11. Boules (I Robot Experiment) 2'00
(Eric Woolfson / Alan Parsons)
12. Breakdown (Early Demo of Backing Riff) 2'11
(Eric Woolfson / Alan Parsons)
13. I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You (Backing Track Rough Mix) 3'30
(Eric Woolfson / Alan Parsons)
14. Day After Day (Early Stage Rough Mix) 3'42
(Eric Woolfson / Alan Parsons)
15. The Naked Robot 10'19
(Eric Woolfson / Alan Parsons)
Total Time: 62:57
Alan Parsons - Projection (1, 3, 4, 6), SynthiA Sequencer Programming (1, 8), Acoustic Guitar (4), Vocoder 'Voice' (6), Tape Loops (7), Effects (7)
Eric Woolfson - Clavinet (1, 3), Keyboards (2, 6, 7, 10), Piano (3), Wurlitzer (4), Organ (5), Jangle Piano (8)
Ian Bairnson - Guitars (1-8, 10), Acoustic Guitar (3, 4, 10), Backing Vocals (8)
B.J. Cole - Pedal Steel Guitar (8)
Duncan Mackay - YAMAHA CS10 Synth (1), Synths (4), Keyboards (10)
Andrew Powell - Hammond Organ (8)
John Leach - Cimbalom (1, 3, 7), Kantele (1, 3, 7)
David Paton - Bass (1-8, 10), Acoustic Guitar (3, 10), Backing Vocals (8)
John Wallace - Piccolo Trumpet (5)
Stuart Tosh - Drums (1-8, 10), Percussion (5, 6), Water Gongs (7)
Lenny Zakatek - Lead Vocal (2)
Peter Straker - Lead Vocal (3)
Jaki Whitren - Lead Vocal (3)
Allan Clarke - Lead Vocal (4)
Dave Townsend - Lead Vocal (5)
Steve Harley - Lead Vocal (6)
Jack Harris - Lead Vocal (8), Backing Vocals (8)
Hilary Western - Soprano, Soprano Vocal (1)
Tonv Rivers - Backing Vocals (3, 10)
John Perry - Backing Vocals (3, 10)
Stuart Salver - Backing Vocals (3, 10)
The ENGLISH CHORALE; Bob Howes - Choirmaster (1, 7, 9)
The NEW PHILHARMONIA CHORUS - Choir (4, 10)
Produced by Alan Parsons
Executive Producer - Eric Woolfson
Engineered by Alan Parsons
Assistant Engineers - Patrick Stapley, Chris Blair
Expanded Edition Mastered by Dave Donnelly
and Alan Parsons at DNA MASTERING, Studio City, California
Produced for Reissue by Alan Parsons,
Eric Woolfson and Jeff Magid
Compiled for Reissue by Eric Woolfson & Haydn Bendall (for WOOLFSONGS Ltd),
Tim Eraser-Harding & Jeff Magid (for SONY BMG) and Alan Parsons
Sleeve Concept - Eric Woolfson
Original Sleeve Design by HIPGNOSIS
Graphics by George Hardie
Additional Design for Expanded Edition Booklet - Mainariery
Memorabilia - with Thanks To Steve Martin, Sally Seddon and Mainariery
Bonus Tracks licensed by WOOLFSONGS Ltd.
All Compositions ©1976 WOOLFSONGS Ltd./ CAREERS MUSIC Inc.,
Administered by BMG
All Tracks Written by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons
Except "Total Eclipse" Written by Andrew Powell
Published by WOOLFSONGS Ltd. / CAREERS MUSIC. Inc. (BMI),
Administered by BMG
Original Album ®1977 ARISTA RECORDS Inc.
All Bonus Tracks ®1977, ®2007, licensed Courtesy of WOOLFSONQS Ltd.
Recorded and Mixed at ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, London between December 1976 and March 1977
Steve Harley and Duncan Mackay appear by Courtesy of EMI RECORDS Ltd.
Allan Clarke appears Courtesy of Chigreen Ltd Peter Straker appears courtesy of GOOSE PRODUCTIONS Ltd.
Thanks To David Katz, Smokey Parsons, Hazel Woolfson, Mickey Shapiro, Bob Britton,
Mike King, Eric Prince, Humphrey Ocean and all at ABBEY ROAD.
Special Thanks To Tim Eraser-Harding, Haydn Bendall and Sally Seddon
The official Alan PARSONS PROJECT Website:
www.the-alan-parsons-project.com
www.the-alan-parsons-project.com
If 1976's debut album 'Tales Of Mystery And Imagination' introduced the world in style to the concept of The Alan PARSONS PROJECT,
then 1977's follow-up 'I Robot' made even bolder strides for this most unique of groups who, punk rock seemingly raged all around them, took their
own stylish brand of progressive rock around the globe.
