Pictured above: Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, 1966
With the turn of the year in 1966, Sony introduced a new audio format into the industry, called the "Laser Read Music Delivery System". The music industry was hesitant to try the new format, however the classical and jazz industries soon embraced the format for its cleaner sound, longer playback times and the elimination of the need to turn the disc over halfway through. But not before renaming the format to the Extended Long Player or ELP for short.
Despite this, the pop market was slow to use the format due to it's higher cost for the consumer, especially the need to buy a new player for the system. Despite this, one of the first musicians to adopt the new system was none other than Bob Dylan.
"You see, this ELP thing... I thought it was alien technology sent to us humans or something. And the fact that nobody was using it but the classical and jazz industries shocked me. So I eventually decided not only to release Blonde on Blonde as a double LP, but also as an ELP, and that's really when it started picking up."
- Bob Dylan, 1981
Pictured above: The Who's A Quick One, 1966
After the success of their debut album My Generation, The Who departed from the R&B emphasis of their previous album. Part of the marketing for the album was the requirement that each band member wrote at least two songs.
However eventually the band reworked the album, including a nine-minute suite of songs snippets written by Pete Townsend, which tells a story of infidelity and reconciliation which became the name of the album. It was also the band's first foray into an extended form that led into the new way of telling stories through music which would later be called by the press as "rock operas".
"Well, ya know those guys from The Who released an album in 1966 called 'A Quick One', and in this album, there was a track called A Quick One (While He's Away), and... ya know and the idea of telling an whole story through music really peaked my interest, ya know? And that, along with Pet Sounds were really the things that inspired me and the guys to make Merseyside Summers."
- Paul McCartney, 2003
Author's notes:
Sorry for the short post today everyone, I just wanted to get everything from 1966 done before I move onto the next year. Credit goes to Uncle Dan from What If for the concept of the ELP, and for giving me permission to use it in my timeline.
It should be interesting to see how Merseyside Summers will play out.
ReplyDeleteI also notice our alternate history stories start very similarly in 1965/1966, but circumstances like the Rolling Stones changing an album title for the US market and Brian Wilson surviving are different.
Admittedly, I kind of overlooked the differing US and UK albums on the Rolling Stones' end in my chapter one but... you know, live and learn.
All in all, it'll be nice to see how your take on 1967 onward will play out.
Hey man, I was kind of aware of the fact our timelines started kind of similarly, but there wasn't really anything I wanted to/could change from before the whole Could You Walk on The Water? ordeal, so I just started from there.
DeleteAs for the whole US/UK ordeal, I made that be "abolished" earlier because I didn't want to deal with that bullshit for any longer than an album or two, y'know?
And I already got quite a bit of 1967 planned out, so let's see how that turns out in the end.
Yeah, I suppose that's fair enough. I mean, the Beatles' US discography pre-Sgt. Pepper is just annoying to try and untangle. I feel like the one time Capitol got an album right was Magical Mystery Tour, using tracks from the double-EP alongside the 1967 singles.
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