If it's rock, all of them.

The sad thing you can't name any and you resort to saying that. You are actually saying rock and roll hasn't progressed since 1956. As it is a lot of people will tell you that rock and roll and rock music are different. Maybe that's not true but I am throwing that out. Then you might as well add Chuck Berry, Bill Haley and Fats Domino.

By that logic then the people who influenced Elvis have to be more influential than him.

You should read your own quotes a bit more carefully. Pete Townshend basically said that guitar feedback was all over the London scene by the time John Lennon put it on record. He said that he, Dave Davies and Jeff Beck would squabble 'til the day they die that they were the first. Not he, Dave Davies, Jeff Beck and John Lennon. John Lennon got beat to that one. Ritchie Blackmore says unequivocally that Pete Townshend was the first.

Not culturally.

Maybe I will throw this one out at you since you don't know. George Martin states that feedback was a constant thing in their recording sessions and John Lennon had been messing around with it for a long time. Page 80 on Rolling Stone Magazine 100 greatest Beatles songs.

Another thing "I Feel Fine" intentionally uses guitar feedback as part of the songwriting process or arrangement. If there is a Who song that pre-dates it than tell me. As it is Pete Townshend credits the Beatles for making the use of guitar feedback in rock and roll. Maybe you should read this Pete Townshend "Lennon used it at the beginning of that record I Feel Fine and then it became quite common and a lot of people started to use it".

As for Ritchie Blackmore I guess he wasn't hanging out with the Beatles. I don't think Davies, Townshend and Beck were hanging out buddies with the Beatles in 1964 also.

Ninety percent of the population versus ten percent of the population.

Read the Townshend quote in its entirety.

This according to All Music Guide.

"This was the very first use of feedback on a rock record. It's been claimed that others (such as the Who, the Yardbirds, and Creation guitarist Eddie Phillips) had developed guitar feedback, or something approximating it, live before the Beatles did "I Feel Fine." It seems inarguable, however, that the Beatles were the first to use it on disc; probably no other group had the clout to get away with that experiment in late 1964".

http://www.allmusic.com/song/t4282118

Whether this is the first actual use of intentional guitar feedback instead of a studio accident as a recording effect I don't know. Many have stated it and the fact is people starting using after the Beatles used it. Yes even Pete Townshend stated once Lennon used it on "I Feel Fine" it became common in rock music. So maybe it's was happening at the same time. Even with that John Lennon had been using it for a long time. The fact is the Beatles used it as intentional recording effect before the The Who, The Yardbirds and The Kinks. Whatever it is you can't deny the impact it had on rock music especially how they tied the guitar feedback to a guitar riff driven song. I guess that concept has worked well the last 45 years in rock music.

No, I'm not.



Ignorant people.



More like shoveling it out.

I think you underestimate their influence. In particular all of those artists except Nirvana fall pretty substantially below them in influence. We're talking about by far the most important influence on the development of the entire subgenre of metal, the most important proto grunge influence (seeing as how the entire scene including Nirvana has a hard core of Sabbath at their center), an important influence in the development of 80s hardcore punk (and in turn an alternative influence from that), and of course a general harder rock influence. For sheer number of acts with a significant influence on in the past 35 years I'd put them in the top 5. Obviously this doesn't make them top 5 in rock overall because there is a whole significant 20-25 years before that, and obviously it doesn't account for trends where their influence is low, BUT I think their influence is staggering and often overlooked because a lot of what they influenced is either dismissed by the critical establishment or the influence is harder to see in a direct line.

Remind me what the working definition of musical impact we're using right now is?

Popularity you won't get a strong argument from me on several of those artists but I'd say they're more popular than the Everlys at least and close to some of the other artists (of course comparing pre and post album era artists in popularity is a difficult exercise). They certainly have pretty damn good sustainable long term sales.

And Forgotten Son Pink Floyd get's pretty comfortably beaten in influence by Sabbath even though their influence is quite large.

So does Sabbath. Of course Pink Floyd has a fair amount of influence on progressive metal and post metal but I'd say those genres still all have a Sabbath core. In fact I'd say pretty much all metal does.

And of course what Sampson says is totally true. Elvis has a simply massive cultural advantage. He made rock a ubiquitous popular genre (of course not alone but without him its fair to say rock would never have been more than a niche). Every rock artist after him built on the foundation he laid culturally. Top that off with the fact that while the Beatles were massively influential musically that influence is not as ubiquitous as some would believe. I'd say Elvis' cultural influence is far greater than the Beatles musical influence.

No they didn't. Nothing the Beatles did was significantly more advanced than the pop music of George Gershwin and that predated them by well over two decades. Now if we want to go to the rock song that would still be an incorrect statement because their were other artists who had already broadened it. Yes the Beatles are incredibly influential but broad sweeping statements like this are silly.