Back in 1984, Tommy Edwards was sitting in his seat at the Biograph Theater watching a movie with his wife when music started playing in the background.
“I told my wife, ‘I know this song. It’s ‘Sirius’ by the Alan Parsons Project,” Edwards, WLS’s longtime disc jockey and radio host, told NBC Sports Chicago’s KC Johnson in 2019. “The more I listened to it, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. This could be a Bulls song.'”
The next day, Edwards bought the vinyl record, put it on his turntable at home and began practicing the Bulls’ starting lineup.
“Because it has so many great parts in the intro—new guitar parts or crescendos—it works really well,” Edwards said. “The Bulls loved it right away. Michael (Jordan) loved it. From that point on, that was the opening music.”
The song has actually become a cultural phenomenon, played at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and sports venues around the world. Edwards played his final game as the Bulls’ public address announcer in November 2019 and has remained at the United Center since.
Edwards, whose innovation and broadcasting abilities helped transform sports entertainment in the game, served in that role at the old Chicago Stadium from 1976 to 1981 and 1983 to 1990, and again at the United Center from 2006 to 2019 assume this position. He missed the championship years as his successful broadcasting career took him to Boston and Los Angeles.
When the Bulls drafted Jordan, marketing officials worked with Edwards to come up with something special for the potential star. As early as 1977, they had joined forces to become the first team in the league to turn off the lights and introduce the starting lineup. Initially, Edwards introduced Jordan and the other starters to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” In some games, he attempts to play the theme song from the hit TV show “Miami Vice.”
Then Edwards heard “Sirius,” the instrumental intro to the song “Eye in the Sky.”
At this point, Edwards starts using his “Ahhh now…”. . “. Prelude to the starting center introduction. After first trying the simpler “middle” at the request of his then young daughter, he permanently settled on using “the man in the middle” as the starting center introduction.
While the introduction was Edwards’ invention, it was his successor, Ray Clay, who became the face of the dynasty.
“I was the right guy in the right place at the right time,” Clay told The Ringer in 2018.
Clay served in this role from 1990 to 2002. When Edwards returned to the team in 2006, his iconic debut was forever associated with Michael Jordan and the Bulls’ six-time NBA championship.
The song itself is a nearly two-minute instrumental piece written and performed by British rock band Alan Parsons Project, and is the first song from the band’s sixth studio album, released in 1982. Alan Parsons has achieved great success in music working as a sound engineer on albums such as The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let it Be and Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon.
To this day, the Bulls use “Sirius” in their starting lineup introductions for all home games. Tim Sinclair, who is in his fourth season as the team’s current radio announcer, even uses the same cadence when calling out the starting five.
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