Time, flowing like a river

Today Eric Woolfson, the creative mind and frequent vocalist of The Alan Parsons Project, died from cancer at the age of 64.

One of the things that sucks about getting older is watching the pop icons of your youth grow old and die and 64 isn’t even old.

The first APP album I bought was Ammonia Avenue in 1984 (on vinyl, of course). I was late to the party but went back and grabbed all of their back catalog and purchased the final three albums they released after Ammonia Avenue as they came out. Woolfson wrote clean, straightforward lyrics that worked without being overly schmaltzy or cliche and his vocals had a strange elegance that I can’t fully describe with any justice.

The idea that he and Parsons might work together again — something I had hoped for — is now lost, of course, so we’ll never know what a new collaboration might have sounded like (much like Rick Wright’s death ended any chance of further work from Pink Floyd after their 2005 Live 8 reconciliation). Time to listen to Eye in the Sky again…