Alan Parsons Project: ‘The Turn of a Friendly Card’

Following 1979’s Eve, and with an overarching concept around gamblers and gambling, The Turn of a Friendly Card was the fifth album by progressive rock collective The Alan Parsons Project, a studio-based collaboration between esteemed Pink Floyd/Pilot producer/engineer Alan Parsons and songwriter Eric Woolfson with a rotating cast of world class musicians.

Originally released in 1980 on the Arista Records label, this new Esoteric Recordings 3CD & 1 Blu-ray package is the definitive edition of Turn of a Friendly Card, featuring the first disc being the remastered version of the original album (plus the original 2008 bonus tracks), the Eric Woolfson demos from the 2015 edition on disc 2 and finally on the third, previously unreleased recording sessions bonus tracks as well as the three single edits of Games People Play, The Turn of a Friendly Card and Snake Eyes.

Additionally, we get on Blu-ray a 5.1 mix by Alan Parsons, plus a mammoth book telling the story of the album with in-depth recollections from Alan and Sally Woolfson (Eric sadly having died in 2009). My only minor gripe with boxes like this, is that unless we want to buy the album again, the 5.1 mix is unavailable outside this box.

Despite their success the Alan Parsons Project were incredibly hit and miss with the quality of their albums, the first two (Tales of Mystery and Imagination; I, Robot) were superb, whilst the sequels Pyramid and Eve were patchy in comparison, and this reputation of inconsistency dogged the band throughout their career, with such stinkers as Ammonia Avenue and Vulture Culture being allowed to escape.

Luckily The Turn of a Friendly Card is one of their strongest collections, with a stellar cast of musicians including Pilot’s David Paton & Ian Bairnson (who recently passed away, on 7 April 2023), Cockney Rebel’s Stuart Elliott on drums, Chris Rainbow, Elmer Gantry and Lenny Zakatek on vocals, whilst as well as contributing his usual piano and songwriting skills, Time features the first time Eric Woolfson’s vocals were released on record.

They managed to walk that fine line by splitting the album; with the shorter ‘standalone’ tracks onto side 1 of the vinyl, whilst side 2 has the entire 16 minute plus The Turn of a Friendly Card suite, which for those of us listening on new-fangled compact discs, has the individuals elements of the suite listed as separate tracks (although luckily they still segue nicely into each other) this mix of prog and rock (which was to ease as the band moved further into the 80’s) works really well on this album. The contrasting vocalists, musical dexterity of the musicians involved, and the use of the Philharmonic Orchestra (arranged and conducted by Andrew Powell) help pull the gambling concept together with the music.

If you have this album in either the 2008 or 2015 edition what is the real attraction to buy this album again? Sometimes these special editions with bonus discs of extra material are superfluous to requirements, however in this case the two extra discs from Woolfson’s home demos to the initial band studio demos are well worth the price of admission. Meanwhile for anyone, like me who thinks 5.1 is the pinnacle of music reproduction, the new mix by Alan Parsons take the original material and brings it to life in a way you have never heard it before, it sounds crisp, clear and despite being over 40 years of, as contemporary now as it did then.

The band in my opinion, peaked with the follow up 1982’s Eye in the Sky – where all the tricks they learnt on this album come to fruition, and on both Eye in the Sky and A Turn of a Friendly Card they proved that high concept progressive rock, if delivered and performed well can be accessible to the more casual listener, and that’s their biggest trick of all, bringing prog sensibilities to early 80’s FM rock.

This is a fantastic package, superceding the 2008 remaster and 2015 special edition, that celebrates the songwriting of Eric Woolfson as much as the production and performance technique of Alan Parsons and reinforces the partnership nature of the APP, whilst putting a human spin on the impact gambling has on people, one that sadly is still far too relevant.