The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones: is rock’s greatest rivalry finally over? | CPT PPP Coverage

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The Beatles also regularly complained that the Stones copied them. Being slightly behind on the career curve meant that the Stones could observe and then mimic The Beatles’ success, went the argument. In a 1970 Rolling Stone interview, a clearly riled John Lennon accused Jagger and the boys of regularly doing what The Beatles had just done. He was particularly scathing about the Stones’ psychedelic 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request, which was released shortly after Sgt Pepper.

“I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every f—— album. Every f—— thing we did, Mick does exactly the same – he imitates us… Satanic Majesties is Pepper,” Lennon said. He added that the Stones were “not in the same class, music-wise or power-wise” as The Beatles. In the Let it Be track Dig A Pony, Lennon appears to reference this. “I roll a stoney / Well, you can imitate everyone you know,” he sang. It’s also worth noting that arguably the two best Stones albums – Sticky Fingers in 1971 and Exile on Main St. the following year – were actually released after The Beatles broke up, so they weren’t exact contemporaries after all.

For his part, Jagger once complained that The Beatles were too willing to give their fans a running commentary on their career. When the band were experiencing money problems in their Apple business in 1969, Jagger told Village Voice journalist Howard Smith that they over-shared. “They publicise everything they do,” Jagger said. “They always have – that’s their big hang-up.” The Stones singer also lambasted his rivals for the nastiness that characterised their break-up. Asked if the Stones would ever split, Jagger said, “Nah. But if we did, we wouldn’t be so bitchy about it.”

So the battle-lines between The Beatles and the Stones appear to be pretty well-drawn. But despite all this, there is a similar mountain of evidence that points to the bands being fellow travellers and friends. George Harrison is said to have recommended the Stones to Decca (the record label that famously turned down The Beatles in 1962). Further, Lennon and McCartney wrote the Stones’ second single, I Wanna Be Your Man. It was to be the Stones’ first Top 20 hit (although Lennon, pointedly, later said that the pair knocked the song out in minutes, adding, “Well, we weren’t gonna give them anything great, right?”).