Mr. Aboz, because everything you say I take seriously, I have been thinking about this since you posted it. Part of my reflection is something that was a very living part of my life (and still has) has been already turned into an academic subject - now that makes me feel old indeed - and your perspective as a student (student in the best of senses, such as, I am a student of Bonhoefer's theology) certainly highlights in my mind the distinctions that we make in history once it becomes history. For example, I could list the five reactions to the year 1517 (Reformation, Counter Reformation, Anabaptism, Anglicanism, and iconolasm) but surely in 1517 and through the rest of the 16th century no one looked at in all in those academic terms. Those we have applied retroactively and that is good, because it is a way to understand the actuality - which we can never arrive at anyway because what is actual, what is real, what ever really happened ever? There is no pure objectivity, there is only our own methodological presuppositions (Gerhard Van Rad's phrase) which is our subjectivity.
Can we hold several opposing thoughts at the same time and reject none of them yet see the reasons for each opposing thought?
Your point is surely academically sound.
But I would lift up these two additional oppositional perspectives?
The English releases are only important in retrospect. There were lots of English stars who have had a negligible effect on culture. Simply by numbers and the (not necessarily fair) position of the US as the cultural arbiter, it was the American releases that had the significance. The American releases rocked the scene - and the scene was and is American. If it happens here, it happened. If it doesn't, it never did.
And... on the third hand...
This is a different era now that it was in 1964 and this is not a "when I was a lad" story. Music now is album driven. (That may be in dispute - the album driven nature of music may have ended with the arrival of downloading and mp3s.)
In 1964, before and after, music was single driven (or if anyone will quibble, the rock and roll/popular music scene). You were born after 45s had died. It was all 45 driven then. I can't recall exact percentages, but in any record store or record department in the era, the stock was mostly 45s. Albums were inconsequential in many ways. There would be one to three decent songs on any album and the rest was crap, filler, covers. Everyone had 45 collections. Very, very few people bought albums (in my experience). The most important time period of the week in Chicago was Friday afternoon, beginning at 3:30 when WLS began the Top 40 countdown. We'd go to the Sears (Sears!) and get the weekly printed version of the top 40. My cherished Meet the Beatles album will leave my hands when I die, but yet on the day after the Ed Sullivan appearance, when I made my way through the crowd to the counter and asked for "a Beatles record" it was the 45 (I Want to Hold Your Hand/I Saw her Standing There) that was given to me. Record = 45 in that era.
That is the whole discussion of A sides vs B sides, not an album concept, but a 45 concept. And of course the Beatles altered that because early on the real question was, which was the A and which was the B on a Beatles record? It was obvious on anyone else's 45s but not always clear on a Beatles 45.
What ended the era of the 45s was, as you will know, definitively was Sgt Peppers. Rubber Soul and Revolver hinted that the end of the era was coming but Sgt Peppers was the first concept album, first unifed album, and first album that it was essential to own because no single track from it was "a 45." Indeed, if there ever was a 45 released from Sgt Peppers, I have no recall. Sgt Peppers was the first time you had to buy the album. That changed the scene in its entirety.
I remember Dex Card doing the Silver Dollar Survey solemnly proclaiming that "Ticket to Ride" was the death of the Beatles because it did not reach #1 on th Chicago charts. It was not until this day, today, that I realized that Ticket to Ride was on the Help album. Help (the 45) was released long before Ticket to Ride was. Ticket to Ride was memorable because it was so obviously the first non feel good song by the Beatles (we all missed the meaning of the lyrics to Help). I will always associate Ticket to Ride as a further progression in the music, not as of the same moment as Help. And I will always associate Ticket to Ride with Yes It Is, which was the flip (hardly a B side). And Yes It Is is not on Help the album; to say Help alone will always conjour up the image of a 45.
In other words, to have lived in that time, we didn't consider the albums. we considered the 45s. And of course most of the 45s were differently mixed than the album versions (the Beatles helped end that too...). That drove the music. And then there was the difference between monoral and stereo (for some of us, mono is the way an album was realized as opposed to stereo and not a disease, and the mono versions were the bigger sellers, they were $1 cheaper and who had stereo, no one had stereo, and the 45 mixes are far closer to the mono versions than stereo). And the release of the 45s was very intentional because that was the market, that drove the market, so all musical definitions and progression were measured by the 45 releases, not the albums.
This is all to say I am not disputing you in the least. If I study Mozart's operas (which i do) I can easily place Le Nozze di Figaro before Don Giovanni but not so clear where Die Zauberflute fits in as it relates to the first performances of Cosi fan tutti. Academics dispute that. I bet people who lived in that time would have different recollections, depending on whether one lived in Prague or Vienna.
As in all things, there is always more than one way to view any subject. Your UK album as official methodology has its merits to be sure and makes some sense for academic study. But the US album as pivotal or the 45 as determinative is just as valid. I am going to cling to the 45 theory up to Sgt Peppers because that is how I remember it being lived out in a different era. And then I will go with the US album theory. But there is no right or wrong.
Here is a tricky question: for those of us who hold the US albums as sancroset, I Want to Hold Your Hand was the definitive song on Meet the Beatles. What UK album was it on?
And please know how much I enjoy the discussion with so many here and I enjoy your perspectives because you have academically studied something that is experiential to me. And thus I learn from you.
