According to the liner notes of the album, "The Raven" is the first rock song to use a vocoder,[6] developed by Electronic Music Studios (EMS), to distort vocals. It is also one of the few songs by the band featuring vocals by Alan Parsons, who sings the first verse through the EMI vocoder. Actor Leonard Whiting performs the lead vocals for the remainder of the song, with Eric Woolfson and the Westminster City School Boys Choir providing backing vocals.[7]
The B-side of "The Raven" is "The Fall of the House of Usher" prelude. "The Fall of the House of Usher" is an instrumental suite that runs more than fifteen minutes and takes up most of side two of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, however, the prelude is trimmed down to 5:59. Although uncredited, the prelude is taken from the opera fragment "La chute de la maison Usher" by Claude Debussy, which was composed between 1908 and 1917.[9]
Other versions
On the 1987 reissued version of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, the song contains a guitar solo by Ian Bairnson near the end, before the "Quoth the Raven"/"Nevermore, nevermore, nevermore, never!" refrains and a few licks between the lyrics.[10]