Non musician/producer/songwriters who were influential on the history of rock

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I am trying to start some kind of project about those non-credited acts who influenced rock. There are of course lots and lots of producers and songwriters to choose from, and I will have to choose from them later on. What I am most interested in now is suggestions for people who are/were neither singers, instrumentalists, songwriters or producers, and yet - in spite of having nothing to do with the creative process, they have clearly influenced rock music and related musical forms.

Starting off with some obvious key figures (some of which may be musicians, but not rock musicians):

Les Paul
Pioneered the electric guitar

James Moog
The man behind the synthesizer.

Alan Freed
Radio DJ who started playing black R&B hits for a white audience, also the one who invented the "rock'n'roll" term.

Sam Philips
Visionary Sun boss who would pioneer rockabilly and discover Elvis Presley

Brian Epstein
The Beatles' manager

Kit Lambert
The Who's manager may not be quite as famous as Kit Lambert, but was still important enough.

Simon Fuller
Perhaps the most influential man in current popular music. Particularly famous for being the man behind Spice Girls and Pop Idol.

Shawn Fanning
Started Napster and started a seemingly unstoppable wave of online filesharing that would also revolutionize the music market.

Ashley Abram
Possibly not as famous as the others, but he was the man behind the original "Now That's What I Call Music" compilation in 1983, and I guess we all know how influential that series (and similar series) has become.

Bob Pittman
The man behind MTV, more or less

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:12 (twenty years ago)

john peel

― jellybean (jellybean), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:18 (twenty years ago)

it's BOB Moog, geir you fuckin' idiot. dude died recently and you can't even get his name right.

― hstencil (hstencil), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:21 (twenty years ago)

Les Paul is a musician and performer.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:23 (twenty years ago)

also, Berry Gordy

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:24 (twenty years ago)

Don't forget Malcolm Maclaren & Vivienne Westwood

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:25 (twenty years ago)

Hmm. Bob Moog. My bad.

Malcom McLaren is a good call except I guess he could be considered a musician (although considerably less influential) in his own right.

I know Les Paul was a musician, but not in the rock genre. Bob Moog was also a musician.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:30 (twenty years ago)

Peter Grant is important because he was the manager of Led Zeppelin and Ahmed Ertegun is important as the head of Atlantic Records which signed up Led Zeppelin on terms which allowed the band to create their own image and not have to release singles, this allowed Led Zeppelin to concentrate on their albums.

The art agency Hipgnosis was important too for designing 70s rock album covers for various acts like Led Zeppelin ("Houses of the Holy") and Pink Floyd ("Wish you were here") which nearly everybody aged 30+ years agrees are classics.

― Jennifer Hor, Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:34 (twenty years ago)

Suge Knight! < /Geir baiting >

― joseph cotten (joseph cotten), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:34 (twenty years ago)

Actually, Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons would be good ones.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

Raymond Pettibone

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

Jac Holzman

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:36 (twenty years ago)

was Harry Smith a musician?

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:37 (twenty years ago)

Clive Davis

― Dominique (dleone), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:38 (twenty years ago)

Rick Rubin

Producer, obvs.

― Eppy (Eppy), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:41 (twenty years ago)

Richard Branson
David Geffen

― Dominique (dleone), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:42 (twenty years ago)

Bruce Gowers

― Navek Rednam (Navek Rednam), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:44 (twenty years ago)

Dick Clark!

― Dominique (dleone), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:45 (twenty years ago)

Ahmed Ertegun was an important figure way before signing Led Zeppelin.

And, no, Suge Knight is no baiting. He is important, clearly, and has IMO done considerably less harm to current music than Simon Fuller has anyway :)

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:45 (twenty years ago)

the fans are the real stars

― Dominique (dleone), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:49 (twenty years ago)

Alan Lomax

― silence dogood (catcher), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:53 (twenty years ago)

As well as producing a lot of vapid, horrendous, sexist crap. (Yes, I am over 30 btw)

To get back to the question. Geoff Travis/Dave Robinson, stalwarts of the early UK independent scene.

Paul Morley.

― Billy Dods (Billy Dods), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:53 (twenty years ago)

Jann Wenner

― Binjominia (Brilhante), Thursday, 12 January 2006 21:56 (twenty years ago)

phil spector, colonel tom parker, joe meek

― J.D. (Justyn Dillingham), Thursday, 12 January 2006 22:07 (twenty years ago)

Eric Clapton and George Harrison's Layla.

― Stephen C (ihope), Thursday, 12 January 2006 22:12 (twenty years ago)

Stevo?

Tony Wilson?

― Dan Selzer (Dan Selzer), Thursday, 12 January 2006 22:28 (twenty years ago)

Wavy Gravy and Chet Helms! :)

And wasn't Clive Davis a producer before he became an artist remodeler?

