For years, fans of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles thought the “rivalry” that was often explored in pulpy magazine articles was (more or less) fabricated. However, according to Paul McCartney, it looks like that beef was actually real.
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“I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what The Stones are,” McCartney said in an interview with The New Yorker from 2021. “I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”
A week after McCartney made his comments, Mick Jagger took to the stage at a Rolling Stones show as said that McCartney should be “joining us in a blues cover.” There’s your proof, folks. The rivalry was real, even though it was likely pretty tame and playful.
So, why was the rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones a good thing? In my opinion, it resulted in some really killer music.
A Legendary Rivalry That Yielded Some Killer Rock Tunes
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones first met back in 1963 and even partied together for a bit. The Stones would then sign a big record deal with Decca, after being recommended to do so by none other than George Harrison.
Without that recommendation, who knows what would have come of The Stones? From then on, despite getting their big break partly because of The Beatles, The Rolling Stones would continue to battle it out with the Fab Four on the charts.
Still, things were friendly. The Beatles offered “I Wanna Be Your Man” to The Stones. It ended up being a big hit for them. But it wasn’t entirely generosity that led the Fab Four to throw The Stones a bone. John Lennon would later make it seem like the song wasn’t good enough for The Beatles.
“It was a throwaway,” said Lennon. “Ringo sang it for us, and The Stones did their version. It shows how much importance we put on them. We weren’t going to give them anything great, right?”
Though, from there, the two bands would collaborate often. Two of the Fab Four sang on “Sing This All Together” and “We Love You” from Their Satanic Majesties Request, which boasts an album cover created by the same photographer who did Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Lennon would later say that The Stones ripped them off with that album.
Things Got a Bit Messy in the 1970s
Then, there’s “Dig A Pony”. Many believe that this song contains a direct dig at The Rolling Stones with the lyric “I roll a stoney / Well, you can imitate everyone you know.”
Some excellent music came out of that rivalry. Things would get more heated after The Beatles’ breakup, from Lennon going off on The Stones in a 1970 interview to Mick Jagger saying that “when The Beatles broke up I couldn’t give a sh*t.” But for a few glorious years in the 1960s, that rivalry produced some amazing tunes.
Photo by Dave Benett/Getty Images
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