Ok, so your musical taste is obviously for more subdued singer-songwriter stuff and The Beatles aren't your jam. But they had released 6 or 7 albums, including Rubber Soul in 1965, by the time Cohen, Nick Drake and Velvet Underground released their first albums in 1967, with Van Zandt releasing his first album a year after that in '68. (I'm ignoring Coltrane, Davis and Simone because they don't belong in a pop/rock conversation)

To Say that your favorite artists, or the producers that they worked with, were not in anyway influenced by what The Beatles were doing is intentionally putting your head in the sand.

Look, I haven't listened to The Beatles with any regularity since I moved out of my parents' house over 20 years ago, but I also am not going to deny their influence on most of the music we listen to today