Debunking the idea of the Beatles' unsurpassed influence and why the Yardbirds are rock's most influential band

Saturday 4/11/26

The Beatles weren't that influential. This isn't a criticism. The Grateful Dead also weren't very influential. Nor was the Duke Ellington Orchestra. The Beatles were influential in the sense that within their era, bands followed the trends that the Beatles amplified. But in terms of shaping how bands got their sounds or wrote their songs? The Beatles didn't have much to do with that then, and even less in the decades since. What were you going to do? Try to write something like "She Loves You"?

It's like with the Grateful Dead: What are you going to do, try and have your own "Dark Star"? You can't. The modern day Beatles fan, who is much less invested in hearing the Beatles' music well and thinking about it smartly--and who typically has no sense or understanding of what that music actually is, what it's doing, how it functions--and much more invested in a parasocial aspect, will parrot the line about how influential their plush-toy Beatles were and are.

It's simply false. And the point isn't influence anyway. Influence and impact aren't the same.

The most influential rock band is the 1965-1966 edition of the Yardbirds with Jeff Beck. People want their volume, their riffs. To do their versions of those things. Much of this has to do with the guitar, whereas with the Grateful Dead, the greatest rock band, a lot of what they were had to do with their musicality. Jerry Garcia is perhaps the most musical of all music artists, regardless of genre. That's why his guitar playing is beyond guitar playing, why you almost can't label it guitar playing. That doesn't speak to what he's doing with the guitar as (part of) a means of doing it.

Nor is this a criticism of the Yardbirds. They are one of our best and most important bands. They could influence in ways that the Beatles couldn't. You'd hear "Heart Full of Soul" and it was inspiring and liberating. You could be loud. You could have all that fuzz. You could have cool riffs. And attitude. You could learn that band's songs, put your own stamp on them, even if you couldn't match the guitar prowess. But you didn't have to.

The Count Five's "Psychotic Reaction" is an awesome song from an awesome (and personal favorite) album. You don't hear it (obvious [initial] rip off though it is of the Yardbirds' "I'm a Man") and think, "That rave-up section pales in comparison to the Yardbirds." The overall presentation ends up being different enough. Or maybe I should say, ends up sounding different enough. And then overall, the Count Five could be their own thing, for an album, anyway, which was all they made.

Bands wanted to be the Yardbirds sound-wise and set out to do so. The Yardbirds traded in commodities that were attainable. You could say that the Yardbirds, sound-wise, felt achievable. To enough of a degree to try, anyway. You could learn those songs and create variants of them. There are so many bands I can point to and say, "Yep, that came from the Yardbirds." The bands themselves came from the Yardbirds. They are the Yardbirds' musical offspring. The Beatles don't have much in the way of musical offspring.

I can't undertake this same genealogy exercise with the Beatles, who were too expansive, too many things, with the combined effect of those things being what the Beatles were. This means you couldn't also take this piece from the Beatles and be influenced that way, because the pieces weren't reducible from the totality.

Whereas you could look at the Yardbirds and take the volume, the cranking proto-heavy metal aspect, the attitude (listen to how much attitude and sheer balls that Keith Relf sang with), and also dial in on the guitar and be influenced.

The Jeff Beck Yardbirds were also as innovative as anyone. "Shapes of Things," "Still I'm Sad." The former in particular wasn't a less creative approach to the possibilities of sound than "Eight Miles High," "Good Vibrations," or "Strawberry Fields Forever," and--and this is big--it still made it feel like you, seventeen-year-old kid, could gather some of your high school buddies who dug music and try and have a go yourselves.

Granted, you weren't going to be as good as the Yardbirds, but because of their influence, you'd be playing all this music you wouldn't have otherwise that we can connect back to that Yardbirds music. Directly trace it back, as in, play it side-by-side with that music and hear the connection. You can't do this that much with the Beatles, or even more so the Grateful Dead, who were too good for anyone else to follow, save, perhaps, ideologically.