Nobody - they had their own sound, but they didn't invent either the styles or ideas they experimented with - which is unfortunately what various corners of the music fan community, in a state of denial, wish to assert.

Did they sound like their underground counterparts they supposedly ripped off?

Crikey, I'm not claiming they ripped off the underground. I'm just saying that virtually everything they did was inspired by other ideas of the time. No doubt, whatever they took, they made their own and unmistakenly crafted it into the Beatles, fashioning their own sound out of it. And besides, of course they'd never sounded like their inspirations - The Beatles' overwhelming focus remained melody and pop, while the other bands were trying to do the exact opposite.

So it's not a claim against their credibility, but against those who try to assert that they invented all of their ideas organically and were therefore the great innovators of the rock era - which they were not. They were the greatest songwriters of the rock era...

I don't know anyone who claims everything they did came from their own heads but its how they did that makes them the most important band ever and if you deny that then you're the one in denial not everyone else.

I'll agree that some great Dylan songs have some pretty bad lines ("jeeze, I can't find my knees" comes to mind), but a lot of Dylan can be enjoyed without necessarily listening to the lyrics. As someone said, HW61 and BOB are enjoyable on a purely musical level. So are Nashville Skyline, New Morning, Planet Waves, Desire, and a few others. None are innovative, but so what? There's a special feeling to albums like Nashville Skyline that's just as meaningful as the lyrics to Desolation Row. Dylan's main strength may be as a lyricist, but it's definitely not his only virtue. Listen to Live 66; Dylan had a voice to match any rocker.

Seriously dude, I just don't know. The Beatles are my favourite band ever, but I cannot help thinking that there was probably very little that they really innovated into rock music.

And then there are other niggling little things that nag at me, like the huge importance of George Martin to their ingenious arrangements, and just how much he really was responsible for getting the clever things done......and also the point that they had so much more studio time and state of the art equipment/engineers at their disposal etc.

I think they're the best band ever, but I don't think they were anything like the most important. You could probably blot them out of the book of music history without that causing much of a difference to the development of rock music on the whole. Like I said, I reckon they were pretty retro overall, with their real roots in the 40s/50s, not the late 60s.

I think ultimately if somebody's going to say they were the most innovative band of the rock era, they should be able to bring some substantial justification. It is necessary to show what they innovated and what they influenced. For too long people just make these blanket statements without caring to explain why. I used to say and think those things and then realized that I couldn't justify it and neither could I find anybody else who could. So I became content to love the Beatles just for what they were instead.

Yeah but if someone's going to claim you could erase the Beatles from rock history and nothing would be changed don't you think they should provide evidence as well? You've given nothing concrete at all just a few guesses at all and you even contradict yourself, you say they were just stealing from underground bands that were around at the same time then turn around and say their roots were in the 50s and 40s? Maybe you should get your own accusations straight before you make them.

I didn't say they stole from the underground, this is about influence. They took on and adapted both obscure and popular styles of the times. As for their roots being in the 40s and 50s, by that I'm referring to their focus on melody and song. So basically, putting the two claims together, I'm saying that they took the new emerging styles of the 60s but with the twist of putting them into their own retro pop format.

About being able to erase them from history, I say that because if you look at the music that came in the next decade and onwards, for the most part it has its roots in the 60s but very rarely seems to owe much to the Beatles. At least I don't see how it would, anyway. I haven't heard all that much from the 70s that really sounds like it's descended from the Beatles. But plenty that sounds like it has descended from a lot of the other popular bands of the era.

I think the thing about the Beatles was that they took what these underground bands where doing and then made something a whole lot more accessible from it, they managed to make what was quite avantgarde at the time into something poppy which many people could enjoy, that's why they deserve the credit they have.

Yes, that about sums it up pretty well.