Woolfson was born in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow and raised in the Pollokshields area.
He started composing music in his early teens. He moved to London where he found work as a session pianist, at the age of 18. The record producer for the Rolling Stones, Andrew Oldham, signed him up as a songwriter. During the following years, Woolfson wrote songs for such artists as Marianne Faithfull, Frank Ifield, Joe Dassin, The Tremeloes, Marmalade, Dave Berry, and Peter Noone. His songs were recorded by over 100 artists both in Europe and America. During the '60s he worked with two then-unknown writers, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice...
In 1975, Woolfson joined forces with record producer Alan Parsons who was a recording engineer on many Beatles and Paul McCartney albums as well as having engineered Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon.
Eric and Alan formed a new kind of collaboration that would allow Parsons' engineering skills to be used to the fullest extent while allowing Woolfson to exploit his talents as a songwriter and lyricist. The Alan Parsons Project was born, the name originally being intended as a working title for their collaborative project. From 1976 to 1987, Woolfson and Parsons collaborated on the conception and lyrics for all ten albums by The Alan Parsons Project, which have achieved world-wide sales in excess of 40 million.
On every Project album, Woolfson would sing a guide vocal track for each song, which the album's eventual lead vocalists would use as a reference. Some of these tracks can be heard on the new remastered editions of various Project albums released in 2007. Woolfson himself was the actual singer on many of the Project's biggest hits, such as "Time", "Don't Answer Me" and the band's signature tune "Eye in the Sky", which spent several weeks in the Top 3 of Billboard's Hot 100 in 1982.
Here are a couple of Eric's Alan Parsons Songs...
