“The name of the band stemmed from the record company. On our first album, before we had a name, they would ask, ‘How’s the Alan Parsons project coming?’ And we’d say, ‘Oh, great. Sounds good. We’ll be delivering the Alan Parsons project in February.’ After a while, the record company president said, ‘I like that – the Alan Parsons Project. That’s what we’ll call it.’

“This was our second album; we’d had some success with the first one, the Edgar Alan Poe album [Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, 1976]. Being signed by record company giant executive Clive Davis was great, a very humbling experience.

“It was funny, however – there we were, this progressive rock outfit sitting alongside the other Arista artists, people like Barry Manilow. I think we’re the only prog-rock band Clive Davis has in his history.

“The title track to the album owed a heavy debt to an early sequencer on a suitcase synthesizer. It was in this small case – you’d open the lid and there were all of these buttons and things. That’s what formed the basis of this instrumental track, the opening song on the album.”