Steve Howe is not a rock guitarist. Yes (pun) he played loud and with some distortion, but he went well out of his way to avoid any rock guitar cliches.
All of your Howe influences are 100% spot on though. Leon McAuliffe and Franny Beecher are the names you're missing. Speedy West was also a huge influence.
After hearing CTTE I became a certified Howe junkie. Sold my LP and bought a semi-hollow jazz box and ended up playing Siberian Khatru and All Good People in my late 70s band.
He was so damn hard to ape because his style was so removed from all of the rock of that era. Hell, on the entire Tormato album he didn't use any vibrato - at all.
During the 70s when Page was winning 'Best Rock Guitarist' in the annual Guitar Player magazine polls, Howe was winning every year for 'Best Overall Guitarist'.
My fave Howe track of all time is an outtake that never made one of Yes' official studio recordings. Yes he rocks, but he's not playing rock licks in the traditional sense.
Not true, it may have not made it on a studio album, but it was a official studio recording. It was released on a 45 which was purchased concurrently with the compilation album Yesterdays.
Steve Howe was in a band that played "Progressive Rock." So "Rock" goes with the territory, don't you think? Even though Steve Howe stayed away from the Blues idiom (which is understandable since at the time the world was inundated with Blues-Rock guitarist) he was one of the most well grounded guitar players in the traditions of early Rock and Roll, and also the music that influenced early Rock and Roll. All of that makes him the quintessential Rock and Roll guitar player.