― Joe McCombs, Thursday, 12 January 2006 22:36 (twenty years ago)

Harry Smith was an artist and record collector, but not a musician…

― veronica moser (veronica moser), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:20 (twenty years ago)

Every world leader ever.

― Dom iNut (donut), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:21 (twenty years ago)

..well, since music began.

― Dom iNut (donut), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:22 (twenty years ago)

..which was in 2001, of course.

― Dom iNut (donut), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:22 (twenty years ago)

Alfred Lion & Francis Wolff.
Roger Dean.

That's yr archetypal "sublime to the ridiculous" right there.

― Flower King of Flies (noodle vague), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:25 (twenty years ago)

Geir Hongro

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:42 (twenty years ago)

Geir's a musician and songwriter and a good one at that.

― Flower King of Flies (noodle vague), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:45 (twenty years ago)

borges, le tigre

http://bombazine.podomatic.com/

― musikcafe.blogspot.com (harare), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:46 (twenty years ago)

Andy Warhol

― Stephen C (ihope), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:56 (twenty years ago)

whoops my bad, re: Geir

Carl Djerassi, inventor of birth control

― Drew Daniel (Drew Daniel), Thursday, 12 January 2006 23:58 (twenty years ago)

Dr. Albert Hofman

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Friday, 13 January 2006 00:03 (twenty years ago)

― blunt (blunt), Friday, 13 January 2006 00:05 (twenty years ago)

B. DiCrescenzo

― Confounded (Confounded), Friday, 13 January 2006 00:12 (twenty years ago)

Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan: No bigger career boosters in the US during the 50s & 60s.

― jim wentworth (wench), Friday, 13 January 2006 01:43 (twenty years ago)

Has no one mentioned Andrew Loog Oldham yet? Because someone should have.
Leo Fender. Jim Marshall.
Simon Napier-Bell's patchy history of the music biz covers a lot of this, doesn't it?

― snotty moore, Friday, 13 January 2006 02:47 (twenty years ago)

Has no one mentioned Andrew Loog Oldham yet?

He is at least credited as producer on most Stones albums during the Brian Jones era.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:04 (twenty years ago)

...Yeah

Um, on Samuel Fuller @ Wikipedia : Fuller is also at work on an Internet portal called I Love Music, where songs will be available for downloading onto wireless devices.

― blunt (blunt), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:07 (twenty years ago)

mo ostin
bill graham

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:23 (twenty years ago)

Hmmm. Wikipedia just taught me two things I didn't know about ILM

1. Simon Fuller is a regular here, even a moderator apparently

2. ILM are planning a downloads feature soon.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:26 (twenty years ago)

Les Paul
Pioneered the electric guitar

if we're going to count him despite his musiciannness, i'd give him at least as much credit, if not more, for his invention of multitrack recording.

if i've got my history right, his role in the electric guitar was to help popularize it, bring it into the mainstream, and improve his design. but it had already been invented and all that other stuff was going to happen sooner or later anyway.

multitrack recording would've been invented, too, but he actually started it, at least if you can believe the history books. and he continued improving it and widening the possibilities for quite some time after.

whereas quite some after popularizing the electric guitar, he actually rejected the design of the gibson SG (which was supposed to just be a new model of the les paul, but he refused to put his name on it). and the gibson SG is the most rock and roll instrument ever invented.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:29 (twenty years ago)

dr hofman just turned 100!

― oops (Oops), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:30 (twenty years ago)

Alan Freed
Radio DJ who started playing black R&B hits for a white audience, also the one who invented the "rock'n'roll" term.

he might've popularized the term's attachment to a certain kind of music, but the term had been around for decades before that.

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:31 (twenty years ago)

hilly kristal

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:32 (twenty years ago)

sid vicious, arguably

― fact checking cuz (fcc), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:33 (twenty years ago)

Sid Vicious belongs in another thread, along with Paul Rutherford, Andrew Ridgeley and Milli Vanilli. :)

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:35 (twenty years ago)

2. ILM are planning a downloads feature soon.
it's a deal with YSI then because it's been running for a while

― blunt (blunt), Friday, 13 January 2006 03:37 (twenty years ago)

Dewey Phillips.

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Friday, 13 January 2006 09:22 (twenty years ago)

Bob Moog didn't invent the synthesizer rather than popularized it, though his influence is obviously bigger than any other synth designer's.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Friday, 13 January 2006 09:35 (twenty years ago)

Jack Kerouac & William Burroughs

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:13 (twenty years ago)

Jebus.

― Flower King of Flies (noodle vague), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:14 (twenty years ago)

rimbaud. surrealists. kerouac. burroughs. situationists. creators of MTV. wilde. many more...

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:14 (twenty years ago)

oups, sorry dadaismus !

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:15 (twenty years ago)

levi strauss (not the ethno-philosopher !). lester bangs. greil marcus. NME. melody maker. rolling stone magazine (and many other magazines...). harley davidson. pot, coke and heroin producers.

