Mick Jagger wanted to keep the connection going since The Beatles had previously written a song for The Rolling Stones.
The majority of the music business started attempting to imitate The Beatles in one form or another when they became popular.
Numerous bands sought John Lennon and Paul McCartney over the years to collaborate on their chart-topping tunes since they were the principal composers of the Fab Four.
Lennon, however, observed that The Rolling Stones, their musical competitors, were making the most effort to keep up with them.
Finally, he accused the band’s lead singer, Mick Jagger, of copying their style.
Lennon stated to Rolling Stone Magazine, “I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every f****ng album. Every f****ng thing we did, Mick does exactly the same – he imitates us.”
Not just the Imagine vocalist in The Beatles was aware of the perceived connections between the two bands.
Once, George Harrison said: “Mick Jagger was also there. He was always lurking around in the background, trying to find out what was happening. Mick never wanted to miss out on what the Fabs were doing.”
It makes sense that Jagger would want to keep an eye on The Beatles, particularly after they had given The Rolling Stones a fresh path to fame.
Jagger got to know the Fab Four in the early 1960s, and finally, they gave him a big song, I Wanna Be Your Man. Jagger reflected, “We knew [the Beatles] by then. And we were rehearsing and Andrew brought Paul and John down to the rehearsal. They said they had this tune, they were really hustlers then. I mean, the way they used to hustle tunes was great.”
John Lennon and Paul McCartney informed the lead singer, “Hey Mick, we’ve got this great song. So they played it and we thought it sounded pretty commercial, which is what we were looking for, so we did it like Elmore James or something.”
He added, “I haven’t heard it for ages but it must be pretty freaky ’cause nobody really produced it. It was completely crackers, but it was a hit and sounded great onstage.”
I Wanna Be Your Man became their biggest charting song ever when it peaked at number 12 on the UK singles charts.
