Alan Parsons

I went back yesterday and I read our interview that the first time I met you and I went to your previous home up in the hills there in Santa Barbara. It was 20 years ago that we first met.

Wow. Lisa and I probably just got married at that time. We just did our 20th anniversary so it must be around about that time.

Right. It was really fun to meet you then. I remember above the garage you had a temporary kind of mixing studio space set up with the [ASC] TubeTraps.

That's right. I actually recorded an album there. A Valid Path. It was my foray into the world of electronic music. The first time I actually used a hard disk recording system. I was terrified of it, as I thought, “Oh my god. What if my computer crashes? What if the hard disk breaks down?" So, I still backed up everything I did to TASCAM tapes.

No way! To TASCAM DA-88s?

Yeah, eight tracks at a time. I just saved everything just in case.

Wow.

I've always been a back up and back up the back up and back up the back up with the back up. [laughter]. Always been a believer in that.

Yeah. In the days of tape you'd have to get a second deck and do a full 24 or 16 channel backup right. If you're doing it.

Right.

Did you do that? I know that's kind of the story with The Dark Side of the Moon going way back. But, did you do that with the Alan Parsons Project stuff, like make backups of your basic tracks and…

Yeah we would always back up just to be just to be safe. But Abbey Road was lucky enough to have the machinery to do it. There was always the second machine. And when I progressed to Sony [PCM-] 3324, I always had two machines, so I could always go from one machine to the other.

Right.

And that was actually creatively good as well because you could bounce the chorus of a backing vocal say, and just put it in different places or what, from one machine to the other machine.

Right.

Of course it's a piece of cake now to do that in [Avid] Pro Tools. Just cut and paste and it's easy. But when it's a linear recording system it's much more difficult.

Oh yeah. I remember even taking like digital delays and flying a backing vocal into a digital delay that could hold it for a second and then punching it in on tape. Like play it back and punch it in.

Oh yeah. I was a great one for doing that. Especially when you run out of tracks. If you didn't have a track to put something on you’d do it. Literally a wild fly in of stuff.

Right.

To save tracks.

Well the change from the studio where you did A Valid Path to your ParSonics Studio now. That must have been a big undertaking to start building that up again building up a studio?

Yeah. It was. The control room of the new studio was originally a shed housing an electric generator. And there were actually two of them. Because the previous owner had allowed for the end of the world on December the first 1999.

No. Oh really? [laughter]

And had two huge generators. Probably enough to drive the city of Santa Barbara. [laughter] So, that and a shipping container full of survival food. Dried food. He thought that the whole world was going to collapse.

Well, it took a number of years but it did in other ways.

Yeah, everybody got to midnight on that day. "Well, we're still here." Nothing’s happened.

You must have been accumulating recording equipment over the years? Had a lot of that been in storage at that point?

I had accumulated microphones. Not so much in the way of outboard gear. I had a Studer [D19] mic preamp. I had some Aphex stuff. But I'm pretty happy usually just using plug-ins these days. I've got a lovely fake Fairchild [UTA UnFairchild 670M II], which sounds great. I'm using that. I'm very happy with a Universal [Audio] front end. My comps and limiters. But, in general I'm just doing everything – not so much “in the box”, but just using the Pro Tools system to the max.

Are you out of [Steinberg] Nuendo now?

Yeah, I'm long gone from that. Although I'm using [Steinberg] WaveLab for surround mastering. Have you been doing surround stuff? Atmos stuff?

Not at all. I haven't had any demand for it from clients. I keep wondering when someone's going to ask.

I'm waiting for the phone to ring too. I mean…

Here we are.

It seems that Bob Clearmountain [Tape Op #129], Steven Wilson [#143]… Those guys…

Elliot Scheiner.

Yeah. …they got all the work. I don't know if they think, “Oh, he's also a rock star. He wouldn't be interested.” I am! I want to do that stuff. I enjoy mixing in Atmos and in 5.1. I really do.

And is it pretty interesting to go back to the Alan Parsons Project records and with these reissues and…

It is yeah. Well I don't know if you knew that two weeks from now, the Pyramid album is coming out in a box set.

