Rock n’ Roll legends Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger have been engaged in a friendly argument recently about which one of their classic rock bands, The Beatles or The Rolling Stones, was better.
Hi, hello reader. Classic rock lover Taylor Sakellis here to give you a bébé rock history lesson.
Much of the music and pop culture in the 1960’s was influenced by the “British Invasion.”
Rock n’ roll bands from the UK were coming to America and making it big .
There was The Who, The Animals, The Zombies, The Kinks and The Yardbirds. There was Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Hollies and Herman’s Hermits.
But as we know now, not all British Invasion bands were made the same.
The superior British Invasion groups that stood the test of time are, of course, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
They’re the toppermost of the poppermost, if you will.
Recently, Paul McCartney was on Howard Stern’s podcast where Stern agreed with McCartney that the Beatles were the superior rock group.
“[The Stones] are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues. We had a little more influences,” McCartney said .
“There’s a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.”
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Now, Mick Jagger is responding in an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music.
“That’s so funny. He’s a sweetheart. There’s obviously no competition,” Jagger laughed .
However, Jagger believes the main difference in the bands lies in what they did, or didn’t do, after 1969.
“The big difference, though, is and sort of slightly seriously, is that The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour, Madison Square Garden with a decent sound system. They broke up before that business started, the touring business for real,” he explained.
He continued: “So that business started in 1969 and the Beatles never experienced that. They did a great gig, and I was there, at Shea stadium. They did that stadium gig. But the Stones went on, we started doing stadium gigs in the ’70s and [are] still doing them now. That’s the real big difference between these two bands.”
“One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.”