The Alan Parsons Project was a British rock band active between 1975 and 1990, whose core membership consisted of Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. They were accompanied by a varying number of session musicians and some relatively consistent session players such as guitarist Ian Bairnson, arranger Andrew Powell, bassist and vocalist David Paton, drummer Stuart Elliott, and vocalists Lenny Zakatek and Chris Rainbow. Parsons was an audio engineer and producer by profession, but also a musician and a composer. A songwriter by profession, Woolfson was also a composer, a pianist, and a singer. Almost all the songs on the Project's albums are credited to "Woolfson/Parsons".

The Alan Parsons Project released eleven studio albums in its 15-year career, including the successful I Robot and Eye in the Sky. Some of their most notable songs are "The Raven", "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether", "I Wouldn't Want to Be Like You", "Games People Play", "Time", "Snake Eyes", "Sirius"/"Eye in the Sky", "Old and Wise", and "Don't Answer Me".

Alan Parsons met Eric Woolfson in the canteen of Abbey Road Studios in the summer of 1974. Parsons acted as Assistant Engineer on the Beatles' albums Abbey Road (1969) and Let It Be (1970), engineered Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973), and produced several acts for EMI Records. Woolfson, a songwriter and composer, was working as a session pianist while composing material for a concept album based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe.

Woolfson's idea was to manage Alan and help his already successful production career. This was the start of their longstanding friendly business relationship. He managed Parsons's career as a producer and engineer through a string of successes, including Pilot, Steve Harley, Cockney Rebel, John Miles, Al Stewart, Ambrosia, and the Hollies. Woolfson came up with the idea of making an album based on developments in the film industry -- the focal point of the films' promotion shifted from film stars to directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. If the film industry was becoming a director's medium, Woolfson felt the music business might well become a producer's medium.