Don’t You (Forget About Me) was made popular from The Breakfast Club, and many other songs only became hits due to their luck in being selected by a popular film, but are we limiting this to whole albums?
Good point. But didn’t Bowie produce the whole album? I know that doesn’t necessarily indicate how involved he really was, but I got the impression he was pretty heavily involved in the arrangement, mixing, etc. Although after reading a bit more it sounds like Mick Ronson did a lot of the heavy lifting as well.
I think it’s probably fair to say that without Bowie, that album would not have been a success. Which I think is what the OP is going for.
Nope. No one bought I, Robot, Eve, and especially Turn of a Friendly Card (#13 US Billboard 1981, 2M copies sold worldwide), because “hey that’s the dude that engineered DSoTM.” We bought them because they are cracking good albums.
Alan Parsons Project was a band, not a solo thing. And by namd I mean duo, kin the same vein as Steely Dan. Eric Woolfson had as abig a hand in their output as Parsons. And you might as well claim that AP built his fame on Anney Road, as he worked on that, too.
I bought Tales and Mystery… when it was released. Nowhere was it marketed as “By the guy who engineered DSotM.” In fact, that kind of martketing didn’t really exist backk then.
So, in a word: no.
You’re forgetting Daniel Lanois.
And you may think of this from a U.S. perspective, but U2 were already huge in Europe and had been gaining attraction in the U.S. for a while:
[In 1983, i.e. before The Unforgettable Fire] The band played several dates at large European and American music festivals,] including a performance at the US Festival on Memorial Day weekend for an audience of 125,000 people.
What really cemented them as Rock Gods was Live Aid, not who produced what.
Agree that Lanois was also important here, and acknowledge that U2 was already big in Europe, but I will continue to insist that their sound was becoming played out and would’ve fallen by the wayside by the end of the 80’s had Eno & Lanois not helped them develop what we now recognize as U2.
I would argue that Pink Floyd owes a debt to Alan Parsons every bit as much as Alan Parsons is in debt to Pink Floyd.
Thanks to Parsons, Dark Side of the Moon was a significant departure from Floyd’s earlier work, and that style became a linchpin of Floyd’s sound after all of Roger Waters’ weird shit had played out.
Not to minimize the huge impact of The Wall, but that kind of thing isn’t what kept Floyd going for the next three decades.
“The Sound of Silence” was released in an acoustic version on Simon and Garfunkel’s first album in 1966. The album sold 2,000 copies, and Simon and Garfunkel split up. Tom Wilson at Columbia remixed it with a rock band backing, and it became a big hit. So I think “The Sound of Silence” album’s success could be attributed to him. And also to Bob Johnson who finished it. Wilson and Johnson were both producers for the early Dylan.
Yes, absolutely.
And this, too. Even though I love Meddle and see it as a rough prequel/blueprint/sketch of what was about to come, it’s certainly not DSotM. Parsons had a huge part in polishing the sound and getting a coherent album out, which Meddle is not.
I suppose one could argue that Klaatu only enjoyed whatever success they achieved because of the widespread rumor that they were really the Beatles.
Didn’t they even record and release the new version of it while Paul Simon was out of the country, and without the Simon and Garfunkel’s knowledge? I think Paul in particular hated the new version.
So yeah, that’s a great one. You could argue that not only did Tom Wilson create the success of Sound of Silence, but probably also the continued existence of Simon and Garfunkel as a duo.