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Eric Norman Woolfson (18 March 1945 – 2 December 2009) was a Scottish songwriter, lyricist, vocalist, executive producer, pianist, and creator of The Alan Parsons Project. He has sold over 50 million albums world-wide.
Following the 10 successful APP albums he made with Alan Parsons, Woolfson pursued his career in musical theatre. He wrote 5 musicals which won many awards and have been seen by over a million people. They have been performed in Germany, Austria, Korea and Japan.
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Woolfson, who belonged to a Jewish family, was born in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow and raised in the Pollokshields area. He was educated at the High School of Glasgow.
He started composing music in his early teens. He moved to London where he found work as a session pianist, at the age of 18. The record producer for the Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham, signed him up as a songwriter. During the following years, Woolfson wrote songs for such artists as Marianne Faithfull, Frank Ifield, Joe Dassin, The Tremeloes,Marie (french singer) Marmalade, Dave Berry, and Peter Noone. His songs were recorded by over 100 artists both in Europe and America. During the '60s he worked alongside two then-unknown writers, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice.
In 1971, with the assistance of Eric Stewart, Kevin Godley, Lol Creme and Graham Gouldman (who later became 10cc), a single was produced under the name of Eric Elder ("San Tokay" b/w "Sunflower") and issued on UK Philips 6006 081 and US Philips 40699. Woolfson then produced a single by Graham Gouldman ("Nowhere to Go" b/w "Growing Older") which was issued in 1972 on UK CBS 7739.
In the early '70s, Eric turned his hand to management and was instantly successful. His first two signings were Carl Douglas (whose record Kung Fu Fighting was one of the biggest selling hits of all time) and engineer/record producer Alan Parsons.
In 1975, Woolfson joined forces with record producer Alan Parsons.
Eric and Alan formed a new kind of collaboration that would allow Parsons' engineering skills to be used to the fullest extent while allowing Woolfson to exploit his talents as a songwriter and lyricist. The Alan Parsons Project was born, the name originally being intended as a working title for their collaborative project. From 1976 to 1987, Woolfson and Parsons collaborated on the conception and lyrics for all ten albums by The Alan Parsons Project, which have achieved worldwide sales in excess of 50 million.
On every Project album, Woolfson would sing a guide vocal track for each song, which the album's eventual lead vocalists would use as a reference. Some of these tracks can be heard on the new remastered editions of various Project albums released in 2007. Woolfson himself was the actual singer on many of the Project's biggest hits, such as "Time", "Don't Answer Me", "Prime Time" and the band's signature tune "Eye in the Sky", which peaked at #3 on the Hot 100 on 16-30 October 1982.
Freudiana was originally meant to be the 11th album by The Alan Parsons Project, but Woolfson was keen to explore the possibility of realising the project as a musical. While recording the album, Brian Brolly was introduced to Woolfson and promised to steer the album in this new direction. Brolly was previously a partner with Andrew Lloyd Webber, and together they created such musicals as Cats. With some help from Brolly, Woolfson was able to turn Freudiana into a stage musical.
Before the Freudiana stage production opened in 1990 in Vienna, a double-length studio album was released. The musical had a successful run, and it was planned that the show would open in other cities. However, plans were put on hold when a lawsuit broke out between Brolly and Woolfson, each fighting for control of the project.
The studio disc (the "white" album) was quite difficult to obtain for a while. There was also a double-length German-language cast disc (the "black" album) which is currently out of print.
Woolfson was eager to write for musical theatre. He explained his career switch during an interview in 2004:
His first musical premiered in Vienna in 1990: Freudiana, about Sigmund Freud. The success of this first work led to Woolfson’s second musical Gaudi (concerning the Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi) (1995), which ran for over five years in several German productions. Gambler, Woolfson’s third musical also premiered in Germany in 1996 and had a first run of over 500 performances. Gambler has had six productions in Korea, two of which also toured Japan in 2002 and 2005 (the first time a Korean language production had been staged in this way). A fourth musical POE, based on the life of the author, was given a world premiere concert production at Abbey Road studios, London in 2003. An album was released in 2003 as POE More Tales of Mystery and Imagination and a musical album CD 'Edgar Allan Poe' and DVD of the POE Abbey Road concert were released in 2009. DVD.
Dancing with Shadows (inspired by the anti-war play Forest Fire by the Korean playwright Cham Bum-Suk and with a book by Ariel Dorfman) was premiered in July 2007 in Korea.
Woolfson was married to Hazel from 1969 until his death from kidney cancer in London in the early hours of 2 December 2009. He is survived by both his daughters.
Арик Норман Вольфсон
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