Eric Woolfson wrote "The Raven" before he met Alan Parsons, having demoed the song in the early 1970s with Rick Westwood and Dave Munden of The Tremeloes. On the demo, Woolfson sang lead vocals and played keyboards. This song, along with other demoed around this time, were rolled into Tales of Mystery and Imagination once Woolfson and Parsons agreed to create an album based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.[2]
"The Raven" was one the first songs to use a vocoder developed by as manufactured by EMICentral Research Laboratories, which was used to process Alan Parsons' voice.[4][5] Parsons used the vocoder due to his belief that the song should feature a "non-human voice". It was one of the few songs in the band's discography to feature Parsons as a vocalist, who commented that he "only sang through necessity."[2] At the time Parsons used the vocoder, he felt that the device was "a very cumbersome thing that was very much in its early stages."[6]Leonard Whiting performed the lead vocals for the remainder of the song, with Eric Woolfson providing backing vocals with Bob Hughes and the English Chorale.[2][5]
For the backing track, Parsons had the band Ambrosia provide the instrumentation. Parsons had previously worked with the band on their second studio album. Parsons recalled that he and Woolfson opted not to inform the session musicians about the song's subject matter during the recording sessions and attempted to conceal the song's meaning by referring to the song as "The Raver" during this time.[2]David Paton, who participated in the album's recording sessions, had a different recollection of how the song title was presented, saying that "sometimes the song titles would give things away. You'd see something like 'The Raven' and think 'Well I know what that is'."[2] According to the 2016 liner notes for the box set edition of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the recording tape used for "The Raven" had become nearly transparent due to the number of overdubs that were completed.[2]
Release
"The Raven" was the second single released from Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It peaked at No. 80 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart during the week of 30 October 1976 and spent a total of four weeks on the chart.[7]
On the 1987 reissued version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the song contains a guitar solo by Ian Bairnson near the end of the song.[8] Bairnson's guitar solo was recorded digitally and otherwise used the same equipment from the original recording sessions. He commented that the guitar solo "was quite logical" since "there was space for it."
Cashbox highlighted the song's "synthesized lyrics" and how the song "slowly rises to a crescendo".[10]Record World wrote that the mystery and imagination of the track is inherent in its sound."[11] Mike DeGagne of AllMusic thought that the addition of a choir "add[ed] a distinct flair to its chamber-like sound."[12]
B-side
The B-side of "The Raven" is "The Fall of the House of Usher" prelude. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an instrumental suite that runs more than fifteen minutes and takes up most of side two of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, however, the prelude is trimmed down to 5:59. Although uncredited, the prelude is taken from the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy, which was composed between 1908 and 1917.[13]
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