Song:Games People Play
Album:Eye In The Sky: The Encore Collection
Alan Parsons was already a famed recording engineer and producer when he decided to record under his own name. The Alan Parsons Project had quite a bit of success including the 1980 top twenty hit Games People Play. He was born Dec. 20, 1948 in London. In 1967, he worked as an assistant recording engineer at Abbey Road Studios and got his first album credit on the Beatles' Abbey Road. He worked with Paul McCartney, Pink Floyd and The Hollies and started producing in the mid-70s. He had his biggest success with the Al Stewart album Year Of The Cat in 1976. He formed The Alan Parsons Project in 1976 with Eric Woolfson. Woolfson was a songwriter and producer who had recently had success with the 1974 Carl Douglas hit Kung Fu Fighting. The idea was to use studio musicians and release the music under one name. Parsons produced bands like Pilot and Ambrosia so they were on the records. In fact, Pilot guitarist Ian Bairnson is on all The Alan Parsons Project albums. They were successful as an album band but they had a couple of hit singles including Games People Play which reached #16 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1980. The lead singer on Games People Play was Lenny Zakatek. He was lead singer of the 70s group Gonzalez but by this time had turned to studio work. Parsons produced his 1979 solo album. The Alan Parsons Project continued to have success until Parsons and Woolfson split up in 1990 while working on album which Woolfson released under his own name. This budget comp is a good intro to their music. Eric Woolfson died in 2009 but Alan Parsons continues to work on various projects and has occasionally revived The Alan Parsons Project for tours. Here's a video for Games People Play by The Alan Parsons Project featuring Lenny Zakatek. It appears this may have been intended as a music video at the time but it was lost for many years and discovered a couple of months ago. It's pretty good.
Games People Play : The Alan Parsons Project from Paul TV on Vimeo.
My favorite APP song-the songs with Lenny on vocals come across as much less pretentious than their other work.
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