Eric Woolfson's Poe - More Tales of Mystery and Imagination

Eric Woolfson, creator of The Alan Parsons Project and writer of many of their hits, such as Eye in the Sky, continues his deep interest in the life and works of American poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe in his recent album More Tales of Mystery and Imagination.

This is the second time that Eric has created an album inspired by Poe, as Tales of Mystery and Imagination was a huge success for Eric with the Alan Parsons Project previously, and sold over 8 million copies worldwide.

More Tales of Mystery and Imagination is Eric's opportunity to revisit Poe and explore not only some of Poe's works, but aspects of Poe's tragic life.

The deaths of the women Poe dearly loved had a profound effect on him. This combined with an opium habit, which he acquired as a child at the hands of a "well-meaning nanny", seemed to be part of the fuel for his creativity, whilst at the same time his stumbling block in life.

Poe's loves, his passions, his losses and his depression, managed to combine with his expertise of writing poems and stories laced with imagination and the essence of nightmares to produce some truly brilliant stories which are still widely-read and respected throughout the world today. It is quite easy to understand how Eric Woolfson could become so interested in such a person.

There was a live performance of the music from the CD held in November 2003 at the world-famous Abbey Road Studios. It was a remarkable performance - originally billed as a "concert performance" in actual presentation it was very much like a musical, with the songs being acted out and choreographed.

The Premiere Performance was performed to a full house and was a once in a lifetime event, which was recorded for a DVD release. Its release has been rumoured but as of yet we have not received any official information regarding its release.

We suggest that you start contacting your favourite DVD/Music stores and ask them if they have been given a release date for it. As soon as anyone finds out any information to pass onto us, please let us know on our messageboard - it is a must-have to Steve fans!

He was in excellent voice that night, and the performances of Steve and the entire cast were impeccable. I am sure when you see and hear it for yourself, you will see what I mean! There were extra songs included in the performance that were not on the original CD, and some songs were sung by other characters in the live show differing from the CD (ie Tiny Star was sung by Poe's Mother in the live performance, while Poe (Steve) sung it on the CD.)

To our knowledge, the items that were available for official release were the CD album (which features a sticker on the box of early pressings stating "from the creator and writer of the Alan Parsons Project". Also on very limited availability was the single of Immortal which included the Radio Edit version as well as Tiny Star taken from the CD album. We have also recently found that there was indeed a single with very limited availability in the Netherlands for Somewhere in the Audience which features Steve singing lead on the title track and Fred Johanson singing Train to Freedom on the second track.

	Immortal single featuring the radio edit of the title track and Tiny Star
Somewhere in the Audience single featuring title track sung by Steve and Train to Freedom sung by Fred Johanson

Promo Items

There were promo copies of the entire CD produced, but the cover and tracks were identical to the official release with the exception that the promo copies do state that they are promos.

We also know of a POE EPK (EPK is short for Electronic Press Kit) which essentially is standard press kit/folder which also has multi-media content on discs with it. In the case of POE, there was a lovely folder (featuring the dark green POE theme as in the vein of the CD artwork) and in the UK issue of this EPK, the folder included a leaflet with facts/history, a sheet giving details of the Abbey Road Concert, and 2 CD's - one of which featured samples from the CD album, and the other featured interviews with Steve and Eric! You can still track these down but they are not cheap, and fetch anything between $45 - $80 when you find them. But they are lovely, and well worth the hunt, and the price!

We have also spotted 2 different German versions of the EPK - both are in the same folder however one has 2 discs as the UK version, and the other only has the interview disc. It is unconfirmed as to whether the single disc version is as it was intended, or if the excerpts CD was simply missing.