Who have been the most influential bands (popular or not)?
 

There have been so many bands that have come and gone. So many were influential in their own right, either positive or negative.

What bands would you say were the most influential on the rock music groups that followed after they got started (or broke up, if not still going)?

King Crimson influenced just about every prog band out there. The Beatles and Zeppelin laid the ground work for a lot of rock. Metal is all Ozzy and Metallica. Some bands that aren't as well known have been influential too. Kyuss is an amazing band and they've influenced bands like Mastodon and a lot of people in the music buisness.

Spooky Tooth influenced Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and possibly Led Zeppelin and Blue Oyster Cult.

As for King Crimson, they were clearly influenced by The Moody Blues, who influenced many Mellotron driven Prog bands.

Metallica have influenced a vast number of bands, as did Motorhead before them - but the metal sound was created by Michael Schenker, who is the unsung major influence on the genre.

Pink Floyd too are massively influential - the entire Krautrock scene (or, at least, the rockier side of it) seems to stem from their first 2 albums. They even influenced The Beatles.

But no-one can be as influential as Bob Dylan, surely?

I totally forgot about Pink Floyd. Whoops.

I think Yes and Pink floydwere pretty influential for prog rock.

David Bowie pretty much set the template for a huge amount of the post-punk and New Wave groups.

Ozric Tentacles

Living proof that you can sell a million records without the backing of a major record label.

Radiohead

Living proof that you can completely change your musical direction to something a lot more experimental, rather than churning out the same old stuff, give away your album for free, influence some of the biggest bands (Coldplay, Muse and Keane for starters), and still retain your own spot as one of the biggest bands, continuing to sell millions :D

Sex Pistols/Johnny Rotten, then PiL/John Lydon.

I would say Zeppelin, Hendrix, Iron Butterfly, Jeff Beck w/Cream, The Yardbirds, and The Beatles from the 60s had the most impact and influence on musicians and the bands that followed in their footsteps. A lot of neat riffs and song structures came from the aforementioned bands and influenced not only the 70s musicians, but every musician who has stepped up to the amplifier since then.

Zeppelin and Black Sabbath greatly influenced rock and metal respectively.

Regarding the constant references to the Beatles; I'd say the band, of the same era, which was far more influential on metal would be the Monks. If not through a direct influence, due to the Monks massive influence on punk rock.

...that, and Slayer have been _far_ more influential than Metallica. While all their prior releases were quite important, 'Reign in Blood' changed metal in such a manner that it would be hard not calling it the single most important metal album of the 1980s.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

maybe if ...and justice for all came out 2 years later. 'One' changed metal in the 80s far more than everything else out at the time. being a #1 hit on billboard meant that actual legitimate metal was entering suburban homes for the first time for a lot of ears. EVER. all of a sudden the mainstream had to acknowledge metal as a legitimate style, it provided a way for kids who had no access to the underground to finally taste what they had only read about in magazines.

think of it like this, in order for anything to be influential it has to be known. Metallica is the reason metal got known outside of the underground in the 80s. they're the reason it got well known in the mainstream. that single is what busted doors down and why there are so many people who can now look back and rediscover all the good stuff that was going on. having that hit single meant that album was going to be on shelves all over the continent, at all the department stores that 'refused' to carry metal.

there's a difference between influence, coincidental imitation, and retrospective adulation. it's not to say Slayer doesn't influence people now, but when it actually was the 1980s the most important album in metal was most definitely by Metallica. if it weren't for them then 'Reign in Blood' would have remained in obscurity, regardless of its awesomeness.

Reign in Blood broke the Billboard top 100 - topping at 94 - and South of Heaven hit 57. Slayer were definitely not obscure.

To really show who is the most is to create a sort of tree of influence. If you really do make one of these trees (it would be lengthy as hell :/) you would find that you are likely to come up with an influential bluesman by the name of Robert Johnson.
Johnson influenced (among hundreds of others) Muddy Waters, who then influenced Chuck Berry, who after that influenced people like the Grateful Dead, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. The Beatles influence was MASSIVE. With artists like Oasis, Jimi Hendrix and David Bowie (and pretty much every un-death/black metal band ever created since the 70's haha) being influenced majorly by the Beatles. Hendrix helped inspire the metal genre, while David Bowie's image pretty much single-handedly created the glam culture/music. Oasis impact is also large in British music, with bands like Muse, Keane, Coldplay and Arctic Monkeys owing something to them.
From there on in you can pretty much branch off to all these other artists which truly shows you the influence Johnson had on music.
Of course there are many other ways you can view the 'tree' with all types of outcomes on who is the ultimate influencer. I just quickly typed some influences and whatnot so of course my branchings aren't really that accurate.

On that note:

The Monks
bla bla bla
Discharge
Slayer/Hellhammer (Celtic Frost)
Repulsion/Master/Death/Sepultura/Venom
Releases/More/Amazing/Than/Anything/Metallica/Ever/Released

Without The Velvet Underground we wouldn't have any glam rock, noise pop or shoegaze, and punk would probably look very different.

Glam Rock would have certainly existed. The New York Dolls main influence was The Stones, Bolan's was 50s Rock n Roll, Bowie's was all over the place. If anything the Velvet Underground are the total antithisis of Glam Rock, I think their influence on it is minimal, maybe with some of the sleazier subject matter you could credit them but you could do that with the Stones too.

Shoegaze is basically miserable psychedelia. A stronger influence but not the only one.

