It was the last week of March in 1984 that I became an Alan Parsons Project fan. “Don’t Answer Me” was climbing the charts, eventually becoming a top 20 hit on the Billboard Hot 100. I knew of the Project before that – “Damned if I Do” and “Games People Play” were album rock staples and “Eye in the Sky” had been a huge pop hit (the biggest of the Project’s career) a couple years before. However, I hadn’t plunked down change for an APP album – until that week when I took the leap and grabbed up not just Ammonia Avenue, which featured “Don’t Answer Me,” but also The Best Of collection which had been released just a few months earlier.
A year later I would joyously plump for 1985’s Vulture Culture and a year after that for Stereotomy. As I was prone to do when discovering music in the ‘80s, I started dipping into the back catalog. Beyond the hits, I stumbled across gems like “Old and Wise” and “Turn of a Friendly Card.” Most amusingly though was, in May 1986 when I was anticipating a new album by Styx frontman Dennis DeYoung. I fell in love with this song on the radio that I thought was surely by him. I was wrong – it turned out to be “Breakdown,” from the nearly-decade old APP album I, Robot.
I learned the requisite back story necessary to claim a band as a new favorite. It turns out the Project’s namesake did engineering work on classic albums such as The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon. However, Alan Parsons wasn’t alone in the creation of those prog-lite concept albums forged from 1976 to 1987 that sold over 40 million albums worldwide. The group owed as much to Eric Woolfson – a songwriter, keyboardist, singer, and manager who lent his chops to some of the group’s best-known songs such as the aforementioned “Eye in the Sky” and “Don’t Answer Me.”
Following 1987’s Gaudi, the Project disappeared for three years, returning in 1990 with Freudiana. The thing confusingly was not credited to anyone, suggesting that it was a new group called Freudiana. However, this Eric Woolfson-helmed project was clearly the Project with Parsons producing and credits including longtime APP players Ian Bairnson on guitar, Stuart Elliott on drums, and orchestral arrangements from Andrew Powell. John Miles and Chris Rainbow, who’d warbled on past-Project tunes, also put in appearances.
There was something different, though. Peppered with far more guests and stretched to twice the length of the average APP album, this felt more like a musical cast album. Sure enough, there in the liner notes was the statement that “the first stage production of Freudiana has its world premiere in December 1990 in Vienna.” Hmm. This was definitely a new direction for the band.
It proved to be a new direction, but for Woolfson, not Parsons. While Woolfson was eager to explore musical theater, it was the jumping off point for Parsons. The Project was no more. Woolfson went on to craft the musicals Gaudi (1995), Gambler (1996), and Poe (recorded 2003, premiered 2009). He also wrote the music and lyrics for 2007’s Dancing Shadows, which won for Best Musical at the Korean Tony Awards.
This year, I was overjoyed to stumble across The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was, an album from Woolfson that combined some unreleased material from the Project days alongside songs crafted for his musicals. Sadly, it would be Woolfson’s finale. As I scanned the various comments on Facebook this morning about who was headed off to work and who needed coffee and who wasn’t enjoying the weather, I stopped sharply upon a fan notice: Eric Woolfson had died of cancer at the age of 64 on December 2, 2009 – a date that will now, sadly, overshadow that wonderful week in March 1984 when I became a fan. Farewell, Eric. You will be missed.
“Somewhere in the midst of time/ When they ask you if you knew me
Remember that you were a friend of mine
As the final curtain lifts before my eyes/ When I’m old and wise.”
- “Old and Wise” – Alan Parsons Project
Click here to hear an early version of the song that featured Eric Woolfson’s guide vocal.
Also check out my page on the detailed history of the Alan Parsons Project as well as the solo work of Parsons and Woolfson at DavesMusicDatabase.com.
DavesMusicDatabase.com is devoted to ranking, rating, and reviewing music of all genres and eras. The DMDB blog serves up album and song reviews, best-of lists, music history snapshots, and music-related essays.
