On Air (Alan Parsons Album) - Album's Concept

Album's Concept

With their newfound independence from Arista, Parsons and Bairnson decided early on that this release would be a work of art from start to finish where neither vision nor integrity would be subverted by commercial sensibility.

The album follows the history of airborne exploration, from the mythological flight of Daedalus and Icarus to escape the labyrinth of the Minotaur in "Too Close To The Sun", through Leonardo da Vinci's search to design a flying machine, or ornithopter, in long-time Project drummer Stuart Elliott's "One Day To Fly", until finally mankind's aspirations for space exploration placed on the shoulders of a single astronaut in "So Far Away" and the subsequent superpower race to put a man on the moon in "Apollo", a track backed by John F. Kennedy's famous speech of May 25, 1961.

While the ode to hot air ballooning "Blown By The Wind" and following instrumental "Cloudbreak" are arguably the finest guitar work Bairnson has ever recorded, the creative catalyst for this album is the beautiful, albeit melancholy, ballad "Brother Up In Heaven". The song's lyrics remember Ian's deceased cousin Erik Mounsey who was killed in a friendly fire incident above Iraq in 1994. The death of this young helicopter pilot is made even more haunting by the fact that he was an unarmed peacekeeper.