Who are your influences?

I guess all of us using Sonar are making music, so who are your influences? 
 
As for me, I draw a lot from the Three B's: Beatles, Big Star and the Byrds.  Of course there are others, but I think that's what keeps surfacing.  What about you guys?

Elvis/Scotty Moore/James Burton
 
Jimmy Page/Led Zeppelin
 
John Lennon/the Beatles
 
Alice Cooper - especially the old, original Alice Cooper band
 
Syd Barret/Pink Floyd/David Gilmour
 
Black Sabbath
 
John Williams
 
Nine Inch Nails/Charlie Clouser
 
The Cure
 
Ozzy Osbourne/Randy Rhoads
 
KISS
 
Jerry Goldsmith
 
Tommy Bolin
 
Ennio Morricone
 
Depeche Mode
 
Shunsuke Kikuchi
 
Bill Leeb/Front Line Assembly
 
Skinny Puppy
 
Brian Setzer
 
David Bowie
 
Marilyn Manson
 
Jimi Hendrix
 
Danny Elfman
 
Die Form
 
 
 
Pretty much everything I listen to influences me one way or the other, and my influences change regularly to incorporate new, minor ones or let go of others - for a while, when I was a teenager, that list would have consisted of "Metallica". Of course, those old, formative years influences are always there somewhere in the background.
 
 
 

The three B's for me, too: Bach, Beethoven and Brahms.
 
Actually, Tchaikovsky and Wagner were more influential than Brahms, but they don't have the same alliterative concordance.
 
Pop music was just a nice distraction until I moved to the motherland and discovered firsthand the amazing stuff that was happening there in 1969, starting with The Nice (and the revelation that an organist can be cool) and reaching its mind-blowing zenith with the album that changed everything: In the Court of the Crimson King.
 

a lot of what i've heard since kid age, is some kind of influence.....
mozart from early piano lessons,
religious stuff from singing in choir...
but the rock stuff comes from rundgren, hendrix, deep purple, queen, humble pie, zeppelin, crosby stills nash and young, 3 dog night, beatles.
 
and the more progressive stuff comes from Brand X, Holdsworth, return to forever, Weather Report, the dregs.
 
modern influences would be Queens of the stone age, Cosmosquad, Muse, A Perfect Circle, Foo Fighters, tool

Having been fortunate enough to see the Beatles and the Rolling Stones I would have to include
Lennon/McCartney
Richards/Jagger
As they are instilled influences
 
and then as they spring to furry mind in no particular order, though am I sure some will sound a little strange.
 
Camel
CAN
Caravan
Soft Machine
Peter Gabriel
John Martyn
Tangerine Dream
Mike Oldfield
Genesis
The Moody Blues
Pink Floyd - Gilmour and Wright in particular
Hawkwind
Tonto's expanding head band.
Jean Michel Jarre
and many many more that made my ears smile on the way.

Well, I played with and got lessons/tips from Craig Goldy, who played with Dio and is Ritchie Blackmore's Godson (who was HIS influence).  So, I definitely inherited some from that line by default.  On my own I used to play along with the early Scorpion albums from begin to end so I also picked up things from Herman Rarebell and the Schenker's.  A lot of time was spent on Jimmy Page stuff too.  Later on I studied some of Steve Bartek's work (Oingo Boingo), Wolf Hoffman (Accept), the guitarists in Styx, Boston, Judas Priest and Def Leppard; and I love some of the stuff from Edgar Froese (Tangerine Dream).  I'm sure I've missed some obvious influences, but they say one of the first things to go as you get older is... Um, well... Anyway, I'm sure I'll recall it later! 
 
One thing that's interesting is that I didn't even get into guitarists who predominantly play single coils until I was over 40 (including most blues players, Jimi Hendrix or David Gilmour - among others).  I just loved the double-coil humbucker sound too much when I was young.  Now that I can't play fast, I need to study feel more (like Gilmour).

Rather than write a list that would be fairly long.... suffice it to say that I have influences from just about every category of music.   Everything from bluegrass to hard rock and in between. It's all got good musicians and writers in it.

First I would say ELP, Yes, early King Crimson and the Strawbs. But in reality it's Pink Floyd that seems to creep into every thing I (try to) do.

And, to be completely different I have a heavily AC/DC influenced song on the go.

jamesg1213

SteveStrummerUK

• Les Dawson
• Father Abraham
• Chico

You forgot Paper Lace.
 