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Showing posts with label Stereotomy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stereotomy. Show all posts
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Saturday, February 1, 1986
Alan Parsons Project Stereotomy released
Stereotomy |
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Charted: February 1, 1986 Peak: 43 US, -- UK, 32 CN, 50 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Genre: progressive rock lite |
Tracks:Song Title [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts.
Total Running Time: 41:58 Also from This Era:
The Players:
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Rating: 3.190 out of 5.00 (average of 16 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album:“’Stereotomy’ is the scientific term for enclosing scientific samples in wax and then cutting them into fine shavings. The word was used by Edgar Allan Poe in his work The Murders in the Rue Morgue which was the first detective novel.” APP The album, the ninth by the Alan Parsons Project, uses “stereotomy” as “a metaphor for the way that famous people…are often ‘shaped’ by the demands of fame.” WK This allows for the exploration of themes about how ‘the modern world molds the personality, the character, and the livelihood of the human being. People are but a slave to their lifestyle and their environment and they are destined to be thrown into this situation at birth.” AM "The Alan Parsons Project’s conceptual grandeur began to lose its potency right around the mid-‘80's.” AM On Stereotomy, "one must really pay attention to the profound lyrics and loose structuring of the music to attain the concept that Parsons metaphorically dances around.” AM “The lack of unity and cohesion means that [this] is merely a collection of good songs and not a work in its own right.” DV Commercially, the Project were on the downside as well. They had top 20 hits like “Games People Play” and “Don’t Answer Me” as well as the top-10 “Eye in the Sky,” but now they were lucky to grace the Billboard Hot 100 at all. The title cut peaked at a lowly #82. “The elegant, Appolonian keyboard-based sound of albums like Eye in the Sky and Vulture Culture was gone, replaced with a drum and bass-heavy throb on the opening track. The production was still crisp and clean, the engineering exquisite,” DV but “in many ways this was the end of any pretensions that Alan Parsons’ was progressive rock…this was a stripped down and…almost…funky?…Project.” DV While the Project’s instrumentals may be a selling point to many fans, the presence of three of them, not to mention a very unnecessary reprise of the title cut, make the album feel lazy. Coupling that with Parsons’ growing weakness in presenting readily apparent concepts well supported by the songs makes for a mediocre effort. “Parsons’ genius can be better investigated on numerous past releases, as this album proves to come up short.” AM Notes:A 2008 reissue included alternate versions of “Stereotomy” and “Light of the World” along with a demo of the unreleased “Rumour Goin’ Round.”The SongsHere’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs. |
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StereotomyAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson (see lyrics here) Vocals: John Miles Released: 1/18/1986 (single), Stereotomy (1986), The Best of, Volume 2 (compilation, 1988), The Definitive Collection (compilation, 1997), The Essential (compilation, 2007) Peak: 82 BB, 5 AR, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 1.83 streaming |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:The Project used a myriad of singers over the years and in this case, they turned to John Miles for most of the vocal, although Eric Woolfson, the only mainstay in the group other than Parsons, does come in toward the end. Miles wasn’t well known in the United States, but his song “Music” hit #3 on the UK charts in 1976.The “angriness” of his “forceful voice” makes “Stereotomy “a passable rock tune.” AMG “Stereotomy” notched a fitting place on the album rock tracks (#5), but once again was shunned by pop radio, peaking at a mere #82 on the Billboard Hot 100. |
BeaujolaisAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: Chris Rainbow Released: Stereotomy (1986) Peak: 31 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.65 streaming About the Song:The “new wave-tinged dance of Beajolais” DV is a decent, but not overly memorable song. |
UrbaniaAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: NA (instrumental) Released: Stereotomy (1986), Instrumental Works (1988) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.66 streaming About the Song:“Two of the album’s instrumentals, Where’s the Walrus? and Urbania, conjure up mood and keep the listener slightly poised, causing some musical buoyancy among the blandness of the other tracks.” AM |
