One record carries two names, and that small detail tells the whole story. The cover of Freudiana says only 'Freudiana', yet early pressings added a line across the top: 'The Alan Parsons Project'. The rock opera by Eric Woolfson was released on 11 October 1990, and it was supposed to be the eleventh studio album by the duo he had built with producer Alan Parsons. Instead, it became the last thing they ever made together.
Woolfson's Freud concept takes shape
The idea had been growing since Woolfson finished work on the album Gaudi. He began studying the life and work of Sigmund Freud, visiting the psychoanalyst's former homes in London and Vienna, which are now museums. The songs drew on classic Freud cases: the Wolf Man, the Rat Man, Dora, Little Hans and Judge Schreber. Woolfson had found a subject big enough for a whole record, and he set out to write it as the next Alan Parsons Project release.
Then the partnership cracked. During the recording, Woolfson and Parsons fell into creative disagreements, and the project split apart. It was a strange end for a collaboration that had defined a certain polished, ambitious strain of rock through the 80s. The official eleventh Alan Parsons Project album, The Sicilian Defence, sat on a shelf until 2014, a full 36 years after it was recorded. Freudiana, meanwhile, moved forward without the old name attached.
From studio album to Vienna stage show
Around the middle of the sessions, producer Brian Brolly approached Woolfson with a bigger idea: turn the concept into a stage musical. Woolfson agreed, and with Brolly's help Freudiana became a theatrical show. The premiere took place at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna on 19 December 1990. By 18 April 1992 the production had run for 380 performances and drawn 320,000 people. The album itself reached number 7 in Austria, and charted at 51 in the Netherlands and 50 in Germany.
The record appeared in two forms. The standard 'White Album', released by EMI Records, held 18 tracks and credited no artist above the title except the word Freudiana. Its singers included Leo Sayer, Kiki Dee, Marti Webb, Eric Stewart of 10cc, Frankie Howerd, Gary Howard and The Flying Pickets, alongside familiar Alan Parsons Project voices such as Chris Rainbow, John Miles, Graham Dye and Woolfson himself. Parsons still wrote and produced parts of the music, but his name was no longer the selling point.
Marketing misstep and legal battles
That choice haunted the album. Parsons later admitted that not releasing it under The Alan Parsons Project name was a huge marketing mistake. He believed the record would have performed far better with the familiar brand attached, and he said the show had the potential of Cats or Les Misérables. Instead, the whole venture sank into legal battles. Woolfson and Brolly fought for control of the project, and the dispute dragged on for more than three years, costing a great deal of money.
Brolly won the case, but the album stayed credited to Eric Woolfson and Alan Parsons. By then the damage was done. Plans to open the show in other cities were suspended, and the partnership that had powered the Alan Parsons Project never recovered. Woolfson said that after the split the songs became his own, except for one track. The only piece on the White Album written by Parsons was 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle'; everything else came from Woolfson.
For Woolfson, though, Freudiana opened a new door. The experience gave him a taste for musical theatre, and he decided to build the rest of his career there. The record that ended one chapter of his life also started another. It stands as the last joint work of Woolfson and Parsons, a rock opera caught between two futures: the band it was meant to extend, and the stage it was always reaching for.