''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' is the fifth

studio album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

by the British progressive rock band The Alan Parsons Project, released in 1980 by

Arista Records Arista Records () is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of the Japanese conglomerate Sony. The label was previously handled by BMG Entertainmen ...

. The title piece, which appears on side 2 of the LP, is a 16-minute suite broken up into five tracks. ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' spawned the hits " Games People Play" and " Time", the latter of which was Eric Woolfson's first lead vocal appearance. An edited version of the title piece combining the opening and ending parts of the suite was also released as a single along with an official video. As other band's albums, ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' is a

Concept album A concept album is an album whose tracks hold a larger purpose or meaning collectively than they do individually. This is typically achieved through a single central narrative or theme, which can be instrumental, compositional, or lyrical. Som ...

with its theme focused on the gambling industry and the fate of gamblers, with more than one reference to Las Vegas (e.g. "there's a sign in the desert that lies to west" from the title piece). Musically it's a more melodic and accessible album than its predecessors. Up to this album, all Alan Parsons Project albums had been packaged in gatefold sleeves. Increasing budgetary constraints of record companies made ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' the beginning of all subsequently released Alan Parsons Project albums to be single-sleeve packaged. The album was recorded in a record short time of two weeks in Paris. Usually the Alan Parsons Project would take many months to record an album.

Track listing

All songs written and composed by Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson. Though numbered as a single work, "The Turn of a Friendly Card" is split into five tracks on most compact disc and all digital and streaming releases.

Bonus tracks (2008 remaster)

''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' was remastered and reissued in 2008 with the following bonus tracks: #

"May Be a Price to Pay" (Intro/demo) 1:32 #"Nothing Left to Lose" (Basic backing track) 4:36 #"Nothing Left to Lose" (Chris Rainbow overdub compilation) 2:02 #"Nothing Left to Lose" (Early studio version with Woolfson's guide vocal) 3:11 #"Time" (Early studio attempt) 4:42 #"Games People Play" (Rough mix) 4:33 #"The Gold Bug" (Demo) 2:50 * "The Gold Bug" (Demo) was named after an Edgar Allan Poe short story. The main keyboard sound is a Hohner Clavinet with damaged strings and a repeat echo. This was also used for the final album version. The short duration of the notes made it difficult to get in tune.

Deluxe Edition (2015)

In 2015, a "deluxe anniversary edition" was released on double CD. This featured a new remaster of the album, the bonus tracks of the 2008 edition on disc 1 and an additional disc including excerpts from Eric Woolfson's songwriting demos, rough mixes and the three single edits. On this new remaster, Parsons corrected a persisting speed mistake which was present in all earlier CD editions, from the very first (1987) up to the 2008 remaster, caused by the original master tape running slow during the CD mastering process and thus altering the pitch of the entire recording. "Eric's Songwriting Demos" #"May Be a Price to Pay" 3:26 #"Games People Play" 3:06 #"Time" 4:06 #"I Don't Wanna Go Home" 2:12 #"The Turn of a Friendly Card" 3:19 #"Snake Eyes" 3:13 #"Nothing Left to Lose" 2:46 #"TOFC / Snake Eyes / I Don't Wanna Go Home" 4:32 "Extra Bonus Tracks" #

"May Be a Price to Pay (Early version - Eric Guide Vocal & Unused Guitar Solo)" 5:03 #"Games People Play (Early Version - Eric Guide vocal)" 4:32 #"Time (Orchestra & Chris Rainbow Backing vocals)" 4:19 #"The Gold Bug (Early Reference Version)" 5:08 #"The Turn Of A Friendly Card Part One (Early Backing Track)" 2:18 #"Snake Eyes (Early Version - Eric Guide Vocal)" 3:20 #"The Ace Of Swords (Early Version With Synth "Orchestration")" 3:03 #"The Ace Of Swords (Early Version With Piano On Melody)" 2:40 #"The Turn Of A Friendly Card Part Two (Eric Guide Vocal And Extended Guitar Solo)" 3:32 "Single Edits" #

"Games People Play" 3:35 #"The Turn of a Friendly Card" 3:44 #"Snake Eyes" 2:26

Personnel

* Stuart Elliott –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

, percussion * David Paton – bass guitar * Ian Bairnson – electric, acoustic and

classical guitar The classical guitar (also known as the nylon-string guitar or Spanish guitar) is a member of the guitar family used in classical music and other styles. An acoustic wooden string instrument with strings made of gut or nylon, it is a precursor o ...

pedal steel guitar The pedal steel guitar is a Console steel guitar, console-type of steel guitar with pedals and knee levers that change the pitch of certain strings to enable playing more varied and complex music than any previous steel guitar design. Like all s ...

on "Time" * Eric Woolfson – piano,

harpsichord A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism ...