"I took no notice of punk", smiles Parsons. "I wasn't even slightly interested in it and had a secret
desire that our audience would feel the same way. 1 think punk was a youth culture that wasn't anything to do with music. It was an excuse for badly performed and executed hard
The AIan PARSONS PROJECT was, for many people, very much to do with music. "At the beginning we were making quality music with no expense spared," adds Eric Wooifson, songwriter, singer
and manager, with a steely defiance. He was right too.
One only has to look at the backgrounds of the two protagonists of The Alan PARSONS PROJECT to where their rich ideals for quality music, played well and sounding amazing, had come from,
Few bands can link artists as diverse as The BEATLES, PINK FLOYD, COCKNEY REBEL, PILOT,
Frank Ifield, Marianne Faithfull, lOCC, MARMALADE, The TREMELOES and The EQUALS (to name but a few).
The Alan PARSONS PROJECT can.
Alan Parsons' work has been well documented. He joined EMI in the tape duplication unit, where
he was first exposed to The BEATLES legendary 'Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band'.
He soon moved to ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS where he racked up hours working on 'Let It Be' and 'Abbey Road' as assistant engineer.
He soon progressed to being a fully-fledged engineer and recorded Paul McCartney's 'Red Rose Speedway' and PINK FLOYD's masterpiece, 'Dark Side Of The Moon'.
"Barely an interview goes by without a mention being made of PINK FLOYD", he laughs. "And I'm very glad of it. It paved the way for the path my career took.
It was an important record, I'm proud of it, it was good for everybody. But it didn't make me rich."
By the time he met Eric Woolfson, he was a producer in his own right, garnering success with the likes of COCKNEY REBEL, Al Stewart and PILOT.
Woolfson plied his early trade as a songwriter. His first meetings with mogul Andrew Loog Oldham proved quite an eye-opener.
"Oldham kept me waiting for four hours. I met him in an office in Denmark Street and Oldham came in.
He said 'You're a songwriter, play me something'. I did, he said 'You're a genius, come with me'. So I did! One journey we took together I remember in particular - we got into his chauffeur driven Chevrolet Impala which filled the street, picked up Keith Richards and drove to Portland Place.
When his driver didn't appreciate someone else's driving, he would reach out of his window with a hammer and smash the windows of the offending car!"
Woolfson had moved from songwriter for the likes of Marianne Faithfull to producer for bands including The TREMETOES to manager of Carl Douglas ('Kung Fu Fighting').
Eric and Alan met at ABBEY ROAD STUDIOS, with
Parsons asking Woolfson to manage him. Woolfson duly agreed.
"I'd already started my Edgar Allen Ðîå activities before I'd even met Alan", reveals Woolfson.
"I thought we could combine his engineering and production talents which I didn't have.
I obviously recognised he had something very special, but it wasn't enough on its own.
I put together the idea of the project in a report and gave it to 20th CENTURY RECORDS who'd signed Carl Douglas and AMBROSIA.
I referred to it as the 'Alan PARSONS PROJECT', the project for Alan Parsons, and everyone in America misunderstood that to be the actual name of the thing."
And thus was born The Alan PARSONS PROJECT. A studio based collective which would create albums that concentrated on quality music.
The pair would utilise the finest musicians to hand including would be ex-members of PILOT (the band produced by Parsons),
orchestral arranger Andrew Powell and top vocalists drawn from a wide pool.
"The choice for vocalists was based on several things", declares Parsons.
"One, that we had a contact with that person. Two, that they weren't terribly famous and three, that we would be inspired by the thought of that person's voice."
On 'I Robot' COCKNEY REBEL's Steve Harley and The HOLLIES' Allan Clarke were two who stepped up to the mic, the latter proving surprisingly
adept on 'Breakdown', a more progressive style of music than the public was perhaps used to hearing him sing.
Elsewhere, Lenny Zakatek (of Gonzalez) proved effective on the funky 'I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You',
which gave the band their very first breakthrough single (it got a tremendous amount of exposure,
especially on American radio) and cemented Zakatek's place as one the APP's most enduringly popular vocalists.
Eschewing the old hit single format and more in keeping with the popular progressive rock bands of the era,
every APP album was based around a concept. And although 'I Robot' seems self explanatory, scratch beneath the surface and there's more.
Eric was greatly inspired by Isaac Asimov
whose 'I, Robot' was one of many science fiction masterpieces he had devoured at that stage.
