Songfacts®:

• Tales of Mystery and Imagination is a concept album based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe. "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" is no different, but it takes a different approach than the other tracks.
  
  Poe's The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether is about a man who visits an insane asylum and discovers that the inmates have taken over. He thinks he's talking to hospital staff until, during dinner, he realizes that he's been talking to the patients the whole time. The former head of the hospital has gone mad himself and is part of the crazy crew. Not only have the rest of the staff been imprisoned, but they've been tarred and feathered - a fate that's foreshadowed in the tale's title (Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether).
  
  Tarring and feathering was a common form of punishment in Europe and the United States in the mid-to-late 1700s. Mobs would strip people down, cover them in wood tar, and dump feathers onto the tar. Not only was this humiliating but also physically painful, especially when hot tar was used.
• All the other songs on Tales of Mystery and Imagination are either instrumentals or direct lyrical retellings of Poe's stories. In this one, The Alan Parsons Project instead focuses on the tar-and-feather method of mental-health care, speaking to us as an inmate that's trying to convince us to give the method a try.
  
  Just what you need to make you feel better
  Just what you need to make you feel
  Just what you need to make you feel better
  Just what you need to make you feel
• UK guitarist John Miles (1949-2021), remembered best for his 1976 hit "Music," sings lead on this track. He also sang on "The Cask Of Amontillado," which immediately precedes "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" on the album's track list. Recording for Tales of Mystery and Imagination started in July 1975 and stretched to January 1976. In between (November-December 1975), Parsons produced and engineered Miles' Rebel album (on which "Music" appears).
  
  Jack Harris backs Miles on vocals. Harris was a Project mainstay and also backed up Arthur Brown (known for "Fire") on "The Tell-Tale Heart," the third track on Tales of Mystery and Imagination.
• Parsons released "(The System of) Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether" as the second single off Tales of Mystery and Imagination, following "The Raven." It peaked at #37 on US chart, making it the album's best-performing single. It also hit #62 in Canada.
• Parsons' 1987 remix of Tales of Mystery and Imagination adds a cathedral organ to this song.