 
 

Billy don't be a hero

It started with the most metal I knew, Jerusalem. Then Stryper. Stryper is a mix of pop and metal I think is really underrated. And I have aloft of that approach from them. Guitar wise I would say Anthrax, Stryper, Yngwie Malmsteen and so on. I'm not that technical tho. I've always wanted to be, but lack of discipline and concentration made me give up. For singing, every high pitched singers. Male or female. From early on I discovered Handel and Bach sort of on my own, and always have a mind to put something baroque in songs or the whole thing. I love Fugue technic and try to learn more on my own. So Bach and Handel is grate influences too. For extreme metal I have some. All Christian. Antestor, Mortification, Paramæcium. But I started making such music just recent. Another influences is Dream Theater.

It's only recently that I've realized that I have been heavily influenced by Jeff Beck without actually listening to him  
 
I remember about 20 years ago at a party, listening to a friend tell the person sitting next to him that I was a guitar player and that I sounded like Jeff Beck. It kind of stuck in my mind but amazingly enough I never really bothered to check out his music. I'm sure everyone has an example of some musical legend whom they've somehow managed to avoid listening to over the years only to discover them later. Over the last couple of years I've listened to a lot of his stuff and very often thinking wow, that's exactly what I would have played. 
 
I think I've also been heavily influenced by the British folk guitar players - Bert Jansch (I once transcribed almost his full catalog), John Renbourne, Davey Graham (of Anji fame), Archie Fisher, Martin Carthy (amazing), Wizz Jones, Nic Jones, Martin Simpson, John Martyn and many more. 
 
Back when I first started, my influences were a weird mixture of classic rock (Jimmy Page, Richie Blackmore etc), thrash metal (picking out Kirk Hammett's solos on Kill 'Em All is what taught me to play guitar) and the sublime guitar playing on Steely Dan albums. 
 
I grew up in the 70's in a house in which my father smoked weed and listened to amazing music. How much of that smoke I inhaled is anybody's guess (although my brother and I ate nearly a whole tin of strong hash cookies when I was 5 - I was stoned for a couple of days apparently and the box was kept on a higher shelf after that) but I sure as hell soaked up all that music like a sponge. Steely Dan, Frank Zappa, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Back Door etc. It definitely influenced the way I hear chords and melody. 

Hi,
 
Having come from a house with 40K+ books on Portuguese, Spanish and Brazilian literature (not toilet paper!), makes a difference. I had gotten and enjoyed the Beatles and Rolling Stones way back in 1964 in Brazil, but I already thought that the lyrics were childish and that most "pop music" was not to be taken seriously -- like Bapu!
 
When the Beatles "grew up" and did not want to do silly pop songs, I was quite OK with that and it was better for me, since a new generation was, then, also creating new "literature" that I could relate to. This, eventually, led me to the European music scene and its much more intelligent and less pop minded attitude towards what we could/would/should call "music".
 
From a writing perspective, I could easily say that Amon Duul 2 in its incarnations until "Apocaliptyc Bore" is the closest thing to my attitudes and how I write, although I will state that I do not have the "psychedelic" shine that they did. Others that also influenced me were Tangerine Dream, and Guru Guru ... both known widely for being total free form for a long time on stage in the early days, and still create a lot of outstanding material.
 
After that, the numbers slow down. The person that I admire the most in rock music is Peter Hammill and Van der Graaf Generator, for being so honest with his words and music, that one wonders where it stops. After that, the Master Builder himself, is an inspiration for his work and specially his meditative work, that he used to teach. Sadly, the ravages of time and cancer are eating him apart and he just posted recently a moving hello and goodbye to all of us, by saying Thank You.
 
Wise Man In Your Heart!
 
The rest is something that I love to hear and enjoy watching people "going away" with their own music ... something that lyrics can not replace much, and define an "artist" for my tastes. At moments like those, there are no words, that one can use to describe the inner feelings, and they become way too special moments for one's life.
 
And recently, seeing King Crimson, with 3 drummers, and watch a music master just rip it all apart into oblivion and one of the best concerts I have ever seen. Only "Return to Forever" displayed such amazing discipline and musicianship on a stage in my life! The rest just does not sound as important. I want to add Pink Floyd Live at the Hollywood Bowl in 1972 to the list ... and Tangerine Dream at the Greek Theater with Lazerium turning all the trees on fire, the picture of which you can see on the Live Album in America! That was something else, but otherwise ... the only other concert I love dearly and most don't was YES at the Long Beach Arena doing Tales from Topographic Oceans which was magnificent and made me cry, because I knew no rock band would EVER do something that valuable and important during my lifetime! I did not have a chance to catch JT's Passion Play tour and would love to have seen it otherwise.
 
That's it ... most of my inspirations are in music. Some people have even said that my poetry is very musical and when I read it to myself, I have no idea what they are saying ... I only see a floating movie in my head!
 
Which is where it all comes from for me!

From a synth perspective...
Vangelis
Jarre
Tangerine Dream
 
From a melody perspective...these artists inspire great tunes
Kate Bush
Annie Lennox
Sting