Quote:
Originally Posted by jazzrocks
The Beatles started out as a skiffle group. So yeah there is a strong folk influence. Compared to everybody in Rock Music their chord progressions were quirky. No one was using folk chord changes with a power-pop sound like the Beatles in 1963-1964. They are the reason the Byrds went electric. Sorry give credit where it belongs.
Here are some actual quotes.
Roger McGuinn
At about the same time, McGuinn discovered the electric 12-string, also the result of his admiration of the Beatles.
“We saw `A Hard Day’s Night’ and took note of the instruments. And (the Rickenbacker) was one of them. (George Harrison played it on the song `If I Fell.’) I loved the sound of it. I had been playing an acoustic Gibson 12-string that had a pickup on it, but it was too fat-sounding. It didn’t have that jingle-jangle sound. So we went shopping for one in L.A. It wasn’t the exact model George had played, but it was a Rickenbacker 12-string.”
“It was something that kind of evolved from working with Bobby Darin and then hearing the Beatles and the folk music chord changes they were using,” McGuinn says. “I was really inspired by the Beatles, so I started taking old folk songs and putting a Beatle beat on them - rocking them up.”
Bob Dylan on the Beatles
In an interview taken in 1971, Dylan recalls being impressed by their music. "We were driving through Colorado, we had the radio on, and eight of the Top 10 songs were Beatles songs...'I Wanna Hold Your Hand,' all those early ones. They were doing things nobody was doing. Their chords were outrageous, just outrageous, and their harmonies made it all valid...I knew they were pointing the direction of where music had to go."
The Rolling Stones on the Beatles
Keith liked the Beatles because he was quite interested in their chord sequences. He also liked their harmonies, which were always a slight problem to the Rolling Stones. Keith always tried to get the harmonies off the ground but they always seemed messy. What we never really got together were Keith and Brian singing backup vocals. It didn't work, because Keith was a better singer and had to keep going, oooh, ooh ooh (laughs). Brian liked all those oohs, which Keith had to put up with. Keith was always capable of much stronger vocals than ooh ooh ooh.
- Mick Jagger
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Since the Byrds recorded anything, they were an electric band. Their first album was Mr Tambourine Man, 1965. An electric album. It is purely irrelevant that the Beatles were an influence for them. They were never (in their recording days) a non-electric band to begin with. The point then is completely moot. As for Dylan, he went electric in 1965, well into the Beatlemania period. The quote you brought gives no indication at all that the Beatles were his main thinking behind going electric. It merely shows that he was impressed with them.
Like I said, I agreed that the Beatles were doing things that the extremely poor competition of early 60s rock'n'roll were not doing. There was no argument there at all.