To Match the Success of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones “Had to be a Pop Band”

For up-and-coming bands in the 1960s, the band to follow was The Beatles. Early on, The Beatles were strictly a clean-cut pop-rock band with both a very marketable attitude and sound. Contrary to The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, who started as a blues band but knew they had to set aside the genre for a bit if they wanted to come back to it later in their careers. In essence, The Rolling Stones adapted, and fortunately for them, that adaptation led them to return to their roots.

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Some might call the action performed by The Rolling Stones “selling out”. However, do you not like their early music? Furthermore, if momentarily digressing from your preferred beat meant you could return to it later with mitigated risk, would you not do this? Maybe you’re loyal to your convictions, but we totally see where The Stones were coming from.

In the early 1960s, The Beatles had created a very clear lane for male bands, a lane that not only The Rolling Stones followed but also The Kinks, The Animals, The Hollies, and The Yardbirds. While each of these bands certainly was talented, their sound and aesthetic, which loosely connected with The Beatles’, definitely helped them achieve early success.

Mick Jagger Reveals Why The Rolling Stones Had to Make the Switch

When The Beatles were exploding, The Rolling Stones were merely a blues band looking to tap into the game at the same magnitude as their competitors. That being said, they needed to make a transition into a sound that was seemingly more radio-friendly, more commercial, and ultimately, more pop-oriented.

“The Beatles suddenly explode, and there you are going, ‘Oh, yeah, but we’re a blues band!’ The Beatles changed this whole thing,” said Mick Jagger in the BBC documentary My Life As A Rolling Stone. “Keith, he’d play The Beatles all the time [and] it’d drive me absolutely batty! Why he was playing The Beatles wasn’t because he didn’t want to listen to anything else; Keith wanted to write these pop songs. We [were] undeniably the blues band, but we knew we had to be a pop band,” added Mick Jagger.

The Rolling Stones did transition to a more pop-oriented sound, but they never did abandon the genre that set them off on their journey. However, as most of us likely know, The Rolling Stones got to a point where they created whatever kind of music they wanted, and they have been doing so for five decades.

Photo by Fred Bauman, The Press-Enterprise/SCNG