag of money on the table, throwing money in the air. Tearing up paper, suggesting tearing up the money. One of those sounds was actually a telephone exchange sound. Completely unrelated to money, but there we go. Anyway, those seven samples we had to make into a continuous loop. Much of the song is in a time signature of seven beats in a bar, 7/4 time, which is very unusual.
So we compiled that loop to be continuous, and that would get recorded onto the multitrack. And the band would play to it. It was effectively the click track that they actually played the song to. There wasn’t a separate metronome or click track of any sort. They just played to that loop.
What are the positives and benefits of working in that analogue era? Because the sound of those records seems to be better than what we have now, but now you’ve got the benefit of unlimited tracks and digital recording.
I think if Dark Side of the Moon had been recorded today, it would have taken a month, not a year. Everything would have been quicker. And it was helped by the fact that the band were all getting on with each other, they were good friends back then. Sadly, that’s not the case today. They’re totally at each other’s throats. But no, it was a fun period. It was all analogue recording back then. Everything was done with tape. There were no digital delays or any digital effects.
Any effect that you had was done with tape. And a case in point would be the delays that you hear on the vocals on us. And then it’s all done with tape machines running, running slower than usual. And sometimes going through a multi-track tape. In fact, ‘Us And Them’ was done with eight track, using two tracks for every delay and then feeding back on itself to make it recycle.
Just for the record, you might want to let your listeners know that we recently remixed a live version of Dark Side of the Moon from 1994. I did that with David Gilmour’s full collaboration and approval in all three – stereo, 5.1 and Dolby Atmos. So brand new mixes of that concert and it’s got video. It’ll be released as a Blu-ray, I would imagine.
So whether it’s the Alan Parsons Project or the live version of Dark Side, that’s a way of almost future-proofing it for future generations to keep up with modern standards.
You can bet your life there’ll be 10 years from now something else new, I’m sure. But for the moment, yeah, we’re up to date.
Further information
The Alan Parsons Project, ‘Pyramid’, released 23rd August via Cooking Vinyl
Audio podcast of this interview coming soon
I have always LOVED Alan Parsons Project music. Doesn’t get enough air play or recognition.