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LimelightAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: Gary Brooker Released: April 1986 (single),Stereotomy (1986), The Best of, Volume 2 (compilation, 1988), The Very Best Live (live, 1995), The Essential (compilation, 2007), The Never Ending Show (live, 2021) Peak: 14 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 3.65 streaming About the Song:“Limelight is almost Broadway in its sheer power.” DV It is a beautiful song and one of the rare highlights on the album. |
In the Real WorldAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: John Miles Released: Stereotomy (1986), The Definitive Collection (compilation, 1997) Peak: 6 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.64 streaming About the Song:“With the help of [vocalist John] Miles’ assertiveness,” AM In the Real World is a “vocal standout” AM and "one of the greatest rock songs you've never heard.” DV This song should have followed “Stereotomy” on to the album rock charts. |
Where’s the Walrus?Alan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: NA (instrumental) Released: Stereotomy (1986), Instrumental Works (1988) Peak: 28 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.89 streaming About the Song:“Two of the album’s instrumentals, Where’s the Walrus? and Urbania, conjure up mood and keep the listener slightly poised, causing some musical buoyancy among the blandness of the other tracks.” AM |
Light of the WorldAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: Graham Dye Released: Stereotomy (1986) Peak: 11 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.58 streaming About the Song:“Light of the World is a passionate, powerful ballad about spiritual seeking and longing.” DV |
Chinese WhispersAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: NA (instrumental) Released: Stereotomy (1986) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 1.36 streaming About the Song:“The synth-laden wistfulness of Chinese Whispers” DV makes for the third (!) instrumental on the Stereotomy album. |
Stereotomy TwoAlan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson Vocals: John Miles Released: Stereotomy (1986) Peak: -- Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, -- video, 0.61 streaming About the Song:This is a very unnecessary reprise of the title cut which, especially in light of the album’s three instrumentals, feels like filler. |
Resources/References:
Related DMDB Pages:
First posted 3/24/2008; last updated 4/26/2026. |
Saturday, January 18, 1986
Alan Parsons Project “Stereotomy” charted
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| StereotomyThe Alan Parsons Project |
Writer(s): Alan Parsons, Eric Woolfson (see lyrics here) First Charted: January 18, 1986 Peak: 82 US, 5 AR, 1 DF (Click for codes to singles charts.) Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 0.52 video, -- streaming |
Awards:Click on award for more details. 
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About the Song:“’Stereotomy’ is the scientific term for enclosing scientific samples in wax and then cutting them into fine shavings. The word was used by Edgar Allan Poe in his work The Murders in the Rue Morgue which was the first detective novel.” APP The album, the ninth by the Alan Parsons Project, uses “stereotomy” as “a metaphor for the way that famous people…are often ‘shaped’ by the demands of fame.” WK This allows for the exploration of themes about how ‘the modern world molds the personality, the character, and the livelihood of the human being. People are but a slave to their lifestyle and their environment and they are destined to be thrown into this situation at birth.” AMG While the group had experienced success with top 20 hits like “Games People Play” and “Don’t Answer Me” as well as the top-10 “Eye in the Sky,” their commercial peak was clearly behind them at this point. They only had one album left in them before they split up. While not their strongest album, this isn’t a phone-it-in album either. The title cut is a strong rocker deserving of far more attention than it received. It reached #5 on the album rock chart, but stalled at a lowly #82 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Project used a myriad of singers over they years and in this case, they turned to John Miles for most of the vocal, although Eric Woolfson, the only mainstay in the group other than Parsons, does come in toward the end. Miles wasn’t well known in the United States, but his song “Music” did hit #3 on the UK charts in 1976. The “angriness” of his “forceful voice” makes “Stereotomy “a passable rock tune.” AMG Resources:
Related Links:
First posted 7/6/2022. |
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