The original idea was to base the work on Asimov's stories,
but unfortunately Asimov had granted rights to a TV / film company from 10 years before
which prevented him from granting permission. Eric recalls a very pleasant conversation with Isaac Asimov
who was extremely friendly and enthusiastic about the idea, but there was nothing he could do.
The Alan PARSONS PROJECT recorded the album using a similar title (on which there was no copyright)
but dropping the comma and with the lyrics completely unrelated to Asimov's writing, although there was a loose robotic connection.
The 'I Robot' album to some extent looks at the questions and the extent to which,as human beings we may or may not be pre-programmed
and act in a robotic fashion as well as the dangers of uncontrolled development of artificial intelligence.
The 'I Robot' album came out at a very fortuitous time, as completely unplanned, the album
(with a robot on its cover) hit record stores in the US the same week as Star Wars was released and suddenly robots were all the rage
and the PROJECT was the only album being featured with a robotic cover.
'I Robot' was the first APP album to be released on the ARISTA label (the first APP album Tales Of Mystery was released on 20th CENTURY RECORDS).
It proved the start of a fruitful relationship between the PROJECT and label that would run over eight further albums up to 1987's 'Gaudi'.
Since then, Parsons has made a series of rock albums under his own name and toured the world with his own band,
whilst Woolfson has pursued a successful career in musical theatre.
'I Robot' represents the way the duo's early vision helped shape their career paths for many years to come.
- Jerry Ewing
CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE
London, October 2006
NOTES ON I ROBOT
BONUS MATERIAL
by Eric Woolfson & Alan Parsons.
December 2006
The recording process contains many
magical moments on the creative journey.
The process is not unlike throwing a lump
of clay on a potter's wheel and then shaping
and re-shaping the material an infinite number of times
until the potter is satisfied. A casual observer might say
'but you had the pot within the first minute, why didn't you just leave it at that?'
and the art of the potter is to know just how far to go.
The record producer's skill is to-know when that point has been reached as far as the recordings are concerned and the writer has to apply a similar process to his compositions. They say a poem is never finished, it is abandoned. The same could certainly be said of music, lyrics or any creative effort. The great advantage of the recording process is that as one keeps rough mixes as a guide; one can delve into stages before the point of abandonment and revisit some of the magic from earlier attempts or stages.
Whenever the core musicians complete a basic backing track, there is a sensation of having reached a plateau and although the eventual production may take the recording in a totally different direction, at that moment something rather special has been created which the music buyer is often unaware of.
Amongst this collection of bonus material.
there are several examples of the magical
early takes and in this re-mastered
version of I Robot, for those interested
in the process, there is a unique opportunity to behind the curtain
of the recording sessions. We have also
included some abandoned experiments
as well as demo material, which guided the ultimate master recordings.
From our personal point of view,
it has been a fascinating experience to re-live these early stages,
much of which were kept in archives and tape libraries and which might well have been forgotten with the passage of time
but for the initiative of Tim Fraser-Harding at SONY BMG.
We are also grateful to Haydn Bendall for his untiring patience and skill in assisting us in our trawl through the archives to compile this material.
Track 11 - Boules (I Robot experiment)
EW: This is example of an abandoned experiment.
While in France, I noticed that Boules was the local Frennch
obscession, much like snooker in the UK
or pool in the US. I discovered these
metal balls made a fascinated
you banged them lightly together and I
tried to incorporate this into an early
studio demo recording of I Robot
Although I thought the effect could have
worked quite well. Alan didn't share my
enthusiasm and the idea was abandoned
Track 12 - Breakdown (Early Demo of Backing Riff)
AP "This is an early attempt to find a feel
from a chord sequence I had come up
with. Eric constructed the final melody
and lyrics around. It is slower than the
tempo exentually chosen.
Track 13 - I Wouldn't Want Be Like You (Backing Track Rough Mix)
EW "This is an excelent example of the
early stage of the magic 'take' which was
eventuaily developed into the master
recording. Interestly, from the point
of veiw of any aspiring solo guitarists,
this rough mix pre-dates the tremendous
Ian Bairnson solo which was such a
feature of so many of the PROJECT
recordings, but this was what Ian
developed his solo over and it gives an
opportunity for others to see what they
might have come up with by playing
along with the backing."
Track 14 - Day After Day (The Show Must Go On) (Early Stage Rough Mix)
AP "This was an example of a 'feel' based track
built around a synthesizer figure."
