Who or what was the biggest musical influence?

For me I suppose was my two siblings. They are much older than me and were Mods in the 1960s. A lot of the music they played was Motown, Stax, Ska and Brit pop acts, such as The Small Faces, The Kinks, Spencer Davis Group and The Hollies.

In the late 1970s I became a part of the Mod revival scene in London, so my early experiences of listening to music on our Radiogram stayed with me. Even today my 'go to' genre is modern and classic Soul and Funk. That said, I will listen to most genres when the mood takes me....

 

Definitely The Who because I don't have any Albums by The What.

 

What about the Kricks or the Tumbling Rocks?

 

I was born in the late '60s. So I began listening to radio on handheld transistor AM radios. So, the playlists were much free form and diverse than after FM radio took over. DJs picked the music. And if they thought a song was still worth listening to, it remained on the playlist along with the newest hits. They were also more than willing to play a requested song. FM radio stations were more oriented to a specific music genre. I'm not going to claim I continued to listen to AM radio. That would have been absurd. I did mostly listen to Rock stations with FM, but, I'm still inclined to not listen to any specific genre. I still love Motown even though my favorite band is probably Led Zeppelin. I attribute this to diversity of music those AM stations I grew up with. Genres don't really matter to me. If a song is good, it's worth playing. I don't care if it's Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Iron Maiden, or the Smashing Pumpkins. I don't care if the song was recorded in the 1950s or last week. Song don't really drop off my play lists.

 

My Mom had an 8-track tape of Billy Joel the Stranger and a Lena Horne vinyl album I remember listening to at an early age
My step-brother had a collection of ELO and AC/DC vinyl that I enjoyed
From the radio I picked up an interest in Pink Floyd, Stones, and Beatles, some other bands

 

My Dad had a nice stereo and music was playing in our family room as much or more than TV watching.
A cool Uncle visiting when I was 14-15 left me a Downbeat magazine, and mailed me a Jamey Abersold play-along record to encourage me in my guitar lessons. Never got good at guitar, but the study and attempts at jazz improvisation gave me insight and a life-long appreciation and love of jazz.

 

tough one...THE BEATLES!

 

What? Well that's easy - Blues in America

 

Robert Johnson

 

My grandfather. He was a jukebox repairman and always gave me old 45s for Christmas and my birthday, starting when I was 3. Growing up in the musical wasteland of the '80s, I got to know and love dozens of classics from long before I was born.

 

Before Elvis there was nothing..

 

If we discuss about the 60s, then..

The Beatles
The Who
The Jimi Hendrix Experience
The Beach Boys
Family
1-2-3 ("Clouds")

 

Looks like Blues was everywhere, before and after Elvis ... hell even our planet shows varied "blues tones" when given a whole look from outside hahah...

However ... as usual no one ever dared to foresee the time when another "colour turbulence" was about to take place at some spot of our planet surface, this time generated by a bunch of intrepid British men - as well as other Europeans here and there. Pretentious? Maybe ...

"At that time, nearly all the British bands were using the blues or soul music — American music — as their influence. Since that well had been visited so many times, we decided we would try to use European music as our base influence, in order to be different. Robert [Fripp] and I [Greg Lake] — and Ian McDonald, for that matter — had all been schooled in European music. We understood it. We played Django Reinhardt, and we did Paganini violin exercises and so forth. Even though I loved American music, and had played it throughout my youth, it was very easy for me to adapt to using European music as the basis for new creations. I had studied that form of music."

R.I.P. Greg Lake!

 

It remains these guys...

Their musical influence on me was so far-reaching that it continues today. They are the reason I went back and explored the Glam scene before them, everyone from Alice Cooper to the New York Dolls. And their own infatuation with power pop and the Beatles led me not only to the latter, but to the likes of Badfinger and the Raspberries. Heck, Kiss is even an influence on my love for easy listening and Motown!

In short, everything positive about rock and roll for me, and for music at large, began here...and still continues...

 

The Who and The Pretty Things

 

Louis Armstrong changed everything.

How Louis Armstrong Changed the Face Of The Music Industry

 

First there was Elvis and R&B music.

Then all the rest.

 

My mother - a musician and music teacher - for passing on a love of music in general through her genes and through living and breathing music as I grew up. Not so much my mother in terms of what she liked when I was growing up. She didn’t admit to liking pop music when I was a boy. The truth came out much later. Similarly, I was too young for much of what she would admit to liking.

A slightly older boy called Derek Austin who lived up the road from me in 1966, who turned me onto pirate radio in a big way.

