Tales of Mystery and Imagination | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | 25 June 1976 [1] | |||
Recorded | July 1975 – January 1976 | |||
Studio |
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Genre | ||||
Length | 40:34 (1976)/42:38 (1987) | |||
Label | ||||
Producer | Alan Parsons | |||
The Alan Parsons Project chronology | ||||
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Alternative cover | ||||
Singles from Tales of Mystery and Imagination | ||||
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Tales of Mystery and Imagination (Edgar Allan Poe) is the debut studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project. It was released on 25 June 1976 in the United Kingdom and Ireland by Charisma Records [3] and 20th Century Records in the rest of the world. [4] The lyrical and musical themes of the album,which are retellings of horror stories and poetry by Edgar Allan Poe,attracted a cult audience. The title of the album is taken from the title of a collection of Poe's macabre stories of the same name.
Musicians featured on the album include vocalists Arthur Brown of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown on "The Tell Tale Heart",John Miles on "The Cask of Amontillado" and "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether",and Terry Sylvester of The Hollies on "To One in Paradise". The complete line-up of bands Ambrosia and Pilot play on the record,along with keyboardist Francis Monkman of Curved Air and Sky.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination peaked at #38 on Billboard's Pop Albums chart. The song "(The System Of) Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" peaked at No. 37 on the Pop Singles chart,and No. 62 in Canada. [5]
"The Raven" features actor Leonard Whiting on lead vocals,with Alan Parsons performing vocals through an EMI vocoder. According to the album's liner notes,"The Raven" was the first rock song to feature a digital vocoder. The prelude section of "The Fall of the House of Usher",although uncredited,is taken verbatim from the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy which was composed between 1908 and 1917. [6] "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an instrumental suite that runs more than 15 minutes and takes up most of Side 2 of the recording.
The album's cover art was made by Hipgnosis. Storm Thorgerson said that Eric Woolfson and Parsons wanted a "classy" design,including a book of lyrics,lengthy credits,and a chronology of Poe's life. He described the recurring image of the "taped" man: [7]
Poe was preoccupied with entombment. Many of his characters have been incarcerated in some form or other –in coffins,brick walls,or under floorboards. We came up with the 'taped' man –a mummy-like figure who is wrapped,not in bandages,but in 2" recording tape. This motif is partially horror-like,as well as being 'entombed',and the 2" tape appropriately suggests that the album is done by a producer in a studio,as opposed to a band recording material they will play on stage. Although the clients were intrigued by this idea they did not desire a pictorial cover but preferred instead a precise graphic representation. The narrow strip of illustration from George [Hardie] shows a long shadow of the taped man.
The booklet (attached to the inside of the cover) is composed of photos related to the songs,and line drawings that explore the taped man as he thrashes about in his restricted world and strives to unravel himself. The illustrated capital letters continue the idea. The layout and drawings are by Colin Elgie. The sleeve is one of our better attempts at combining photographs and illustration.
Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [8] |
Rolling Stone | (mixed) [9] |
Critical reaction to the album was mixed: Rolling Stone's Billy Altman concluded it did not completely accurately reproduce Poe's tension and macabre fear,ending by saying "devotees of Gothic literature will have to wait for someone with more of the macabre in their blood for a truer musical reading of Poe's often terrifying works." [10] Nonetheless,the album has still garnered somewhat of a cult status amongst Alan Parsons Project fans. In July 2010,the album was named as one of Classic Rock magazine 's "50 Albums That Built Prog Rock". [11]
Originally simply called The Alan Parsons Project,the album was successful enough to achieve gold status. The identity of The Alan Parsons Project as a group was cemented on the second album, I Robot ,in 1977.
In 1987,Parsons completely remixed the album,including additional keyboard and guitar passages and narration (by Orson Welles),as well as updating the production style to include heavy reverb and the gated reverb snare drum sound,which was popular in the 1980s. Parsons also made the end of side A segue into the start of side B due to the remix of the album being released when CD's were commercially available,thus no need to stop playback to change sides. The CD notes that Welles never met Parsons or Eric Woolfson,but sent a tape to them of the performance shortly after the album was manufactured in 1976.
