The Beatles. Here. Why?

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 RoyalJelly wrote:

     I hate to resuscitate this tired topic once again, but I found such an 

interesting quote today, I had to reproduce it here. If anyone had any 

doubts of the importance of the Beatle's influence on the main creators of 

progressive rock, this may dispell them:

"The multiplicity of levels evident in Beatles music continued to be an 

ideal that haunted Fripp in composing Lizard, even if he wasn't interested 

in copying the Beatles' style per se. "The only thing that worries me," he 

said, "is that perhaps it [Lizard] won't be given enough of a chance. We've 

made it so that the 24th time things'll really begin to go Zap. At the same 

time, when the album starts it should really hit you, so that you'll think 

perhaps there's something worth getting into." The problem here - I said 

something like this already - is that the Beatles managed to make their 

music likeable and infectious and seductive and entrancing on the first 

hearing; by the twenty-fourth hearing you were into the subtleties, but 

you listened to it twenty-four times because you wanted to."

from Eric Tamm's book on Fripp

Interesting quote. I'd also like to add this one from VdGG's David Jackson - 
"I remember vividly Sgt Pepper coming out - there was this incredible buzz of sheer disbelief. Wherever you went people would be playing it.Suddenly with this astonishing music anything seemed possible"

I think people are missing two things in this debate about the Beatles on ProgArchives - 
1) the impact the Beatles had on music at the time. You may think Sgt Pepper is just a normal pop album now, but only people who are old enough will be aware of the effect it had in 1967 (see above quote).
2) the Beatles are here not because they are a prog band but because of their influence on prog.
This is my last word on the subject.

Possibly.