Eric Woolfson
Freudiana

"If all things mass pass, why build a miracle at all?"

And when you hear the voice of this person, now gone, which still manages to give you those emotions and feelings you thought were lost forever, you realize that a piece of your life has gone with it. In a way, it's like when someone dear to you disappears, and you realize that with them, you lose a piece of your shared existence together.

And so when I listen to the smooth cadences of Eric Woolfson's voice, my mind is whisked back to the latter half of the nineties: long after-school afternoons at Pibroch's house listening to the vinyl of the Alan Parsons Project, first crushes, soccer games, our first troublemaking; our shooting the breeze and the Dodo fan club, often with the voices of Lenny Zakatek, Chris Rainbow, and naturally Eric Woolfson, who we kind of elected as our favorite singer within the Project. Both I and Pibroch learned a few days ago, with great sorrow, of his passing on December 2, 2009, at the age of 64, because of a damned tumor. He paid a splendid tribute in a review you can find here, but I also wanted to make a small homage with this review.

A genius, that Woolfson, much like his music partner Parsons. Someone who would go arm in arm with an orchestra, and his orchestral approach is reflected in his way of composing rock music, at least music for the modern music market. Not just for the massive use of choirs and arrangements intertwined in the compositions but also in their structures. Beyond that, he has always been an excellent pianist.

"Freudiana" was theoretically supposed to be the eleventh album of the Alan Parsons Project, but when the album was ready in 1990, it was clear to everyone that this record was entirely the work of Woolfson, thus Parsons was only credited with the production. And perhaps it's better this way because the sound had undergone some touches of modernity, especially after the album Stereotomy. Assisted by the usual band from the Project (Ian Bairnson on guitar, Stuart Elliott on drums, Andy Powell on orchestral arrangements), Woolfson managed to bring into the world a little gem: a nod to synths, the aforementioned superb orchestrations, a handful of excellent guest vocalists like John Miles, Kiki Dee, Leo Sayer.

Noteworthy are the Beatles-esque "Little Hans", the more Parsons-like "I Am A Mirror", and a couple of instrumentals like "The Nirvana Principle", "Freudiana II", or the beautiful "Beyond the Pleasure Principle", the only one written by Parsons. Chris Rainbow brings us back to Gemini's chills with the brief Destiny, but it is Eric Woolfson who performs miracles with his voice, not so much in "Freudiana I", but more so in "Dora" and "Let Yourself Go". The pieces closest to theatrical standards are those sung by the guest group The Flying Pickets, as well as "No One Can Love You Better Than Me" with the trio Kiki Dee/Gary Howard/Marti Webb. Perhaps the album offers the listener too many slow intervals between the above-mentioned noteworthy tracks, but it nonetheless has the merit of being a very heterogeneous work.

In the studio, Woolfson released only three studio albums in his name, maybe because the real magic was in the collaboration with good old Alan.

Goodbye dear Eric, unfortunately, you left almost unnoticed by the whole music world, and undoubtedly, you were not given the honors you deserved. Rest in peace.