The Beatles' Influence on Prog?

I think it's underrated. I can name many early prog rock acts that weren't influenced by The Beach Boys or Frank Zappa. But how many early prog acts can you seriously say that were not influenced by one aspect of The Beatles music from any album from Rubber Soul to Abbey Road? 

Despite being forever tagged as a Liverpool band the Beatles were for most of their musical career, in fact London-based and pretty much the centre of the London scene during the late 60s. And the importance of Swinging London on Psychedelic Pop & Rock and the embryonic Progressive Rock cannot be over-stated - San Francisco is the spiritual home of the Psychedelic movement and the alternative/underground scene but (Zappa aside, as he was lone odd-ball [even] in the SF scene) having plateaued very quickly as the soundtrack to the hippy movement, musically it was pretty staid and static, the creativity that initially vitalised American Psych found a comfortable far-out groove and stuck with it - being progressive in that scene referred to everything but music. Whereas over the pond, it was London's quirky, hodge-podge slant on psychedelia that continued what SF started, it provided the impetus that powered a progression in music that radiated out in a myriad of different directions as a consequence, and that gave birth to Prog Rock. 

While the Beatles and the up and coming Psych and Prog bands were not quite in the same London social groups per se, the Fab Four were a peripheral but key part of the social scenes that grew up around the progressive underground and there was a degree of mutually reflective kudos in that association. 

[Some people disagree when I say this, but] The Jimi Hendrix Experience were a London band (with an American front-man), and what they did was born out of that 'not-quite-counter-culture-but-close' London scene, and they too were part of that same nebulous underground scene that mixed mainstream rock/pop royalty (various members of the Beatles, Stones, Yardbirds etc.,) with the psych-folk/pop fringe-ers (Bolan & Donovan, and to some extent Bowie), the hard-rockers (Zepp, Sabbath, Purple & Heap), all the Canterbury & Ladbroke Grove bands, together with the likes of pre-Crimson Fripp, Pink Floyd, the Gentle Giants before they became Gentle Giant, Yes, The Nice=>ELP and VdGG etc.

Just how influential the Fab Four were on that cannot be measured in cover songs and musical development alone, nor can it be seen in innovation and approach to song writing and music production because that is too interleaved and too ingrained into the fabric of what the Beatles created from being an integral, though perhaps passive, part of the London underground and what those underground bands created also from that association. Whether this was direct inspiration or askance influence, they fed on each other.

 

Sounds such as those 'koo koo.. koo koo....' sung by Lennon on 'I am The Walrus' are sure a key element Gabriel might have to do with him