The first passage narrated by Welles on the 1987 remix (which comes before the first track,"A Dream Within a Dream") is sourced from an obscure nonfiction piece by Poe –No XVI of his Marginalia (from 1845 to 1849 Edgar Allan Poe titled some of his reflections and fragmentary material "Marginalia.") The second passage Welles reads (which comes before "The Fall of the House of Usher" (Prelude),seems to be a partial paraphrase or composite from nonfiction by Poe,chiefly from a collection of poems titled "Poems of Youth" by Poe (contained in "Introduction to Poems –1831" in a section titled "Letter to Mr. B-----------";the "Shadows of shadows passing" part of the quote comes from the Marginalia.
In 1994,Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (MFSL) released the original 1976 version on CD (UDCD-606),making the original available digitally for the first time.
In 2007,a Deluxe Edition released by Universal Music included both the 1976 and the 1987 versions remastered by Alan Parsons during 2006 with eight additional bonus tracks.
In 2016,a 40th Anniversary Edition 3CD/1BD/2LP box set was released,featuring a book,both 2007 Deluxe Edition CDs,a third disc with demos,outtakes,and other tracks,a 45 RPM 2LP set of the original album with bonus tracks,and a Blu-ray featuring a 5.1 surround sound version of the album remixed by Alan Parsons in 2016.
A variant of the song "The Raven" appears on the Eric Woolfson album Edgar Allan Poe (2009),which contains the complete music from Woolfson's 2003 stage musical of the same name. The variant track does not appear on Woolfson's 2003 CD Poe:More Tales of Mystery and Imagination ,which was a highly abridged version of the stage musical. On the variant,the bass line and keyboard chords of the original Tales of Mystery and Imagination track are heard,but they are quieter,do not feature a vocoder,and instead of an abridged version of the Poe poem being sung,the Woolfson version features a fuller spoken dramatic reading of the poem. The Alan Parsons album A Valid Path includes "A Recurring Dream Within a Dream",a composite of "A Dream Within a Dream" and "The Raven" incorporating electronic music influences.
Slough Feg covered "The Tell-Tale Heart" for their 2010 album The Animal Spirits .
All tracks are written by Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons except "The Fall of the House of Usher" by Woolfson, Parsons, and Andrew Powell. Timings from 2007 remaster of 1976 original album. [12]
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
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1. | "A Dream Within a Dream" | Instrumental | 3:41 |
2. | "The Raven" | Alan Parsons, Leonard Whiting | 3:58 |
3. | "The Tell-Tale Heart" | Arthur Brown (additional vocals: Jack Harris) | 4:42 |
4. | "The Cask of Amontillado" | John Miles (additional vocals: Terry Sylvester) | 4:28 |
5. | "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" | John Miles (additional vocals: Jack Harris) | 4:14 |
No. | Title | Lead vocals | Length |
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1. | "The Fall of the House of Usher"
| Instrumental | 15:02 |
2. | "To One in Paradise" | Terry Sylvester (additional vocals: Eric Woolfson, Alan Parsons) | 4:29 |
Total length: | 40:34 |
Orson Welles' narration does not appear on the original 1976 mix of the album. It does, however, on the 1987 remix: specifically on "A Dream Within a Dream", and on the extended Prelude of "The Fall of the House of Usher".
Disc 1: Tracks 1–11, original album in original 1976 mix
Disc 2: Tracks 1–11, original album in 1987 remix
Track numbers in parentheses. [14] [15]
Weekly charts
| Year-end charts
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Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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Canada (Music Canada) [27] | Platinum | 100,000^ |
Germany (BVMI) [28] | Platinum | 500,000^ |
United Kingdom (BPI) [29] | Silver | 60,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
The Alan Parsons Project were a British rock band formed in London in 1975. Its core membership consisted of producer, audio engineer, musician and composer Alan Parsons, and singer, songwriter and pianist Eric Woolfson. They shared writing credits on almost all of their songs, with Parsons producing or co-producing all of the recordings, while being accompanied by various session musicians, some relatively consistent.
Eric Norman Woolfson was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and co-creator of the band the Alan Parsons Project, who sold over 50 million albums worldwide. Woolfson also pursued a career in musical theatre.
I Robot is the second studio album by British rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released on 8 July 1977 by Arista Records. The album draws conceptually on author Isaac Asimov's science fiction Robot stories, exploring philosophical themes regarding artificial intelligence.
