MOST INFLUENTIAL ROCK ARTISTS

EDITOR: SAMPSON
http://www.digitaldreamdoor.com/pages/best_influential.html

CRITERIA: Determined by equal parts Musical Influence, Performance Influence and Cultural Influence.


1. Elvis Presley
2. The Beatles
3. James Brown
4. Bob Dylan
5. Chuck Berry
6. Run-D.M.C.
7. The Jimi Hendrix Experience
8. Ray Charles
9. Led Zeppelin
10. Fats Domino
11. Aretha Franklin
12. Clyde McPhatter
13. Little Richard
14. Madonna
15. Buddy Holly & The Crickets
16. Bill Haley & The Comets
17. Michael Jackson
18. The Beach Boys
19. Sam Cooke
20. The Who
21. Bo Diddley
22. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five
23. Black Sabbath
24. Johnny Otis
25. Public Enemy

26. Stevie Wonder
27. The Byrds
28. N.W.A.
29. The Velvet Underground
30. The Rolling Stones
31. Sonny Til & The Orioles
32. Nirvana
33. Parliament/Funkadelic
34. Tupac Shakur
35. Pink Floyd
36. Prince
37. R.E.M.
38. The Kinks
39. Neil Young
40. Ruth Brown
41. The Ramones
42. The Everly Brothers
43. Afrika Bambaataa
44. The "5" Royales
45. Eddie Cochran
46. Sly & The Family Stone
47. The Supremes
48. Cream
49. The Beastie Boys
50. Frankie Lymon & The Teenagers

51. The Clash
52. David Bowie
53. Link Wray
54. Big Joe Turner
55. The Shirelles
56. Marvin Gaye
57. LL Cool J
58. Roy Orbison
59. Curtis Mayfield & The Impressions
60. The Stooges
61. Joni Mitchell
62. Carl Perkins
63. Jesse Belvin
64. Van Halen
65. Motorhead
66. The Sonics
67. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
68. Queen
69. The Yardbirds
70. Screamin' Jay Hawkins
71. Kurtis Blow
72. Eric B. & Rakim
73. Bob Marley
74. Van Morrison
75. U2

76. The Clovers
77. King Crimson
78. Professor Longhair
79. The Band
80. Metallica
81. Janet Jackson
82. Ice-T
83. Hank Ballard & The Midnighters
84. Little Willie John
85. Frank Zappa
86. The Grateful Dead
87. Otis Redding
88. Janis Joplin
89. The Doors
90. Del Shannon
91. The Ronettes
92. The MC5
93. The Temptations
94. Chic
95. Deep Purple
96. The Flamingos
97. Patti Smith
98. The Isley Brothers
99. Rush
100. The Sex Pistols

Run-D.M.C.? I would have thought Public Enemy were the most influential hip-hop artist.

Nah, I think he has it right with Run DMC, from what I've gauged.

The Who vs Led Zeppelin

Performance Influence: The Who
Musical Influence: The Who
Cultural Influence: The Who

I strongly disagree.

The vast bulk of Led Zeppelin's musical influence is in the realm of hard rock. The Who are as close to ground zero for hard rock as any artist you can name. And then there's The Who's influence on everything from power pop to art rock.

Again I disagree, Zeppelin have a pretty broad influence. Hard rock and metal is just what they're most influential in (where Who would be punk and power pop). It's such an abstract thing to argue though, and I think it's so close that you can't just make such a sweeping comparison.

Well, we agree that The Who take Cultural and Peformance influence, so I don't think it matters. The Who ought to be higher than Zeppelin on this list.

I would disagree that Led Zeppelin vast bulk influence has been on hard rock/heavy metal. Led Zeppelin are considered prog-related and were influential on progressive rock artists like Rush to name a few. Don't forget that no one has mentioned that John Bonham DRUMMING has been influential on rap music in which the Who has basically no influence on.