Track 15 - The Naked Robot
EW "I recall that in creating 'PROJECTS'
we attempted to let different track merge
into each other as part of the editing
process and this meant that much of the
material recorded was in compatible
tempos and keys. I was reminded of this
material on this album and had the idea
of irvinq to re-combine some earlv stage
mixes of material that was subseqently
developed differently. This ten minute
medley of early stage mixes
of instrumental pieces on the album seems
to take on a lite of its own with a diffent
ambience and feel to the original recotd.
The elements contained within this
medley all appeared in a modified form
on the eventual master, which could
obviously have gone in a very
different direction.
In each of the re-mastered editions of
the APP albums, we will include a
'Naked' selection of some of the
material, though it may be in a different
form to this 'Naked Robot' version.
1. I Robot
(instrumental)
2. I Wouldn't Want To Be Like You
If I had a mind to
I wouldn't want to think like you
And if I had time to
I wouldn't want to talk to you
I don't care
What you do
I wouldn't want to be like you
If I was high class
I wouldn't need a buck to pass
And if I was a fall guy
I wouldn't need no alibi
I don't care
What you do
I wouldn't want to be like you
Back on the bottom line
Diggin' for a lousy dime
If I hit a mother lode
I'd cover anything that showed
I don't care
What you do
I wouldn't want to be like you
3. Some Other Time
In a matter of a moment
Lost till the end of time
It's the evening of another day
And the end of mine
Now the starlight which has found me
Lost for a million years
Tries to linger as it fills my eyes
Till it disappears
Could it be that somebody else is
Looking into my mind
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Like a mirror held before me
Large as the sky is wide
And the image is reflected
Back to the other side
Could it be that somebody else is
Looking into my mind
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
Some other place
Somewhere
Some other time
4. Breakdown
I breakdown in the middle and lose my thread
No one can understand a word that I say
When I break down just a little and lose my head
Nothing I try to do can work the same way
Any time it happened I'd get over it
With a little help from all my friends
Anybody else could see what's wrong with me
But they walk away and just pretend
When I breakdown
I breakdown in the middle and lose my thread
No one can understand a word that I say
When I break down just a little and lose my head
Nothing I try to do can work the same way
Where are all the friends who used to talk to me
All they ever told me was good news
People that I've never seen are kind to me
Is it any wonder I'm confused
When I break down, when I break down
Freedom, freedom, we will not obey
Freedom, freedom, take the wall away
Freedom, freedom, we will not obey
Freedom, freedom, take them all away
5. Don't Let It Show
If it's getting harder to face every day
Don't let it show, don't let it show
Though it's getting harder to take what they say
Just let it go, just let it go
And if it hurts when they mention my name
Say you don't know me
And if it helps when they say I'm to blame
Say you don't own me
Even if it's taking the easy way out
Keep it inside of you
Don't give in
Don't tell them anything
Don't let it
Don't let it show
Even though you know it's the wrong thing to say
Say you don't care, say you don't care
Even if you want to believe there's a way
I won't be there, I won't be there
But if you smile when they mention my name
They'll never know you
And if you laugh when they say I'm to blame
They'll never own you
Even if you feel you've got nothing to hide
Keep it inside of you
Don't give in
Don't tell them anything
Don't let it
Don't let it show
6. The Voice
It's almost a feeling you can touch in the air
You look all around you but nobody's there
It's been a long time now since you've been aware
That someone is watching you (he's gonna get you)
Sooner or later when your big chances come
You'll look for the catches but there will be none
Remember before you grab the money and run
That someone is watching you (he's gonna get you)
Before you run and hide
He's gonna get you
You got no choice
Because you can't escape the voice
Jumping at shadows that come up from behind
Scared of the darkness that's there in your mind
You're frightened to move because of what you might find
That someone is watching you (he's gonna get you)
Before you run and hide
He's gonna get you
You got no choice
Because you can't escape the voice
7. Nucleus
(Instrumental)
8. Day After Day
Gaze at the sky
And picture a memory
Of days in your life
You knew what it meant to be happy and free
With time on your side
Remember your daddy
When no one was wiser
Your ma used to say
That you would go further than he ever could
With time on your side
Think of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you'd say, someday, someday
But day after day
The show must go on
And time slipped away
Before you could build any castles in Spain
The chance had gone by
With nothing to say
And no one to say it to
Nothing has changed
You've still got it all to do
Surely you know
The chance has gone by
Think of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you'd say, someday, someday
But, day after day
The show must go on
And you gaze at the sky
And picture a memory of days in your life
With time on your side
With time on your side
(Day after day the show must go on)
With time on your side
(Day after day the show must go on)
9. Total Eclipse
(Instrumental)
10. Genesis Ch.1 V.32
(Instrumental)
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