Whether or not they are deliberately copying Elvis has no bearing on whether or not Elvis is credited with influence.

I could switch this everytime I see someone with long hair in rock and roll I could say it goes back to the Beatles.

I am more impressed with direct influence.

I have never seen that quote. Where is it from?



They're #2 on the influence list. How do you think they got there?

I am more impressed with direct influence. If you are going to there than the people who invented the instruments and the recording technology before rock and roll who made it big are then the biggest influences in rock and roll. It doesn't work that way.

Then go get your own website and make your own list.

Also here is an interesting interview with Pete Townshend where he mentions the Beatles a lot.

A Pete Townshend interview.
http://www.thewho.org/pete.htm

To your knowledge were you the first to use controlled feedback?
PT: To tell the truth, Dave Davies, Jeff (Beck) and me have got a tacit agreement that we will all squabble ‘til the day we die that we invented it. I think possibly the truth is that it was happening in a lot of places at once. As the level went up, as people started to use bigger amps, and we were all still using semi-acoustic instruments, it started to happen quite naturally. I think the development of it was the word was around the street and then 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.

How did you happen to choose a Rickenbacker?
PT: I liked the look of it, I think because The Beatles were using them. They picked theirs up in Germany, they were real German ones. I stayed with Rickenbackers for a long time and then I started to use Fenders. I never liked Gibsons at all - I still don’t very much (laughs). Then I started to get interested in a wide variety of guitars. I just tried anything that was around. I tried a Grimshaw for a while which is an English guitar. I tried a semi-acoustic Gibson ES335, I flitted around a lot and then Hendrix came along and I started to use Strats again. But that didn’t last long because the sound of them wasn’t quite right for what I wanted. And then Henry at Manny’s (music store in New York) introduced me to a guitar which had just come out. I don’t know what you call them; it was a thin crimson-coloured guitar…

Also on "You Can't Do That" as rock critic Lester Bangs not always kind to the Beatles by the way wrote years later), "built on one of the bitterest and most iron-indestructible riffs ever conceived". Lennon handled the lead guitar himself, hammering out a wiry solo which grew into a furious flurry of chords, totally unlike anything that George Harrison performed on the rest of the album

I also have a hard time believing that Elvis was the first to actually act on stage with a overt sexual manner also.

I fail to see how any of this makes the Beatles more influential than Elvis Presley. Sorry.

Please, Sophie Tucker was doing that 100 years ago.

He was the first to have a major impact on popular music and popular culture with it.

I fail to see how any of this makes the Beatles more influential than Elvis Presley. Sorry.

What you actually mean is the he was the first to have a major impact on "white" music and "white" culture with it. Lots of black artists were doing it and having an impact on black music and black culture with it. Wynonie Harris, Sonny Til, Howlin' Wolf with the soda bottle trick, etc...

Rock and roll didn't suddenly become important merely because the geeky white suburban kids finally discovered it with Elvis.