I got a pre-release so I got to listen to a bunch of the tracks. It's amazing, with all of Eric [Woolfson]'s demos. All the bonus tracks, outtakes, and pretty early takes.

You got to hear it though, that's good.

Yeah. Fantastic.

They're doing a playback in London. Got the press and journalists going to hear it in a studio in London with me.

Is that going to be the Atmos mix?

Yeah. I'll be doing Q&A by Zoom after that.

Right. When you're pulling those together to build a new mix or an Atmos mix, are there missing – like we just talked about flying in tracks when there's no tracks left – are there missing sources at times from things that were flown in even at mastering?

Oh yeah. There was missing stuff we had to recreate.

Yeah.

There was a bell sound that somehow got lost and a couple of other things, but I have a complete genius Pro Tools operator in the studio. His name is Noah Bruskin, and he's just an absolute master of Pro Tools. He's incredible.

Right.

And I feel like I'm back in the days where I was then, doing pure engineering. Literally pushing faders up and down, tape op behind me. And it feels like that again. It's great. It's really lovely.

It takes that part out of your mind so you can focus more on the sound and the music.

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. I envy people who do both but no thank you. I'm a hands-on faders guy.

Speaking of that we both have Rupert Neve Designs 5088 consoles.

Right. Right, so we do.

Yeah.

I'm so pleased with it. I think it sounds ridiculously good.

Yeah. I did the same kind of research. I've got console number 27, so I didn't get the Shelford color or anything either. I don't get the darker gray. At the point when I was looking, I felt like there just weren't that many analog consoles being built of this high quality.

Right. And it's arguably the last console that had his [Rupert Neve] design on it before he died.

Right. I really enjoy using that for mixing and I do a lot of mixing in the box and then I go back to the console and I'm just like it is really something much better to me to my ear.

It's a little bit of a frustration because Dolby Atmos, you can do it all analog what they call track based as opposed to – object that's the word – object based or track based.

Right.

You can't mix the two at least not yet. But you essentially, what I've had to do is I balanced everything up for Atmos and then Noah literally matches it and puts it in the box.

Right. When you're working on something like the Pyramid box set were you involved from the beginning of like sourcing tracks? I know that Eric's family also, the daughters went through the tracks and found stuff too.

Yeah. We listened to everything. Sally [Woolfson]'s got all the tapes in her possession, so she knows what's there and then she dug out all the cassette tapes that Eric made of the early versions of the songs and stuff.

Right.

But it was a really nostalgic thing to hear the multitracks again. I enjoyed it very much. To a large extent we went back to the tapes and matched the stereo version, the original stereo version. We didn't bother with a new stereo mix for the box set because it was as “high def” as it could be – it was analog.

That's kind of what you were known for too, that those records sounded great in that era. They were like pushing the boundaries of really clear, well-produced audio, in my opinion.

Well, I should accept that as a compliment.

Why would you need to remix it? Steven Wilson got involved in remixing the Yes records and King Crimson…

Yeah. All the ones I would have liked to do.

Well, me too.

But particularly The Who. I think The Who stuff is out there in box sets as well. I would have loved to have done that.

Yeah. That would be a real treat. But I would think a lot of times, do we need a new stereo mix? Sometimes you can gain clarity. I think there are some records, like Yes’ Relayer, that was a little murky sounding in a certain way.

Yeah. There's good new technology out there to do stuff like that.

Certainly.

But it's really fun to, like I said it's a trip down memory lane. It's nostalgic to hear that stuff again. You hear all the, on outtakes, you hear all the joking around.

With Colin [Blunstone]?

Oh, yeah, you heard that? Yeah, that was funny. Rod Argent became ill a couple weeks back.

Right. I heard that.

So, I don't know what Colin's plans are. We had just played together, not together on stage, but we did this on The Blue Cruise, which featured The Zombies and us.

Nice.

So we're in touch. It's good to see him. We seem to see him once a year these days.

He’s still got that voice.

Yeah.

Amazing. Well some of the tracks, the bonus tracks in the box start with a bit of the backing track and then fade out and you hear just the orchestra or the choir. Were those your ideas?

