Standing under the sheet which they held above their heads, Eric and David waited for the next peel of thunder which duly came and the two of them exploded into laughter, again totally wrecking the recording. Improvising quickly, Eric and the bass guitarist, David Paton, rushed into the rain and held a sheet above the dummy head to keep the rain off.

The rain was belting down so hard, it bounced off the rubber head making such a noise that the thunder could not be properly heard. Alan quickly fitted some long leads to the dummy head, stuck it on a microphone stand and took it through to the garden behind the studio and they waited for the next peal of thunder. Nowhere in the world indicated thunder storms and just as they were about to give up hope, the skies over Abbey Road opened up in the most torrential storm any of them had ever experienced. They were experimenting with a ‘dummy-head’ microphone which was supposed to give a highly realistic surround sound signal, even on a stereo recording and were prepared to fly anywhere in the world with this large rubber head to record the desired effect. The sound effects library had some fairly inadequate samples so they scoured the newspapers to see where weather conditions might be more promising. When they were recording this particular piece, it was at the height of Summer in August in London and there was no probability of such weather conditions. It seemed obvious that as part of the Fall of the House of Usher track, they would need the sound effect of thunder and lightning. Compared to Gaudi and Freud whose work enthralled Eric, but whose lives were mundane by comparison, he found Edgar Allan Poe doubly inspirational. He regards Edgar Allan Poe as probably his greatest musical inspiration because not only were his works fascinating, his life was even more intriguing. Eric was struck with the idea that if this were true, then perhaps an album inspired by his work might not lose money either and this was the genesis of Tales of Mystery and Imagination.Įric has always been inspired by great creative minds, whether authors, architects or psychoanalysts. Eric was far too young to see the movies, but was intrigued by this forbidden fruit and when later in the 60s, he attended some evening marketing classes, in attempting to describe the new marketing concept, the lecturer mentioned a marketing statistic, namely that no film made from Edgar Allan Poe’s work had ever lost money.

He particularly remembers The Pit and the Pendulum, The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher. Eric recalls walking to school in Glasgow, he had to pass various cinemas which often had lurid Edgar Allan Poe film posters on display.

Poe tales of mystery and imagination