I know the question said “Band” but Lonnie Donegan was very influential in getting British kids to want to play music in the 1950s. He is largely unknown in the States but all kinds of 1960s British musicians cite his skiffle bands.
I skipped to the end of the thread to reply, so I may be repeating, but…
The Clash
Honorary mention to The Waterboys.
Interesting. Hard to discern, but I think you could argue that JD/NO win in terms of range (industrial, goth, early hip-hop/club influences, electronica, rave) but virtually every band with a sensitive singer draws a line to Morrissey.
In terms of impact and influence, I think it goes to The Beatles, The Who, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and Black Sabbath. But for the late 70s/1980s I like Dibble’s picks.
I’ve always reckoned that The Beatles are giving far too much credit for their influencing. People claim The White Album was revolutionary, but psychedelic and experimental albums existed for several years before the Beatles made one…
I’d say Deep Purple are given far less credit than they deserve. Pretty much metal was them, I’d say more so than Black Sabbath…
This is one of those questions where the answer is so obvious that a lot of people are going to argue something else just because, otherwise, there’s nothing to discuss. It’s like asking who the best hockey player was; it’s tempting to construct arguments that it was Lemieux or Orr or Richard or Tretiak or Roy because you know that if you just admit it’s Wayne Gretzky, which of course it obviously is, that ends the discussion. Who’s the best baseball player ever? Babe Ruth. Well, that was boring… but if I turn my definitions the right away maybe I can argue it was Willie Mays, that’s much more interesting.
The answer is the Beatles, of course. I mean, half the musicians I’ve ever known either wanted to be the Beatles or wanted to be someone who’d taken something from the Beatles, and the Beatles’ influences went WAY, way past just what bands copied their styles. They had a major influence on the very concept of what a rock band was supposed to be.
A more interesting question would be who’s in second place, in which case there’s a lot of viable candidates, all of them named already. I’d lean towards Led Zeppelin, but some of the other points are very well made.
Having been around when they came on the scene, I can definitely say The Beatles. They opened so many doors for music and musicians. They did stuff nobody else had done not just once, but repeatedly.
Thanks for all the responses. I will accept John, Paul, George, and Ringo as the biggest influence, but I would like to see some more support for number two. I really can’t see “Helter Skelter” as the birth of Brit Metal.
SSG Schwartz
It’s not the birth of brit metal, it’s the birth of Heavy Metal period.
I’d go Beatles, Sabbath, Cream, myself. (Maybe Animals). Then the Stones.
Here’s the question. Most influential on bands that made it, or most influential on getting people to pick up a guitar and play?
“Helter Skelter”, like a few other songs of the time, had a lot of the elements that would end up in heavy metal, but it’s really tough to call it a heavy metal song. Black Sabbath really was the first group who put all the elements together in the right proportions and created metal.
Lonnie Donegan’s Skiffle Group influenced John Lennon to form The Quarrymen. Don’t know what happened to him after that. Lonnie not John.
Yawn. “…Beatles blah blah Beatles blah Beatles blah blah…”
The single greatest achievement of the Beatles was to create an audible identity for themselves which could transcend different styles and different subgenres. This allows anybody to point at a Beatles track and say “Ah, but they did it first”. Even if they didn’t. But they were popular. Because they were the Beatles. Because they were innovators. And round and round we go.
They wrote great songs. Nobody is going to deny that, I’m sure. Perhaps you could argue that they were the ‘most influential British band’ in that they were the conduit through which a lot of stuff flowed. Nothing more.
The Zombies are not often remembered but were very good. Influential? No idea.
A nice piece of creative writing. Incisive and smart satirizing of the obvious nature of the only sensible answer to the OP’s question and the monotonous ways, by comparison, everyone else lined up to register their de rigueur votes. Many may have been whooshed by the almost too dry and sardonic lampooning but I, for one, get this post’s inventive solution to joining the chorus while circumventing the pitfall of repetitiveness.
Score GorillaMan’s as a vote for the Beatles, judges.
That’s because “Helter Skelter” is the dawn of heavy metal in the same way that “Johnny B. Goode” is - ie., not at all.
VH-1’s Heavy: The Story of Metal put the birth of metal thus - Sabbath created one template and Zeppelin the other, and every metal band chose one and ran with it… and they were more or less right.
If you want to give somebody from the 60s the credit for metal, it has to go to The Pretty Things.
Anyway, I vote for New Order.
I don’t think so. Morrissey has always asserted that his biggest influence was The New York Dolls. I don’t think Marrs’ playing sounds like Duffy’s either.
This statement will probably be overlooked by the masses, but it is incredibly insightful.
Well done JJ.
After the obvious example of the Beatles, I’d have to say the Yardbirds. Because the Yardbirds were the platform for Eric Clapton, then Jeff Beck, then Jimmy Page, I think you can make the case that the band did more for pioneering guitar-driven rock music in a shorter period than any other band. Hard rock would be unthinkable without the Yardbirds, and they laid the foundations for heavy metal as well as progressive rock.
Thats easy…the ZOMBIES!!
Yardbirds. That’s way better than the Animals, thank you, that’s who I was thinking of.
I was waiting for somebody to mention the Yardbirds. You’d be surprised about how many fledgling bands in the 60s who copied their sound. I certainly was when I got the “Nuggets” 4 CD set. It seemed like the number of bands who were Yardbirds-influenced rivaled those who were influenced by the Beatles or the Stones.