Ah but Dave, it's easy enough to argue all of those influences (recording aside) are negative, depending on your point of view.
To use the same extreme example as Roo, Nazi Germany has had a colossal influence on modern culture, media and what you could describe as promotional techniques, too.
Lots of people's influence show's in lots of things, doesn't automatically make them good or bad.
(I like The Beatles, incidentally. Well, after they got full of drugs)
Quite - 'influence' is neither positive nor negative without further qualifiers! And the argument that 'without such and such, we wouldn't have [insert genre here]' is also total conjecture. Who knows WHERE music would be now without some of what we call the influential bands? I certainly don't, and I would laugh at anyone who outright claims it would be in a better or worse place under different circumstances.
It can't be denied that their timing (post-war baby boom) helped hugely, both from a sociological perspective and fitting into the then-current music market. At that time, the UK, and indeed the world, was ready and liberal enough (again, as a result of the post-war baby boom) to latch onto a popular sensation. Sadly, they were also impressionable enough and drugged up sufficiently to come to the all-too-dubious conclusion that any life form capable of a) writing and b) publicising the Frog Chorus and Yellow Submarine shouldn't be shot immediately. And don't get me started on the rest of their irritating diatribe. Every time I hear one of their songs, I get so angry I have to leave the room. And to think that people outside of Britain think that we're proud of them???
One thing I ABSOLUTELY HATE is some posh hippy tw@ putting on the Beatles and exclaiming how amazing they are. Get off your lazy arse, get a job and listen to some real music played my real musicians. You're not 'groovy', you're a $%&#ing ####!! and you always will be.
For me, Queen are infinitely the better band - not least for their vastly superior music writing and playing skills, but also in the context of the time during which they came into the public eye.
Even thinking about this is getting me angry. Time to get on with some work, I think. Grr.
PS of all of those things I mentioned, I don't mind other people having mashed potato - just don't serve it to me saying 'oh, but you haven't tasted
my mash!'. All the rest really should be wiped off the face of this earth, though.
