There was no pop music in my house when I was a kid (until I was about 7, and me and my sister started buying records) but I do think that in itself had an effect: because I had to discover everything first hand, I had no real sense of received wisdom about pop. My dad was openly contemptuous of it, in fact. I sometimes wonder if that's the first root of my refusal to be too reverential about "the greats".

not the record division but the less well known electrical and radar division. However, every Friday was 'staff sales' where they were allowed to buy any EMI records for a fraction of the retail price and often much earlier than the formal release date. By the time 1960 came around I had 3 brothers. By the time the HJH were in their pomp ('63,'64) we were a four-piece, all under the age of eight, wielding tennis racket guitars around the reel to reel tape recorder. It was always going to be The Beatles. It just was.

My daughter was born after 23 hours of appalled silence (mine) tempered only by a Coldplay album on continual repeat (the midwife's).
I've done my best ever since to undo the potential damage this may have caused my little girl, but have wondered whether she has a dormant Coldplay obsession. I'M WATCHING HER.

There was plenty of music in our house when I was growing up, but none of it was rock & roll, because as far as the UK was concerned, it hadn't been invented yet.

That's probably why I know all the words to so many of those great jazz standards.

So while I can thank my parents for introducing me to so much wonderful film and show music, they played no part at all in my love of rock music. In fact they hated most of it.

It does give me a chance to post this though, one of Van's strangest and most evocative songs. And I can totally relate to every one of those long-forgotten names on the radio dial he mentions.

... my parents loved Sinatra and Ella - and, despite not wanting to hear them during my adolescence, love them now also. However, we were once driving through France (with them - my parents, not Frank & Ella) and were playing Homogenic by Bjork - when it finished my mum said "if you put that on again I'm walking the rest of the way".

were Scottish Country Dance Music.

I have an abiding aversion to this.

I recently made a CD for my Dad's birthday of current music I was listening to as well as some older classics that I thought he may not have come across.
One of those I put on was The Weight by The Band. I am still not sure why I put it on as my dad has never mentioned them as a band he was into and they aren't really representative of what he normally likes. However something told me to put it on. Within about an hour of him receiving it and listening through the CD I got a call from him more animated and excited than I had ever heard him before (red wine may have been consumed!). It turns out that this song was the track that the DJ always closed with at the night club he used to attend religiously in the late 60s. He never knew who it was by (amazing I know!) and had never heard it in the 40 years since (even more amazing) but he was thrilled to hear it again after all those years.
I like to think that of all the songs I could have picked to put on the CD there was a reason that this was picked. He must have passed something on to me over the years without ever realising it.
Or it could just be that it is a stone cold classic that everyone should like!

but it must be a bit of both.

You cannot help but be influenced by the music of your parents (for good or bad) & this stays with you forever. However, a large part of forming your own identity is in rebelling & discovering music for yourself.

My mum was younger than most & so had a constantly-updated collection of 7" whereas my dad was a brass band musician who loved classical & Queen. 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s & everything in between.

didn't listen to any music as far as I can remember (nor was there a book in the house for that matter - cultural vacuum springs to mind) However, I was baby sat by stewpot and radio fab FM and eventually formed my own tastes. And oddly in later years developed a liking for the kind of Irish rebel songs I heard outside the Kilburn pubs my dad frequented.

...was this - http://www.musicscotland.com/cd/John-Mearns-Best-Of.html. I'm over the worst now, but still have the odd flashback!

To be fair to my dad, this was folk music in an old tradition, which I did come to appreciate in later life. But my formative years were spent listening to this stuff and it wasn't until I got my first transistor radio - c. 1960, that I was able to explore the world of music beyond the bothy ballads of Angus and Aberdeenshire.

I wish you were right because I would love to know why we like what we like (and I assume a lot of record company executives would too!). The only thing I like that my father liked (my mother has never listened to music) is country but I didn't really start to like it until many years after he died and he was more a Jim Reeves man than a Hank Williams fan. The only thing that really stayed with me is the sound of a steel guitar which (in the shape of Hawaiian guitars) my father used to listen too a lot.
My younger brother (who was subjected to a lot of my music due to sgharing a room) has a different taste in music to me and my older sister has never liked "modern" music at all despite being a child of the sixties.

So like some other posters I got my musical taste from a "ground zero" approach and thus anything other than what was available via Radio 1 or TOTP was discovered by recommendations from friends or reading Sounds and Record Mirror from 1979 onwards (expalins my love of NWOBHM!).