Pete Townsend has stated in interviews that if it were not for Link Wray's power chords in "Rumble", he never would have picked up a guitar.
That's a pretty strong influence, IMO. "Up until the point before they released their first single, The Who did not really have any original material to show for. Roger Daltrey, in an interview with Q Magazine, explains why: “We already knew Pete could write songs, but it never seemed a necessity in those days to have your own stuff because there was this wealth of untapped music that we could get hold of from America. But then bands like the Kinks started to make it, and they were probably the biggest influence on us – they were a huge influence on Pete, and he wrote ‘I Can’t Explain’, not as a direct copy, but certainly, it’s very derivative of Kinks music.”"
The Story Behind The Song: How The Who created ‘I Can’t Explain’