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Originally posted by Kworb
There were already plenty of British artists who had success in the US. The Beatles then are One Direction now, just teenage girls hyping up a boy band. They hardly "opened the door" for all future British artists. The door was already wide open. It was also a case of the world getting smaller due to technological advances.
All serious artists experiment with different sounds. The Beatles were not doing anything unique, nor were they directly influencing anyone or doing anything innovative. They were very popular, but did not have much respect musically. That only came much later after they'd broken up and people started romanticizing their legacy.
Lastly, crediting a specific four-piece rock band template to the Beatles is the most bizarre claim in your post. Bands have existed for a very long time in all kinds of formations, and there was as much variety then as there is now.
I do agree that they were the first widely successful boy band, and probably had impact on record labels to produce more of their kind.
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Kworb
(1) The influence The Beatles had in terms of opening the doors of US pop music for British Rock and Pop artists is undeniable. Prior to The Beatles, only two British artists had ever topped the US charts. While The Beatles were ACTIVE, 39 British songs hit #1 on the US charts for a total of 113 weeks. 8 of the top 10 best-selling albums of the 1960s in the United States were from British artists. The door was not wide open. A girl in America literally had to call a radio station and ask why British pop rock music wasn't being played in America before they started spinning The Beatles stateside.
Even beyond their pure popularity, their existence opened up the doors for how bands like The Rolling Stones would market themselves. Their manager was literally a former publicist of The Beatles who used The Beatles' image to market the Stones to a United States audience.
(2) It's ludicrous to say that they weren't respected musically. Yes, they began as an insanely popular teen craze, but you're deluding yourself by believing that all of their critical acclaim came after the fact. Almost all of their legendary releases were greeted with universal acclaim immediately upon release. Some of the most frequently cited reviews, including the famous "Sgt. Pepper's is a decisive moment in the history of western civilisation" are from reviews released shortly after the albums.
(3) I really just don't even understand how you can say that they weren't doing anything innovative and influenced no one.
Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, The White Album, and Abbey Road were highly innovative. Songs like Tomorrow Never Knows, A Day In The Life, Strawberry Fields Forever, and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds made them pioneers of psychedelic rock and integrating classical music into pop pieces. Birthday and Helter Skelter were among the heaviest songs ever released, and certainly represented a huge influence on the explosion of the heavy metal genre shortly after.
Even though they are perhaps the most successful singles act of all time, they were the first act to drive the album to the forefront of the music experience, shattering records of their time. It wasn't until their rise that the industry began to present albums as entire experiences and focused marketing on selling them. They had 12 of the top 15 best-selling albums of the 1960s in the UK and 6 of the 10 top-selling albums in the United States (including #1-3), where previously only movie soundtracks sold. Sgt. Pepper's was one of the earliest concept albums, and it was certainly the first to inspire the creation of concept albums on a large scale.
Even beyond their sheer domination and the huge number of bands that either built off of their sound or tried to innovate in their wake, they revolutionized the touring industry for musicians and pioneered the modern music video. They raised pop music to an art form, showed people that it could be charged with politics and rebellion, and ushered in an age of British musical domination so intense that American citizens and critics desperately searched for an artist that could be considered on their (the British music scene's, and The Beatles' in particular) level.
Even beyond all of that, you can pull up almost any major artist and either find in their work or quotes they've given inspiration from The Beatles. Even the debut performance of The Jackson 5 was considered heavily influenced and reminiscent of the Ed Sullivan Show performance that destroyed the TV viewing records of its time.
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