By the way I will get back to this one also. Many of the artists on this list have basically no influence like Elvis or Chuck Berry on the music scene in the last 20 to 25 years. I think one of the many the reasons why the Beatles should be first has been their enduring influence on popular/rock music. Then again this site has the Supremes over the Rolling Stones on the 60's list so nothing here surprises me

Their influence on Rush is for the kind of stuff that's on their first album: generic hard rock. When Rush started branching out into epic song cycles and rock opera, that's the progressive stuff and that's the stuff that The Who had a massive influence on.



Has it? Why? Because of some samples? Is his drumming really that ubiquitous in rap?



First, you're wrong. Second, besides direct influence, there is also indirect influence.

Rush biggest influence was Led Zeppelin at the start. Look, Led Zeppelin most likely are more influential on American Rock Music than the Who. That is not dismissing the Who but Led Zeppelin is a lot more popular here in America than the Who. Have you heard the Beastie Boys debut album Led Zeppelin is refernced quite a bit.

As for the last point the Beatles influence on modern pop and rock music fingerprints are all over the place and more enduring than Elvis and Chuck Berry. Those are the facts anyone who knows the music scene knows it. You think Alternative Rock and bands like Green Day are referencing the 50's. By the way direct influence is more important than indirect influence anyway.

I am going to disagree with you on the influence of Run dmc and NWA as the rap mod. They do not score their points highly in those areas, where they do score their points highly is in Impact. Public enemy score higher than them in terms of influence in my opinion, and what i've gathered from other rap artists

I just said that the influence of Led Zeppelin was mostly on Rush's first album. There is no question that the influence of The Who quickly took over. Heck, Rush were on the Colbert Report a couple years ago and when asked who their biggest influences are the very first artist they named was The Who. And that wasn't even the member who said that he was the world's biggest Who fan. And then there's the third member who said this: "Pete Townshend is one of my greatest influences. More than any other guitarist, he taught me how to play rhythm guitar and demonstrated its importance, particularly in a three-piece band."

You aren't going to get anywhere name-dropping Rush for Led Zeppelin. Not when it's in comparison to The Who.



So you keep saying. And I'll keep saying you're wrong. They are both massive influences on hard rock. But The Who's influence extends much further beyond hard rock than Led Zeppelin's does.



Popularity and influence are not the same thing. Hootie and the Blowfish are a lot more popular than the Velvet Underground.



How old are you? You think we don't know music here? Okay, we get that you think the Beatles are more influential than Elvis Presley, but you want to knock the guy right out of the top five and that is just completely fucking ignorant.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9XUc5O_54w

No, Run-D.M.C. changed everything in rap, and do well across the board. Cultural influence with the emphasis on the fashion trends pioneered in mid-80's rap to musical influence with the cross-stylistic cuts and lyrically as well. Remember, it's not influence on the music you hear at this moment, its influence on the ongoing development of the music through the years.

N.W.A. was the most influential artists on the most culturally explosive form of hip-hop ever with gangsta rap which brought the music from simply being known by its fans onto the nightly news and political campaigns railing against its violence. Rap went from being culturally dismissed by the mainstream prior to that, to being vilified. P.E.'s influence is massive too of course, including in many of the same ways, particularly with their political lyrics, and militaristic image of the S1W's. But PE is above N.W.A. here anyway, so that's a moot point. But no rap artists were ever more influential to its stylistic development and popularization than Run-D.M.C. Rap became what it did thanks to them more than anyone.

Who ever said that influence on today is more noteworthy than influence on any other point over it's sixty-three years is? What kind of modern elitism is that?

Influence means just that - what it influenced over the entire time span of its existance. Presley's influence literally meant that all rock artists who followed were playing rock, it became viable because of him. Musically he brought each and every individual strand of rock that preceeded him into one cohesive whole, allowing all rock artists after to tackle any chosen style and still be called rock. He gave rock its visual template that it has unquestionably followed ever since, including today. He changed the entire way music was marketed which gave unprecedented economic power to a demographic that had never been catered to before, a market that still dominates rock music to this day.

Berry's influence altered the way rock was conceived, with lead guitar as the centerpiece rather than sax or piano and lyrics that told concise stories with characters, witty narratives and plots. If you can't see how that influence is still felt today than you aren't listening very closely to music.