Noise Pop, again maybe some claim. Still would have existed though Krautrock , Punk & Jazz though.

Their only real influence in punk is subject matter, which wasn't really anything exclusive to them either. I don't really see how punk wouldn't have happened, not with the Stooges, MC5 and the whole Ladbroke Grove counter culture scene (Which pre-dates the Velvets).

I do think they influenced a lot, but I think it has become far too overstated over the years and I think now they're given too much credit for things they had a minimal effect on.

Surprised Judas Priest haven't had a shout yet (Not that I can see).

Forebearers of metal with Black Sabbath, especially the look.

The "Big Four" (Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, and Anthrax) had a huge influence on all of Metal. You don't necessarily have to be known by every Joe Shmoe and Lucy....Schmoosy to be influential. But then there's the super obvious of Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple which pretty much sped up the creation of metal (Or just outright made it huge in the case of Black Sabbath). There's a hundred others but yeah... The Big Four are my favorite of the more influential bands.

The NWOBHM brought heaps of inlfuencial bands.
Iron Maiden (they influenced Thrash Metal, Power Metal and pretty much all metal types)
Def Leppard (Glam Metal and loads of other metal bands from all sorts of genres)
Saxon (Thrash metal, Power metal and with the spandex, Glam Metal)
Venom (Black metal of course. Also Death metal in the case of Possessed who site Venom as there biggest influence).
Motorhead (Speed metal, thrash metal, punk, blues-rock. Heaps of ****)
Diamond Head (Thrash metal)
Tygers of Pan Tang (Many metal bands)

The 'DOORS', to me, were a major influence with alot of bands since the early 90's. I never really liked the Doors that well until, I became to respect their sound/style, more than my own personal choice of music & style. And the Rolling Stones, The Who,.....

I cannot even comprehend that no one has listed Chuck Berry or Little Richard yet. In fact, I remember the Rock n' Roll hall of fame cited Chuck Berry as being the closest to creator of Rock n' Roll. For god's sake, Bob Dylan's dream was to join Little Richard, and Jimi Hendrix said he wanted to do with his guitar what Little Richard did with his voice. I really don't think an argument can be made that any one in rock n' roll history has had more of an influence than these two.

Led Zeppelin
Black Sabbath
Rush
Deep Purple
Pink Floyd
Velvet Underground
Ramones

Rock/Metal
Black Sabbath, Motorhead, Thin Lizzy, Metallica, King Diamond, Led Zeppelin

Punk
Ramones, Sex Pistols, Clash

Hardcore
Agnostic Front, Cro Mags, Sick of it All, Bad Brains

I agree with most of the other suggestions like The Beatles but only posted up who i think is influential in the three main categories of music i most prefer

I'm totally with you. For some strange reason neither of those two are particularly well regarded here at MB, a fact which has absolutely baffled me in the past and continues to do so today.

Heh yeah, I've been baffled by that myself. I'll be honest, I'm not a huge fan, but I'll pull out greatest hits albums for both of them once in a while. It just surprises me I don't know I've ever even seen either of them mentioned on here before, and whatever you listen to, they probably played a huge part in getting music there.

Suicide may not have influenced everybody, but the people they did influence is pretty vast; They started a pretty big amount of electronic/synth artists off, and it's also pretty cool how Bruce Springsteen found himself influenced by them.

I'd also like to nominate Howlin' Wolf.

Well, it all started somewhere.

Here's a little story/theory that kind of centers around that focus.

Think about Kurt Cobain, and why he might have killed himself. Sure, he was tired of being a rock star. Yes, he might have been ashamed about how popular his music had become. But an idea that came up a while back was that he might have felt guilty about betraying the aspects of D.Y.I. hardcore punk rock that had influenced him so much when he was still a struggling musician. He might have realized that he opened the doors for what was to follow: bands like Blink 182, Green Day, Sum 41, Good Charlotte and also bands like Staind, Puddle of Mudd and Nickelback... all that terrible bull****.

Now think about the hardcore, underground punk scene. Jello Biafra once said about Grunge music that, "instead of having rock-inspired punk bands, you now had punk-inspired rock bands". Basically meaning that at the time that punk rock had come along, rock music had become something that was very pretentious and drawn-out, and all these punk rock kids were just inspired by the original artists like Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley. When several punk rock artists were asked what was really punk to them, Steve Jones mentioned hippies and Dr. Know mentioned Chuck Berry's "duck walk".

The Fall inspired a huge amount of music, and it's surprising they arn't cited as an influence on 90's alternative rock more.

In terms of making ambitious music, Pink Floyd are by far and away the most influential band of all time. That doesn't mean they are the most out there but I can't think of many bands who don't list PF as a favourite at some point.

The Velvet Underground, Kraftwerk, Gang Of Four come to mind.

Django Reinhardt
Miles Davis
Chuck Berry
Elvis Presley
The Beatles
Jimi Hendrix

andres segovia all the way.

Metallica, Floyd and of course Zeppelin. I think Husker Du influenced alot more bands than people realize as well, I don't hear these guys get enough props.

Not a band but Touch 'n Go Records was heavily influential on the grunge movement and the popularization of alternative music.....
Oh my god, I'm so bland and lame. I am not very good at contributing to this forum. Somebody ban me or something, I may as well be a troll.

Let's hope it's not a perma-ban, your avatar needs to stay.

i guess beatles...

You're both full of win in my mind.