![\"Alan](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/Alan-Parsons-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credit: Stefan Brending)<\/p>\n
Wed 4 June 2025 23:00, UK <\/p>\n
As far as the people who get all the credit for helping make records go, studio engineers tend to get overlooked. However, if there was nobody behind the desk ensuring everything was operating smoothly, you\u2019d have to rely on a musician to get things right, and you can be sure that they\u2019re not always as reliable in this department as they\u2019d like to think. When it comes to engineers, there probably aren\u2019t many who are as celebrated as Alan Parsons, famed for his work with Pink Floyd<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, Parsons was an exceptional musician in his own right, but he rose to prominence in the first place through his committed work in the studio, tweaking dials and pushing buttons to help create masterpieces. His first credit on any record doesn\u2019t get much more illustrious either \u2013 he was an engineer on The Beatles\u2019 final recording, Abbey Road<\/a>, and would soon after find himself being tapped up to work with rising progressive rock stars Pink Floyd on their fifth album, Atom Heart Mother.<\/p>\n Parsons would continue working with these clients throughout the 1970s, working on Paul McCartney and Wings\u2019 works throughout the decade, and he\u2019d be asked to return to engineer Pink Floyd\u2019s masterwork, The Dark Side of the Moon, in 1973 after having racked up a number of other illustrious gigs. If there was anyone who could be considered a go-to for elevating a rock record to new heights during this period, Parsons was the man you needed to hire.<\/p>\n Saying that all Parsons was responsible for on these records was simply twiddling knobs in the studio is to be severely understating his role, but unfortunately, this is what he had to deal with from some of his clients. While he\u2019d worked on two acclaimed releases by Pink Floyd in the early \u201870s, he would soon find himself in the dark over whether he\u2019d work with them again, and due to some of the comments from guitarist David Gilmour<\/a>, you can\u2019t really blame him for not wanting to continue the partnership.<\/p>\n Despite having done an impeccable job on both records for the band, his work wasn\u2019t exactly appreciated to the same degree that it deserved to be, and Gilmour made a few disparaging comments about his craft later on after they\u2019d parted ways. Allegedly, he once claimed that the two albums had the success based on the quality of the music alone and that they \u201cwould have got there with any engineer operating the knobs and buttons.\u201d<\/p>\n As for how Parsons felt about this, he understandably found himself falling out of love and favour with the group and felt hurt by what Gilmour had asserted. \u201cYes, occasionally it was upsetting that David Gilmour would say that the album would have been just the same no matter who\u2019d engineered it,\u201d he told Prog Magazine in a 2014 interview. \u201cHe later retracted that remark and both Roger [Waters] and Nick [Mason] have always been very complimentary. Of course the biggest blow of all was when I wasn\u2019t asked to do the surround sound version. That was unforgivable.\u201d<\/p>\n While he can still remain proud of the work that he did on those two Floyd records, it is a shame that one of the most integral parts of the group doesn\u2019t think that Parsons\u2019 work was in any way distinguishable from any other engineer. That said, his feelings were certainly damaged by the loss of trust, and for him to not be given the opportunity to work on the band\u2019s later reworkings of The Dark Side of the Moon in surround-sound, despite having played such an important part on the original, was certainly a kick in the teeth.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n Subscribe To The Far Out Newsletter <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credit: Stefan Brending) Wed 4 June 2025 23:00, UK As far as the people who get all the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[67305,44623,77,269,26420,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-159198","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-alan-parsons","9":"tag-david-gilmour","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-pink-floyd","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114628673420758996","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159198"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159198\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}