The Best Psychedelic Rock Bands: Pink Floyd and The Alan Parsons Project
Looking for some great psychedelic rock to listen to? Then check out our list of the best psychedelic rock bands, including Pink Floyd and The Alan Parsons Project!
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd was an English rock band formed in London in 1965. The band initially consisted of Syd Barrett on lead vocals and guitar, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass, and Richard Wright on keyboards and backing vocals. The group are known for their psychedelic and progressive rock music, and they are considered one of the most influential rock bands of all time.
History
Pink Floyd was an English rock band formed in London in 1965. They achieved international acclaim with their progressive and psychedelic music. Pink Floyd were founded by students Syd Barrett on guitar and lead vocals, Nick Mason on drums, Roger Waters on bass and vocals, and Richard Wright on keyboards and vocals. They gained popularity performing in London’s underground music scene during the late 1960s, and under Barrett’s leadership released two charting singles and a successful debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (1967).
Music
Pink Floyd was an English rock band formed in London in 1965. They achieved international acclaim with their progressive and psychedelic music. Pink Floyd were one of the first British bands to incorporate Beach Boys harmonies into their sound, and they also became known for their use of innovative sound effects and technologies. The band’s primary songwriters were Syd Barrett, Roger Waters, and Rick Wright. Barrett died in 2006, and Wright died in 2008; Waters exited the group in 1985.
Legacy
After Syd Barrett’s departure, Pink Floyd continued to produce much-acclaimed and commercially successful albums, reaching their peak with 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, a concept album that explored the nature of human existence. The album is Pink Floyd’s most commercially successful release, spending 741 consecutive weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart (from March 1973 to October 1988), and has sold an estimated 50 million copies worldwide. With more than 45 million copies sold, it is also one of the best-selling albums of all time. The album’s success propelled Pink Floyd to new heights of popularity andcritical acclaim, establishing them as one of the most important bands in rock music.
The Alan Parsons Project
The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, mainly associated with the progressive rock genre. The core members were Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. The Alan Parsons Project is known for their successful concept albums, which are based on themes such as human conflict, social order, and philosophical and scientific discoveries.
History
The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band, active between 1975 and 1990, consisting of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. Both musicians were studio session players in the 1960s and 1970s, and they created the Project as a vehicle to showcase their own producing and songwriting abilities outside the confines of standard band activity.
The group’s debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), was an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems “The Raven” and “The Tell-Tale Heart”, set to new music. It was followed by I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), Eve (1979), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), eye in the Sky (1982) and Gaudi (1987). The Project’s final album, Try Anything Once (1993), was recorded without Parsons or Woolfson.
Parsons was the engineer on many Abbey Road Studios recordings by the Beatles, Pink Floyd, Wings, Al Stewart and others. He also produced three solo albums by former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett. Woolfson wrote songs for musicians such as Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, Barbra Streisand, Dionne Warwick and Engelbert Humperdinck before working with Parsons on several solo albums.
Music
The Alan Parsons Project was a British progressive rock band formed by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson in 1975. The group’s musical style focused on synthesizers and tape music, and they are best known for their concept albums, which included Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1976), I Robot (1977), Pyramid (1978), Eve (1979), The Turn of a Friendly Card (1980), and Eye in the Sky (1982). The Alan Parsons Project disbanded in 1990, but Woolfson continued to release music under the group’s name until his death in 2009.
Legacy
The Alan Parsons Project was an Anglo-American rock band active from 1975 until 1990, founded by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. The group mostly produced by Alan Parsons with the material credited to “the Alan Parsons Project”. They had a more strident and guitar-based sound than Pink Floyd.
They achieved chart success with the debut album, “Tales of Mystery and Imagination” (1976), reaching #3 in the UK.
The second album, “I Robot” (1977), was also successful and contained the top 10 single “I Wouldn’t Want to Be Like You”.
The band’s musical style combined different genres like pop, rock, art rock and progressive rock. Most of the songs were written by Eric Woolfson or Alan Parsons with contributions from other songwriters such as Andrew Powell, Ian Bairnson, Leslie Duncan and Colin Blunstone.
The Alan Parsons Project released ten albums between 1976 and 1987, though most of these were compilations or contained re-recorded material. In total they sold over 50 million records worldwide. After the dissolution of The Alan Parsons Project in 1990, Alan Parsons released several solo albums while Eric Woolfson went on to form The Pyramaxx.
