“Bands like the Ramones and the Smiths may not have been much for ‘chart hits’ but that should never be the barometer for ‘quality’ or mass appeal.”
It has something to do with mass appeal, in that sometimes there’s a reason music appeals only to a limited audience. That wouldn’t affect, quality, no. Part of the point of making rock music is to appeal to a mass audience, but not the whole. If your aim is to appeal to nerds crying into their pillows or coked-out sweaty dancers in dank clubs, well, the proof of your pudding is in how those limited audiences eat it.
This is not to say, of course, that all music that fails to gain popularity failed on its merits. It very well could be popular, given a chance, as has been proved countless times by surpise comebacks. Like I said, by now the Ramones are rather well known and still get plenty of airplay, even if they weren’t tearing up the charts in the 70s.
“Lightnin’ Hopkins never charted either but the majority of your British rockers...Think that maybe the members of Pearl Jam, U2, REM, and Red Hot Chili Peppers owned Ramones records and saw them in concert when they were growing up?”
That’s another thing, in addition to them influencing nerdy rock critics and movie directors and producers. The relatively obscure band Velvet Underground released something that is now widely known now as “the album that launched a thousand bands.” I might think this is somewhat misguided, as surely Elvis, the Beatles and others influenced many, many more musicians than Velvet Underground. But there’s something to be said for the fact that so many people cite them as an inspiration, compared to how well they were known to the general public.
The original poster’s point was something slightly different, though. It wasn’t that the Ramones and the Smiths weren’t influential, people seem to pretend they were more popular than they actually were. And this is undeniable, history does get rewritten as we tend to forget the bigness of disco in emphasizing the influence of punk in the 70s, just as we’ve no doubt already started downplaying the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys in my teenage years in favor of whoever’s more palatable to the hipsters.
Public support must be fickle. Or malleable by the media that denies equal access to smaller labels and acts until such time that they have a successful multi-album marketing deal inked.
Elvis wasn’t the first rocker and I doubt many outside of Michael Bolton took inspiration to become singers from his decade of movie musical soundtracks.
The Beatles weren’t the first of their sort either and by the time they turned their backs on rock and roll at the end of the band’s recording career many saw Sgt. Pepper as a day rock and roll died to be replaced by “concept albums” and overproduced drama.