, lead vocals * Alan Parsons – Projectron on "Games People Play", whistling and finger snaps on "The Gold Bug",

Clavinet The Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds by a rubber pad striking a point on a tension ...

on "The Gold Bug" and "The Ace of Swords", harpsichord on "The Ace of Swords", additional vocals on "Time" * Chris Rainbow – lead and backing vocals * Elmer Gantry (Dave Terry) – lead vocal * Lenny Zakatek – lead and backing vocals *

The Philharmonia Orchestra The Philharmonia Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It was founded in 1945 by Walter Legge, a classical music record producer for EMI. Among the conductors who worked with the orchestra in its early years were Richard Strauss, ...

, arranged and conducted by

Andrew Powell Andrew Powell (born 18 April 1949) is an English musical composer, arranger and performer, born of Welsh parents. He himself moved to Wales in 2003. Early life Powell was born Surrey, England. He began piano lessons at the age of four and late ...

Produced and engineered by Alan Parsons
Executive producer: Eric Woolfson
Mastering consultant: Chris Blair
Sleeve concept: Lol Creme and Kevin Godley * Ted Jensen Original LP UK & US Pressings.

Additional instrumentation

"The Gold Bug", which references the same-titled short story by Edgar Allan Poe, includes a whistling part by Parsons (in the style of

Ennio Morricone Ennio Morricone (; 10 November 19286 July 2020) was an Italian composer, orchestrator, conductor, and trumpeter who wrote music in a wide range of styles. With more than 400 scores for cinema and television, as well as more than 100 classica ...

's early themes for

Sergio Leone Sergio Leone (; 3 January 1929 – 30 April 1989) was an Italian film director, producer and screenwriter credited as the pioneer of the Spaghetti Western genre and widely regarded as one of the most influential directors in the history of cin ...

Spaghetti Western The Spaghetti Western is a broad subgenre of Western films produced in Europe. It emerged in the mid-1960s in the wake of Sergio Leone's film-making style and international box-office success. The term was used by foreign critics because most o ...

films, such as '' A Fistful of Dollars'') and wordless vocals by Rainbow, while the main theme is played on an

alto saxophone The alto saxophone is a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. Saxophones were invented by Belgian instrument designer Adolphe Sax in the 1840s and patented in 1846. The alto saxophone is pitched in E, smaller than the B tenor ...

. The saxophone player, originally credited as Mel Collins, is instead credited on the liner notes for the remastered edition as "A session player in Paris whose name escapes us"; this refers to the fact that the saxophone part is a composite of several separate takes.Liner notes on ''The Turn of a Friendly Card'' remastered CD booklet Similarly, the

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a reed ...

part on "Nothing Left to Lose" is credited in the liner notes to "An unidentified Parisian session player". Also on "The Gold Bug", the newer liner notes credit a "Harmonized Rotating Triangle" to drummer Stuart Elliott. This refers to the phasing sound effects heard throughout the rhythm-free introduction to the piece.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications and sales

Covers

The album's title track was covered by German

funeral doom metal Doom metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music that typically uses slower tempos, low-tuned guitars and a much "thicker" or "heavier" sound than other heavy metal genres.K. Kahn-Harris, ''Extreme Metal: Music and Culture on the Edge'' ...

band Ahab for their album ''

The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" ''The Boats of the "Glen Carrig"'' is a horror novel by English writer William Hope Hodgson, first published in 1907.Keith Neilson, in Frank N. Magill (ed.), ''Survey of Modern Fantasy Literature'', Volume One. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Salem Pres ...

'' in 2015.

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Turn of a Friendly Card, The The Alan Parsons Project albums 1980 albums Albums produced by Alan Parsons Arista Records albums