We publish an excerpt from the interview given to Express.co.uk
"It was my idea to put the clocks on the song Time and to have Clare Torry sing on Great Gig In The Sky. Those two elements alone would not have happened if it were not for me. As you may know, Clare ended up agreeing on an out of court settlement with Pink Floyd for her contribution to that song. She is now credited as a joint composer; nobody knows what that settlement was. I have been in touch with her to ask, but she won't tell me.
He recalls: "It was incredibly good fortune. I had started at an associated department of EMI making reel to reel tapes from which Abbey Road would make the masters. In that job, I heard all the new recordings before their general public release. I remember being one of the first to hear Piper At The Gates Of Dawn by Pink Floyd. After a short time there, I wrote a letter to the then boss of Abbey Road and he was impressed by what I did and gave me a job. Literally six months later I was working on The Beatles' Let It Be."
"Dark Side it was done only sixteen track, believe it or not. There was nothing digital. All time shifting was done with tape and all the reverb was done with mechanical devices. I think it demonstrated the state of the art at the time and I am very proud of it.
They would occasionally double track guitars and I certainly multi-tracked guitars myself as Dave [Gilmour] would have as many as five or six parts going on and that was a demonstration of how the technology affected their creativity. The nice thing about the band back then was that they were all getting on with each other which is sadly, no longer true unfortunately. They were fun times and everybody was enjoying themselves."
Parsons explains: "Nick Mason was always very supportive of me and my role. I feel comfortable in the knowledge that Dark Side would have been different without me and my contributions.
He said: "I remember working with George (M
artin) on many projects, not just the Beatles. We worked with Cilla and I remember The Goons. I never met Peter Sellers, sadly. George was very diverse. He was the true ambassador for The Beatles and they both had a great respect for one another."
The Beatles: "Well, it was the final album and you could tell that there was a little bit of conflict going on between the four band members. They were mostly working as individuals. Once the basic tracks were done, all the overdubs and vocals tended to be done by the Beatle who had written the song. Paul would come in for a few days. George would come in for a few days. John would come in for a few days.
I think there is no doubt The Beatles had a profound effect on the development of recording technology. If it hadn't been for them, I think we'd probably still be using an eight track or four track even. They showed every one that a band didn't just play their instruments and then would add vocals, but that they willing to go beyond that.
They were a band that always were ready to experiment and push the limits of the recording studio to the boundaries that had never happened before. I think other groups from the 1960s and 1970s took advantage of what The Beatles had achieved, and many of them would say, if The Beatles can do it, we can do it too'. And I think Pink Floyd was one of those bands that did that.
They weren’t often seen together after the initial stages of the album, which, you know, kind of pointed towards the breakup,
I think. They had pretty long faces as you saw in the stills from “Let It Be.
I think “Let It Be” was probably the worse atmosphere, but like I said, they combatted their differences by not working together very often (laughs) on “Abbey Road.” They were just doing their own thing.I did some George Harrison sessions with him.
