“One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist”
Back in 2020, Mick Jagger responded to Paul McCartney’s claim that ‘The Beatles were better than The Rolling Stones.’ Paul made the comments in an interview with Howard Stern in April 2020. Paul commented,
“[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. There’s a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.“
Their rivalry goes back to the 60s when they were just starting out in the music world. Mick Jagger had a chance to talk about it on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show. It was while promoting the Rolling Stones single, ‘Living in a Ghost Town’. When asked about Paul’s comment, Jagger laughed and responded,
“That’s so funny, He’s a sweetheart. There’s obviously no competition.”
He then, elaborated on the differences between the two bands. “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.”
“We started doing stadium gigs in the Seventies 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.”
During the interview, he also didn’t address Paul’s claim that the Stones copied Sgt. Pepper when the Rolling Stones released ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request. Paul had commented, “We started to notice that whatever we did, the Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter. We went to America and we had huge success. Then the Stones went to America. We did Sgt. Pepper, the Stones did a psychedelic album. There’s a lot of that.”
The Beatles split and released their final album ‘Let It Be’ in 1970. It was after they recorded 12 studio albums together starting in 1963, with ‘Please Please Me’. Both The Rolling Stones and The Beatles were prolific artists. Without a doubt without them, we could have been way behind on the music than where we are right now.
Rolling Stone’s single, ‘Living in a Ghost Town’ is also available on major music platforms.