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:19 (twenty years ago)

Aleister Crowley

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:19 (twenty years ago)

astrid kirchherr. mick rock. hedi slimane. gered mankowitz. mary quant. ambert maysles.

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:27 (twenty years ago)

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:28 (twenty years ago)

top of the pop creators. staline. mao.jesus&god. thatcher.mcgee.

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:32 (twenty years ago)

McGee was a musician

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:36 (twenty years ago)

oh yeah, right. forgot about this. that's not the main reason he's famous that said !
i guess we should add the founders of all the main labels (for those who weren't musicians).

― AleXTC (AleXTC), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:38 (twenty years ago)

Would Bez be too far involved with the creative process to be mentioned here (Ryder claiming that Bez brought 'the vibe' in the studio)?

― tissp! (the impossible shortest specia), Friday, 13 January 2006 10:49 (twenty years ago)

I would say founders of major labels are important if they aren't just in it for the money, that is if they have had some kind of musical vision about what they were doing.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Friday, 13 January 2006 12:51 (twenty years ago)

Does that matter if they release great records?

― Vicious Cop Kills Gentle Fool (Dada), Friday, 13 January 2006 12:55 (twenty years ago)

Kennedy's (dead ones, at least) and Jackie O.
Anton LaVey

― Poop Ship Destroyer, Friday, 13 January 2006 12:56 (twenty years ago)

Anton LaVey was a circus organist.

― Sith Vidious, Friday, 13 January 2006 20:44 (twenty years ago)

I so wish I could say Bob Mackie.

― Joseph McCombs (Joseph McCombs), Saturday, 14 January 2006 09:27 (twenty years ago)

They're not really people but I think you could probably include drugs here too.

― Tokyo Ghost Stories (Tokyo Ghost Stories), Saturday, 14 January 2006 17:40 (twenty years ago)

joel gion

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 14 January 2006 17:44 (twenty years ago)

Sam Philips was a producer!

― Fritz Wollner (Fritz), Saturday, 14 January 2006 17:53 (twenty years ago)

Dick Clark and Ed Sullivan

Don Cornelius!

― jhoshea (scoopsnoodle), Saturday, 14 January 2006 20:47 (twenty years ago)

Thomas Alva Edison! And Gugliemo Marconi, Nikolai Tesla, Edwin Armstrong, and David Sarnoff (essentially, inventors and commercializers of radio).

(Also, on a less sublime level, Irving Azoff, who along with David Geffen, see above, basically structured the economics of the music industry 1970-2000.)

And has anyone said Bill Graham yet?

And Peter Fonda and Robert Stigwood, whom I will credit with vastly expanding the use of popular music in movies and essentially creating the soundtrack compilation.

And a bunch of label owners -- Robert(?) and Leonard Chess, Jac Holzman.

Timothy Leary.

― Vornado, Saturday, 14 January 2006 21:09 (twenty years ago)

You know, lots of people being listed here were producers (including Leonard and Phil Chess).

Anyway, Metal Mike Saunders - who, yes, is a musician as well as a critic, but his biggest impact on rock was to be the first person to use "heavy metal" as a genre title (fortuitously, in the same issue of Creem (May 1971) in which Dave Marsh first used the term "punk rock").

Dave Marsh.

― Frank Kogan (Frank Kogan), Saturday, 14 January 2006 21:53 (twenty years ago)

Uwe Nettlebeck

― Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Saturday, 14 January 2006 21:57 (twenty years ago)

Peter Goldmark -- invented the long-playing LP record. as a corporate employee of CBS he never made a dime of royalties.

Leon Theremin -- invented the theramin (proto-synthesizer). returned to his native USSR in the 30s and wound up in the gulag.

William Burroughs -- coined the terms "heavy metal" & "Steely Dan"

Mike Nesmith -- apart from the Monkees & his country-rock albums he pioneered rock video, including a failed pitch to NBC for a video-clip program in the late 70s that morphed into the idea for MTV.

― m coleman (lovebug starski), Saturday, 14 January 2006 22:20 (twenty years ago)

Moses Asch (Folkways!)
Ayn Rand (infl. on Rush)
Tolkein (infl. on the '70s)
Che Guevara (infl. on t-shirts)

― Michael J McGonigal (mike mcgonigal), Saturday, 14 January 2006 22:59 (twenty years ago)

Simon Cowell

― National Roffle Association (Paul in Santa Cruz), Saturday, 14 January 2006 23:30 (twenty years ago)

Patty Hearst.

The folks who let Dylan stay in their apartment when he came to NYC (see recent autobio).

― sleeve (sleeve), Saturday, 14 January 2006 23:58 (twenty years ago)

Ghoulardi

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Sunday, 15 January 2006 01:23 (twenty years ago)

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