Interview: Alan Parsons on George Martin, Dark Side of the Moon and the Art and Science of Sound Recording
By Clive Young, Managing Editor of Pro Audio Review
Sitting down with Parsons and his co-author, Julian Colbeck, at the 137th AES Convention provided a chance to discuss all this and more. What follows is a condensed version of the wide-ranging discussion over tea, just an hour after Parsons' Keynote Address. Clive: Your book shares a career's worth of knowledge, but what made you start that journey? What made you want to get into recording? Alan: Hearing Sgt. Pepper for the first time. Clive: And then within a year or two, there you are, working for the people who made it. Alan: Yeah, exactly—in fact the White Album came out the week I started at Abbey Road. Clive: That has to have been an incredible learning experience—heck of a foundation to build on, education-wise. Anything you took away from then that influenced you later? Alan: Oh, yeah—every moment was an influence, I would say. I think possibly I try to model myself on George Martin. He was a great, great mentor—the Beatles had total respect for him and he was musical enough to be able to translate what they couldn't themselves translate into dots and rests and bar lines and stuff; he would fill in that gap for them. He's great [and the experience was] a great asset to me. If you asked Geoff Emerick the same question, he would feel differently; he's much more the sharp end of what the Beatles wanted and what George Martin wanted. Just watching them [all] together, I thought they were magic. Magically compatible with each other. And [George Martin] was rightly called the Fifth Beatle, I think. The Beatles, of course, were the greatest songwriters, greatest rock band that ever lived—so how could it not have been an experience? More »
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