The Turn of a Friendly Card is the fifth studio album by the British progressive rock band the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1980 by Arista Records. The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. The Turn of a Friendly Card spawned the hits "Games People Play" and "Time", the latter of which was Eric Woolfson's first lead vocal appearance. An edited version of the title piece combining the opening and ending parts of the suite was also released as a single along with an official video.
Stereotomy is the ninth studio album by the Alan Parsons Project, released in 1985.
A Valid Path is the fourth solo album by English rock musician Alan Parsons. The record was released on 24 August 2004 via Artemis label.
Alan Parsons is an English audio engineer, songwriter, musician and record producer.
Steve Balsamo is a Welsh singer and songwriter, best known for playing the lead role in the West End revival productions of Jesus Christ Superstar during the mid-1990s. He performs as a member of several bands and is also a successful songwriter. He is also on Eric Woolfson's sixth solo album, Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination in 2003, on which he provides the vocals for eight songs.
"The Raven" is a narrative poem by Edgar Allan Poe.
"A Dream Within a Dream" is a poem written by American poet Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1849. The poem has 24 lines, divided into two stanzas.
"The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether" is a dark comedy short story by the American author Edgar Allan Poe. First published in Graham's Magazine in November 1845, the story centers on a naïve and unnamed narrator's visit to a mental asylum in the southern provinces of France.
"(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" is a 1976 single by the Alan Parsons Project. It first appeared on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination: Edgar Allan Poe. The single reached number 37 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and number 62 in Canada.
"The Raven" is the first song by the Alan Parsons Project, recorded in April 1976 at Mama Jo's Studio, North Hollywood, Los Angeles. It is the second track on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which is a tribute to author and poet Edgar Allan Poe. Though the song is based on Poe's poem of the same name, and is almost a verbatim recital of the lyrics of the poem, Poe is not given song writing credit. It is credited to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.
The Essential Alan Parsons Project is a compilation album released by English progressive rock musician Alan Parsons and the Alan Parsons Project on 6 February 2007. It was released through Sony BMG as part of The Essential album series. The album featured some of the band's best known songs as well as some rare tracks.
The Definitive Collection is a 1997 2 CD compilation by The Alan Parsons Project, released through Arista Records. The American version begins with two songs from the Alan Parsons Project's first album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which was released on 20th Century Fox Records in the U.S. and Charisma Records in the U.K., prior to the band signing to Arista. The European version of the compilation does not include them. Both versions close with two tracks from Alan Parsons' first solo album, Try Anything Once.
Tales of Mystery & Imagination is a popular title for posthumous compilations of writings by American author, essayist and poet Edgar Allan Poe and was the first complete collection of his works specifically restricting itself to his suspenseful and related tales.
Eric Woolfson sings The Alan Parsons Project That Never Was is an album by the progressive rock musician Eric Woolfson, co-creator with Alan Parsons of The Alan Parsons Project, as well as main songwriter and manager of the band. Released in 2009, this was Woolfson's final album before he died of cancer in December of that year. The album includes songs that remained unreleased since the Project time for various reasons; however, as Woolfson himself remarks in the booklet, Parsons' dislike for some of Woolfson's compositions would have often caused them to be excluded from a Project album in its very early stages - such as, for example, "Steal Your Heart Away", an "unashamedly commercial" song with a conventionally sentimental lyric, which Parsons, in Woolfson's words, would have absolutely detested. "Somewhere in the Audience" and "Immortal" are slightly re-arranged and re-recorded versions of two of Woolfson's demos for his 2003 musical about Edgar Allan Poe; the final versions of these songs, sung by the musical's protagonist Steve Balsamo, are featured on the album Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination. "Train to Wuxi" was the original version of "Train to Freedom", which is also included in the Poe musical and features Woolfson's one and only guitar solo.
Poe: More Tales of Mystery and Imagination is an album by Eric Woolfson. It contains some, but not all, of the songs from his musical Edgar Allan Poe.
Tales of Mystery and Imagination may refer to:
Alan Parsons Live is the first live album by Alan Parsons, recorded in May 1994 during his European tour, and released late that year by Arcade Records in Europe. RCA/BMG added three new studio tracks and changed the cover art when releasing the album in the rest of the world in 1995, renaming it The Very Best Live; stylized on the cover with "The Very Best" in a smaller font between Alan Parsons and Live. Despite the tour promoting Try Anything Once with seven songs from the album in the setlist, the live performances on the album are all songs from his years with The Alan Parsons Project.