I always thought there was a certain degree of mystery about them. Sure, it is easy to google something now. But when you had to buy some monthly publication, and hopefully they covered what you were interested in. Some basic shit went under the radar.
For me, I always felt they were far more cerebral than the average rock band. There was complexity to the arrangements that most top 40 lacked at the time. Not Yes or ELP complexity. Just not the simplicity of say, the Eagles.
I’ll also be the first to admit I never knew they used Skunk, and Larry (Mr. 335) Carlton. That is a pretty diverse pair of guitarists who approach the instrument from radically different points of view.
Then you have their attention to detail in production of the albums themselves. If you were an audiophile back in the day few albums moved the needle like the quality of sound you got from Aja. The production of that album made average stereos sound really good. Until then many high end stereo stores used shit like Gino Vinnelli’s People Gotta Move. Simply because it was perfect to audition something like JBL’s Paragon. Which ran about $10,000 in the mid 70’s.