Oh yeah. Yeah. If they weren't compiled at the time back in the 70s, I would have created them because I felt they were of interest. Solo choir, solo backing vocals, things like that. And it is fascinating. You really hear the work that went into the backing vocals. But from, I don't think Chris Rainbow had come into the picture at that time. So it would have been other session singers David Paton I know did a fair amount of backing vocals along with Eric. And I think even I did a couple of oohs and ahhs on the album.

Yeah.

Here and there.

And there's the one song you tried to, did the lead on too, just to see, the lead vocal.

Yeah. Yeah. I tried to resist that being included but Sally and the label thought it was a good addition so I let it go. I'm not very proud of it.

Well now...

As Eric would have been equally not proud of some of the performances on his demos.

Sure, sure.

It's a good piece of history uncovering the historical elements of the songs. It's interesting.

On the whole other side of that you've done new solo records out of your new studio last few years and obviously some live records you've probably finished up there. And has that been nice to have your own place to work out of this full fledge like this?

Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a real studio. So, yeah, I'm very comfortable there. But believe it or not, I’m still using the B&W speakers I had in London 25 years ago.

Right. I saw them on your list and I'm like and that's a very English engineer speaker to want to have isn't it?

There was a strong connection between B&W and Abbey Road and I think there probably still is.

Yeah.

No, I love those speakers and there's new speakers coming out every week it seems, but I'm happy. I'm comfortable and I can still get spare parts for them.

Yeah. That's a good thing. And you say there's a room fully set up for Atmos mixing of course now too, the control room?

Yeah. Yeah. It was surprisingly undisruptive if that's a word. We had to obviously run cables in the ceiling to get the upstairs speakers as we call them.

Yeah.

The side speakers were not a problem and we got a pretty good match for the 802 speakers with the models that we installed. And obviously they're not the same size, they don't have the three-way units in them, but they sound good. They match the existing five speakers well. Well one has to ask the question, "How many people are going to hear 11 speakers?" Who's going to put 11 speakers in their living room?

Yeah. I think it's an interim step. I got to hear some technology that's even a little further beyond Atmos at a place that was doing research. With the recordings they'd made for the multi-speaker arrays, I could feel like a drum set was over here. I'm sure that's going to start to become more tangible.

Was that binaural? Was it kind of a dummy head stuff?

No. Well they must use some kind of array to record it. I felt I could reach out and touch the acoustic bass.

Oh cool.

It was freaky.

And then there's The Sphere in Las Vegas that has thousands of speakers. I've yet to hear it, but I've heard mixed reports. Some professionals I’ve heard say it doesn't work and regular consumers said it's the best sound they've ever heard.

I think the future we'll be able to track somebody in a room and beam the audio to them.

Sounds like it might be some kind of brain implant to me. To make it happen.

This is the next Alan Parsons concept album. [laughter] Plugged In. Will there be a way just to beam the sound around a person's head?

Either we're wearing headphones all day or it's a brain implant. I don't know.

We're going to find out some decade down the line.

Have I mentioned Pink Floyd to you in this today?

No.

Well, I did another interview today. If you do two interviews back to back you forget what you've said and what you haven’t said. Anyway, I have remixed The Dark Side of the Moon live from a show in Earl’s Court in London in 1994. Requested by David Gilmour, which makes me feel really good. I've done stereo 5.1 and Atmos [mixes] of that.

Oh my gosh.

And that'll be out either the end of this year or early next year.

Right. That's from The Division Bell era tour.

Yeah it is previously released but David felt it needed a new lease on life.

Yeah, they famously took you on the road to mix that live a number of years ago as well.

Yeah, believe it or not this concert, it's 30 years ago, and it's much longer ago that I was mixing live in venues. 1972 or 1973; it's a long time ago.

Was that fun to revisit that album in that respect?

Yeah, I wasn't particularly familiar with this particular show. I'd heard the Pulse record, and I wasn't hugely impressed with it. It's a really, really good performance. Perhaps helped by the new mix. No, it sounds really good. The performances are, particularly the vocal performance, David was completely flawless in the show.

