The point is that all 3 of those examples were INFLUENCED by The Beatles, which was the point he was trying to make and is coincidentally the point of this thread... Biggest Influence.

You must be joking changing a band musicial direction is most likely the biggest influence anyone can have on a musician. The Byrds based their jangle sound on the Beatles. The Byrds just did it better. Just being honest there I don't like everything the Beatles did. There influence on music though has been huge.

When the Byrds saw that movie -- when Roger McGuinn, specifically, saw that movie -- he wanted to play that 12-string electric Rickenbacker guitar. When A Hard Day's Night came out, they went to the movie and took notes on the instruments the Beatles were using. Roger McGuinn decided he definitely wanted the same guitar that George Harrison was using, and that little tinkling riff that you hear at the very end (of "A Hard Day's Night") that 12-string guitar riff, that's the pretty much the blueprint for the sound, the jingle-jangle sound that the Byrds perfected with Roger McGuinn on lead guitar on "Mr. Tambourine Man" and most of the songs that they did during their first three years or so, up through 1968.

"So the Beatles kind of re-energized it for me. I thought it was natural to put the Beatles' beat and the energy of the Beatles into folk music. And in fact, I heard folk chord changes in the Beatles' music when I listened to their early stuff like 'She Loves You' and 'I Want To Hold Your Hand.' I could hear the passing chords that we always use in folk music: the G-Em-Am-B kind of stuff. So I really think the Beatles invented folk-rock. They just didn't know it."

What does that have to with what I said? It's ridiculous to measure influence by the amount of music you consider good, as opposed to amount of music. Nothing to do with our differing tastes in music.

I don't care how much music an artist influeneces, if it's terrible music, then they're a terrible influence.

The question is about influence, not the quality of the influence

Yeh, it's supposed to be an objective measuring stick.

Dude. You do NOT read what I'm saying. If you're going to do that, then it's a total waste of time talking to you. OBVIOUSLY changing a band's musical direction is the biggest influence you can have. What I was saying is that The Byrds, in their recording days, were ALWAYS an electric band. They were never anything else. What they were before they started recording is completely irrelevant. As recording artists, they never changed from folk to electric. They were always electric. At most, it is possible to say that The Beatles were the reason that the individuals who constituted The Byrds decided to be a rock band as opposed to another sort of band. But, unlike Dylan, they did not start out recording folk music, and then start recording electric music some time later. They always recorded electric. End of story.

Alright, we get your point. Do you think it is an important one?

I think you are not hearing what the musicians are saying and what people hear are telling you. Bottom line the Beatles influenced a folk band to turn electric based on what the Beatles were doing musically. The Beatles were using folk chord changes with a rock beat they liked. They based their jangle sound on hearing "A Hard Days Night". I mean dude they took notes on what they were playing. Thats what the Byrds based their electric sound on. If thats not influence then I don't know what influence means. The influence basically extended while the Byrds were a electric band till really "Younger than Yesterday".

In the end I think there can hardly be any real doubt that the Beatles were the most influential band of all time. That's not to say they were the most edgy, or the most innovative/cutting edge, or the most sophisticated, or the cleverest...but in terms of the sheer amount of influence they had upon other artists, whatever the influence might have been, there can really be no comparison. They reached more audiences than everybody else and inspired more than anybody else. It seems silly to question it, really.