Radio Caroline and Radio London in 1966 and 1967 for all of the wonderful stuff that they played.

My older sister in terms of the albums that she bought or borrowed in the late 60s and early 70s, including Hendrix, Zep, Sabbath, Curved Air, The Stones etc.

Tony Blackburn for what he played on the BBC Radio One breakfast show in the late 60s and early 70s, including “Save The Children” by Marvin Gaye, which started me on a whole new musical journey.

‘Nuff said for now.

 

My local record library.

 

I'm old there was fun and great stuff then there was Elvis, then there was fun and great stuff then The Velvet Underground.

 

M T V and other music TV, by far.

I doubt that a person has ever influenced me to like a song.

 

I started young. My brother is 8 years older than me, so I started with a front row seat in front of the TV for The Beatles first appearance on Ed Sullivan. In Feb '64 I was 7 years old. My parents bought a Hi Fi console after that and my brother's record collection started to grow. When my parents would go out for an evening, my brother would load up the Hi Fi, turn out all the lights and turn up more Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Billy J. Kramer, Dave Clark Five, Rolling Stones, The Animals, Duane Eddy, Jan & Dean, The Beach Boys, The Ventures and so on. By the time I got to Junior High, he introduced me to The Bee Gees, Don McClean, Steppenwolf, The Guess Who, The Faces and the later Beatles albums. In between those times I caught on to bands he wasn't into like The Doors, The Kinks, and Motown stuff from AM radio. In junior high as I started doing things I wasn't supposed to, I was introduced to Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Yes, The Who, Captain Beefheart, Zappa, Pink Floyd, Humble Pie, Johnny Winter, Hendrix, Steve Miller, Allman Bros. Band, Doobie Bros., Foghat, ZZ Top and such through the older brothers of friends that I ran around with. Then one summer, my best friend's oldest brother graduated from college and landed back at home with a crate full of albums. From that box I discovered Mott The Hoople, Spirit, J. Geils, Led Zep, Dave Mason, Steeley Dan, Savoy Brown, and a host of other great albums. He ended up taking a managment position at Sound Warehouse that summer and made a career of it until they went completely out of business. His influence was huge on me, both directly and indirectly through two of his younger brothers that I ran around with, one being my best friend. From him I learned about Clapton and then I took a dive into blues music, all the British Blues Invasion stuff. That's how it got started.
From there it came from FM radio and friends, then people I worked with. That early immersion starting with The Beatles and beyond caused me as an adult to gravitate toward people who loved rock music, had large record collections, and were knowledgable about bands I wasn't aware of. Then in the 80s, MTV hit the airwaves and I learned about a whole new wave of artists and never letting go of those past influences. I was always adding, rarely subtracting from what I liked.
Great thread!

 

A couple of guys at school who were into buying Melody Maker/NME from age 11 or so. I started buying them at that point (1992) and being young lapped up much of what was covered.

But just as important was the 7pm to midnight offering on Radio 1 in the early to mid 90’s which I would do my homework to:
7-9pm; the Jo Whiley and Steve Lamacq Evening Session. Heard a lot of great indie, lot of landfill indie, the early Britpop years, lots of US rock. Stuff I still listen to now
9pm- an hour of great comedy/documentaries
10pm-midnight: Mark and Lard. More obscure tracks which I probably didn’t all like at the time but I heard some great acts for the first time, I particular Belle & Sebastian.

 

My parents -- huge Nat King Cole fans

Older Brother -- first person I knew to have a Who album (acquired during a trip to Europe before the Who hit in the U.S.)
He was also an early (and albums, not just singles) Kinks and Animals and Hendrix fan.

My neighbor's older sister (same age as my brother) -- Huge Beach Boys and Rolling Stones fan.

This guy named Ed Sullivan -- had some English guys with weird haircuts on his TV show.

TV -- Dean Martin show


The King of Cool:

 

New Order as a young kid I guess, probably meant I was always open minded towards electronic stuff which many people my age weren't going into the 90s.

The Stone Roses a bit later on were my first real musical obsession and Massive Attack opened me up to reggae, soul, funk etc.

In terms of informing me about the most stuff though..



I wrote out a big list of stuff that sounded cool then carried it around gradually grabbing CDs whenever I could find and afford them. It's incredible how different things were even just twenty or so years ago, it took me two or three years to chance upon a copy of Low by the obscure artist 'David Bowie' in the 90s. I'd practically constructed a full imaginary album of what I thought it must be like by that point!