Richard Wright sounded great back then too, as well. It's just amazing.

Yeah, so that was one thing I've been doing. Obviously the Pyramid remixes, took some time. I'm not sure that I've got any other particular recording plans for the rest of this year. At least not yet. But there are gigs and there are other business ventures I'm involved with. I'm sure you're familiar with the ASSR website. The Art and Science of Sound Recording.

Right right.

We've been doing master classes. We did one just a couple of weeks ago.

At your studio?

Yeah, and they got to hear some of the Pink Floyd stuff as well as my stuff. So they were in heaven.

And you offer up different types of classes right? Like some are mixing, some are tracking, is that correct?

Yeah, even if you have an agenda for the beginning of the day it ends up being something completely different.

How many people attend this?

Fifteen. It's not a big control room so yeah it was a bit of a squeeze but we managed.

You've done quite a bit of like educational outreach type work in these 20 years. Has that been rewarding for you to make yourself think about how to teach it?

Yeah, I feel very good about it. It's been a large part of what I do recently. Dealing with the various activities of ASSR and these master classes, and we'll probably be doing another one before the end of the year. It takes preparation.

You said you start the class and it just kind of morphs. Is that just based on people's interests that are attending?

Yeah. Sometimes the questions go off at a complete tangent from what we're doing. I might be recording a vocal, and they say, "Hey, how did you get that sound on Dave's guitar on Money?" Pink Floyd and The Beatles are always top of the list in any interview or any session I do. Right. I was there so it's obvious why.

Well yeah, now we finally get to see you in Get Back.

Oh yeah, that's right. Thank you, Peter Jackson. He actually pulled out shots that were lost from the original Let It Be film, and not only did he find shots he put my name on the screen. Well, that was great!

An average music fan might not know that you were actually a tape op early on, an assistant. I know you're a big fan of The Who, and Who's Next  you've mentioned is one of your favorite records. And there you are, few years before that, working with [Who producer] Glyn Johns working with The Beatles. It's fun to see him at work and his dynamics with pushing and pulling on the band. Were there things that you picked up on when you were young then and watching him work?

I don't think any engineer or producer, other than George Martin, would tell the band what to do. Yeah I just don't think – you didn't order The Beatles around. But he'd have various thoughts; "That was a great take, but I like two takes ago better." Things like that. I remember George Martin was in and out all the time, because he was busy doing other things like Cilla Black or Matt Monro. But oh, it was fascinating. Believe it or not, I've never been face to face with Glyn since then.

Really?

Since the rooftop days.

That's amazing.

But obviously, I've followed his career. I'm curious to know if he's followed mine or even if he remembers that I was the guy that he was walking right by. I remember he sent me out for cigarettes, and that there's a famous story of him sending me out to pick up nylons, pantyhose, to put over the mics?

For pop filters?

For pop filters, yeah. I've told the story so many times you don't you won't want to re-print it but I think in the store where I bought the nylons they thought I was very odd.

They're wondering, "Why?"

They asked what size, and I said, "It doesn't matter." I think they thought I was going to pull it over my head and rob a bank

That's too good. I think Glyn’s recordings were just fantastic, too. He really pioneered how rock recordings were going to be done through that era in a lot of ways.

Yeah, he had pretty radical ideas about drum mic'ing, which was very interesting. I've tried it out on occasion but not had as much luck as he has.

Me neither! I've tried it over and over I can't get it to work like that. I listen to Who's Next and mine don't sound that good. But I don't have those songs or Keith either, did I.

Well, I was going to say, "You didn't have Keith Moon!"

Yeah, oh my gosh. Do you have more educational things coming up? You mentioned there might be some more courses.

Nothing actually on the calendar yet, but I think there will be probably in the days leading up to Christmas. I'm going to New York in December, and David Gilmour is playing at Madison Square Garden, so I'm hoping to catch him there and say hi after all this time.

I've got tickets for him at the Hollywood Bowl, so I'll be down for that. Well Alan, it's been really great to chat and thanks so much.

Well, thanks so much and I hope you're doing well.