Born in Glasgow, Scotland on 18th March 1945. Married Hazel in 1969. They have two daughters, Sally & Lorna and two grandchildren, Toby & Amelie.
Eric had an uncle in Glasgow who played the piano masterfully and who inspired Eric to want to become a musician. After a very short spell of piano lessons which were soon abandoned, Eric started playing by himself and became a self-taught pianist who still cannot read music!
In his teens, following a brief but somewhat unsuccessful foray into the profession of Chartered Accountancy where they said he'd be better apprenticed to a circus, Eric went to London and hung around Denmark Street a.k.a. 'Tin Pan Alley'.
He managed to get work as a session pianist and worked with musicians such as Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones who went on to form LED ZEPPELIN and managed to fix a meeting with the Record Producer & Co. Manager of THE ROLLING STONES, Andrew Loog Oldham.
After being kept waiting for over four hours for his meeting, Oldham finally showed up and asked Eric to play something he'd written himself. After playing just one song, Oldham stood up and said 'You're a f******* genius' and immediately offered Eric a publishing deal with Oldham's newly formed company 'Immediate Records'.
Oldham placed Eric's work with a number of well known artists of the day such as MARIANNE FAITHFULL and FRANK IFIELD as well as using Eric as a session pianist on many of his independent productions.
Other songs written by Eric found their way into various record producers' hands, including MICK JAGGER's first attempt as a record producer with a singer called CHRIS FARLOWE - although Eric's song eventually was consigned the the B-side, the single OUT OF TIME went to number one in the UK Charts.
Eric signed other publishing deals with other companies as his repertoire flourished and more and more of his songs found their way to major recording artists, both in Europe and America.
He signed a deal with Southern Music where he joined the ranks of composers such as Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Eric remembers Lloyd Webber and Rice's decision to create stage musicals as a vehicle for their songs, rather than the more difficult route of trying for covers by the big artists of the day. As time went by, Eric realized how well founded their idea was.
On his way south, Eric got involved with music business agency, Kennedy Street Enterprises. He joined one of their acts HERMAN'S HERMITS as a guest pianist for a short spell, and had high hopes of becoming a permanent member of one their other groups, but they wouldn't guarantee him a retainer and so he decided to carry on further south to London. The musicians Eric left behind in Manchester, shortly afterwards became known as 10CC.
Later, Eric was taken on as an independent record producer by several record companies working with artists including DAVE BERRY, THE EQUALS and THE TREMELOES.
Around this time, Eric had the idea to make an album inspired by Edgar Allan Poe. He wrote some of the material which later found its way into the Alan Parsons Project and at that time he recorded some demos with guitarist Rick Westwood of THE TREMELOES. Eric produced the recordings but was not sure that he had the necessary skill to realize such a grandiose project and shelved the idea.
Despite having many of his songs recorded all over Europe, Eric found that earning a living as a songwriter was not easy and so he decided to try his hand at artist management.
His first two clients were a singer CARL DOUGLAS who had just reached the top of the charts with KUNG FU FIGHTING and a record producer called ALAN PARSONS who he had met while on a session at Abbey Road Studios.
Alan had decided to become a producer and with Eric as his manager, he enjoyed a string of successes including consecutive number one hits with PILOT and COCKNEY REBEL. Other notable successes were JOHN MILES and AL STEWART with YEAR OF THE CAT.
At that time, the film business had become a director's medium with luminaries such as Stanley Kubrick being more influential in the making of a film that the stars who appeared in it. Now having access to Alan's production and engineering talent, Eric saw an opportunity to mirror this in the record business by combining his own writing talents with Alan's. His Edgar Allan Poe idea came off the shelf and the ALAN PARSONS PROJECT was born.
The first album entitled TALES OF MYSTERY AND IMAGINATION, EDGAR ALLAN POE was released in 1976. It was immediately obvious that there was more to the idea than one album, but as the original record deal was for only the first album, a new deal was done with Arista Records for nine further albums.
Despite there being no live performances and few obvious hit singles the venture was a great success. There were however hit singles (many on which Eric sang lead vocal) including EYE IN THE SKY, TIME and DON'T ANSWER ME, three of which in addition to record sales, have been played on American radio more than 1 million times.
After ten albums Eric wanted to develop in other areas and decided it was time to move into the area of stage musicals. His first attempt, inspired by Sigmund Freud, was entitled FREUDIANA which was premiered in 1990 in Vienna's historic THEATER AN DER WIEN where Beethoven premiered 'Fidelio', his one and only opera. Eric had always been inspired by creative minds and his wife Hazel had been studying psychology and began to leave books on Freud lying around the house. Intrigued by the titles, Woolfson became fascinated by their content and started researching Freud and spent a lot of time in the Freud Museum in London, even lying on the couch on which Freud's patients recounted their dreams.
The success of this first musical work led to Woolfson's second musical GAUDI which premiered in 1994 in Aachen, Germany and went on to be staged in Alsdorf (1995) and Cologne (1996) where a 1,700-seat theatre was specially built in the heart of the city to stage the show. Half a million people saw GAUDI in the five years that it ran and every performance received a standing ovation.
For his next musical GAMBLER, Eric drew on his experiences of living in Monte Carlo (in the late 70s) which had also been the inspiration for the APP TURN OF A FRIENDLY CARD album. Many of the songs from this album (Turn of a Friendly Card, Snake Eyes, Games People Play and Time) were included in the show. It was premiered in Germany in Monchengladbach in 1996. GAMBLER has so far had six productions in Korea, one of which also toured Japan in 2002 and 2005 (the first time a Korean language production had been staged in this way) and it won several Korean Tony Awards.
Eric's work POE re-visits his original inspiration Edgar Allan Poe. It had its world premiere showcase at Abbey Road Studios in 2003 and there is an album available containing about half of the material from the musical entitled 'POE, More Tales of Mystery and Imagination'.
In 2007 Eric's musical DANCING SHADOWS premiers in Asia. This is a unique musical project inspired by a famous Korean play entitled A FOREST FIRE. The noted playwright and author Ariel Dorfman has written the book and Eric has written the music and lyrics.
In December 2006, a year long tour of GAUDI will premiere in Cologne, Germany and in 2007 an extensive Dutch tour of GAMBLER is planned followed by a German tour in 2008.
August 2006
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