Because they are stating an opinion they believe to be fact like you regular guys state stuff like John lennon was and arse.
John Lennon's Imagine wasn't even in his top 100 best songs.

The reason the Who are well known is because they changed things.
The stuff on offer from you guys is so poor.
Debbie wasn't rock for God's sake. She was pop.
I am talking about Rock namely hard rock.
Not punk as that has a separtate section .....you see?

Patti Smith was punk.



I like obscure stuff still but don't try to claim undue credit to an unusual band simply because it up's your cred in your minds to know obscure bands and claim they were the driving force when they were not but just as much of an influence as a book that pete townsend read or a film he saw to his songwriting.

Do you guys? When you attack my grammer or attitude it is because you do not have the hard facts and so are angry and looking to try to score back some pride in this forum.
And running stuff down dull.

Well stop obscuring your argument then.
Look at the title of your thread , thats a pretty bold statement.
We've given you examples of bands who were doing the same sort of thing long before The Who ever did , which you just discount because those bands 'were not popular'.

So what exactly is it that you are trying to say here?

Were The Who influential ? ... Certainly , nobody has said they're not.

Were they the first band with that sound to sell millions of records? ... Probably

Were they the first band to do what they do ? ... No they wern't.

So make your mind up whats it to be ?
Your argument that they were first has been discredited , or at least i'll assume we've discredited it as you've not actually answered those points yet. The only thing you can do is cling to some 'they were popular first' shtick which wasn't even your original argument.

If you stop moving the goalposts everytime someone proves you wrong you may even gain some credibility.

and so what if Debbie Harry was pop , last time I checked you didn't have to be a rock band to write good songs.

Blondie was pop and this is the rock section.
The first ever large scale concerts were around 69 with woodstock and the loudest gig was at charlton's ground in London.
Up till then none of your bands would sell out such spaces to create stadium sounds of hard rock.
They wouldn't have sold enough tickets.
Noone knew what large scale rock was till the who played these huge concerts and then promoters went mad for them. That's how led zeppelin started making stadium hard rock.
See my point? Urban is losing this arguement. I mean claiming blondie is a woman's rock star.