For me, there was a kind of innocence to Fantasy gaming in the 70s and early 80s primarily because there was more imaginative space then there were inspirational sources to fill it with. Today, people are bombarded with fantasy stuff from video games to Game of Thrones so that modern kids coming into the hobby are already jaded and have a head full of assumptions about what fantasy is or could be. "Back in the day," we had to seek it out, and it was never enough.
I grew up on a farm in rural Colorado. We had 3 channels of TV and a tiny community library. The D&D rules really didn't make much sense 'cause they were horribly written and organized, but we understood that the rules were there to serve us, and not the other way around. So we used what we liked, ignored what we didn't, and made shit up on the fly. We came to the game with an open mind, mostly because there was so little to fill it with. There was no one to tell you how to play or what the the limits or possibilities of your imagination might be. We created worlds, characters, monsters, treasures, dungeons, rules, and stories. We blended Roleplaying with wargaming. We stole ideas from anywhere, and we had to make shit up to fill in the gaps.
Sometimes I wax nostalgic about it, but you can't go backwards. You can't unfill your mind. You can't remove the influences. I don't know if this can make sense to a young guy like you or not, but knowledge has a way of burdening creativity and the joy of discovery is largely the privilege of innocence and inexperience. I think BV kind of has the right of it, the best you can do get back to that joy is to just be there in the moment, when you play, suspending judgement and disbelief.
As for influences, I have to agree with Tenbones - Moorcock was huge - way bigger than Tolkien. It was mind blowing. Looking back at it, the writing seems amateurish, but at the time it was like a mind-altering acid trip. I read Howard, but didn't learn to appreciate him until I was bit older.
Harryhousen was a massive influence on me, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad, Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, Jason and the Argonauts. Boorman's Excalibur was huge. Some Saturday morning cartoons like the Herculoids and Thundar loom large as well.
Music had a huge influence on my gaming, especially Rush, Iron Maiden, and Black Sabbath. Caress of Steel is still the sound of D&D to my ears. In my circles, everyone who played RPGs listened to these bands, and most of us played guitar or bass and tried to emulate them.
My biggest influence though was history - I devoured books on medieval and ancient history and mythology. It was the one type of source that seemed limitless, and stories of Alexander, or maps of Charlemagne's empire inspired the imagination as much as any fantasy novel.