The Raven (song)

"The Raven" is the first song by the Alan Parsons Project, recorded in April 1976 at Mama Jo's Studio, North Hollywood, Los Angeles.^[3] It is the second track on their debut album, Tales of Mystery and Imagination, which is a tribute to author and poet Edgar Allan Poe.^[4] Though the song is based on Poe's poem of the same name, and is almost a verbatim recital of the lyrics of the poem, Poe is not given song writing credit. It is credited to Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson.^[5]

According to the liner notes of the album, "The Raven" is the first rock song to use a vocoder,^[6] developed by Electronic Music Studios (EMS), to distort vocals. It is also one of the few songs by the band featuring vocals by Alan Parsons, who sings the first verse through the EMS vocoder. Actor Leonard Whiting performs the lead vocals for the remainder of the song, with Eric Woolfson and the Westminster City School Boys Choir providing backing vocals.^[7]

"The Raven" was the first single released by the Alan Parsons Project. It peaked at #80 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart the week of October 30, 1976.^[8] It does not appear on either The Best of the Alan Parsons Project or The Best of the Alan Parsons Project, Volume 2, as the band moved from 20th Century Records to Arista after the release of Tales of Mystery and Imagination. It appears on the American version of the 1997 2 CD Definitive Collection and the 2007 collection, The Essential Alan Parsons Project.

The B-side of "The Raven" is "The Fall of the House of Usher" prelude. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an instrumental suite that runs more than fifteen minutes and takes up most of side two of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, however, the prelude is trimmed down to 5:59. Although uncredited, the prelude is taken from the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy, which was composed between 1908 and 1917.^[9]

On the 1987 reissued version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the song contains a guitar solo by Ian Bairnson near the end, before the "Quoth the Raven"/"Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore, never!" refrains and a few licks between the lyrics.^[10]

The choral band Gregorian covered "The Raven" on their 2004 release, The Dark Side.^[11]

American rapper Danny Brown sampled the song for "Clean Up" on his 2013 album Old.^[12]

Original (1976)

• Burleigh Drummond, Stuart Tosh — drums
• Bob Howes and the English Chorale — choir vocals
• Christopher North — keyboards
• David Pack — guitars
• Alan Parsons — opening lead vocals (using EMI vocoder)
• Andrew Powell — conducted and arranged orchestra
• Joe Puerta — bass guitar
• Leonard Whiting — lead vocals
• Eric Woolfson — backing vocals, keyboards

Reissue (1987)

• Ian Bairnson — lead guitar solo