by Lindsay Huge
Note: The Beatles vs. Stones Show - A Musical Shoot Out performs at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, CA on Dec. 9.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Beatles-vs-Rolling-Stones/207085546009654
My continued attention to apples-and-oranges comparisons/contrasts drew me to revisit this most essential rock music question: Beatles or Stones? On one level, senseless to compare or to certainly rank. On another, it's fun and revealing. Considering 'Beatles vs. Stones' takes us to the core of the 20th century rock music canon. As a middlebrow, I abide the canon. Still for me, the preference is not even close. Left with these two choices, I'm all for the Stones.
But recently I saw that local rock music critics Kot and Derogatis wrote an entire book on the debate, published in 2010. The conversation can't be put to rest, and now there is a published guide.
So I thought it worthwhile to share some angles and information from "The Beatles vs. The Stones: Sound Opinions on the Great Rock n' Roll Rivalry."
K & D both begin by saying, while admiring the Beatles of course, they too both prefer The Stones. As to who was cooler in their Sixties comparative heyday, they agree that there is no contest: The Stones. However, as to which band had more far-ranging influence, the question is less settled.
The Stones, of course, had greater influence on the punk movement which succeeded their heyday, Keith Richards as The Godfather of punk and all that. (It took 20 more years for Neil Young to gain Godfather status w/ Grunge, which might be seen, in retrospect, as punk, part 2, merely more marketed...)
As to marketing, the authors point out that it is easy to assume that, at their beginnings in the early 60s, The Beatles were the more carefully marketed band. And while the Stones consciously positioned themselves as sneering bad-boys from the start, the individual Beatles actually had rougher upbringings. Mick Jagger was from a middle-class London family, and Brian Jones was even better off, a grammar-school boy from the London provinces, while The Beatles were lower-class kids from the working-class environs of Liverpool. And remember that the Beatles learned their chops at underworld clubs in Hamburg. The early Beatles had as much leering attitude as the Stones. Brian Epstein smoothed this out of the Beatles, while the Stones manager, Andrew Oldham, ten years younger, pushed the Stones to be bad boys. They were aggressively packaged from the start. D & K note that Malcolm McLaren, the Sex Pistols manager, had little on Epstein and Oldham.
Oldham was more a post-war contemporary of his band, while Epstein was like an uncle to the Beatles, he managed a record store and preferred classical music. Epstein brought the Beatles to George Martin and pushed out Pete Best. Oldham pushed for Charlie Watts (who would become polished and Saville Row-suited much later). Personally, I've always distilled the comparative musical quality of the two band to their drummers. While Ringo Starr may be commonly underrated, Charlie Watts is clearly a superior drummer. And for Rock to rock, you need good drums.
To push buttons and further the rebel image, Brian Jones once wore an SS uniform for a publicity photo. We are aware of the sources and inspirations: while the Beatles covered Fifties American rock stars at the outset, the Stones did the same but also avidly covered Chicago blues, by no means mainstream American music. Still, there is evidence the early Beatles resisted Epstein's marketing push toward wholesome pop/rock (Epstein also realized the Stones were better bad-boys and had that market licked). When Lennon quipped his famous remark at their performance before the Queen in 1963: "The people in the cheap seats clap your hands; the rest of you just rattle your jewelry," he intended to say "fucking jewelry", but was successfully censored by management. While Lennon defined the Beatles' mission early on, Brian Jones led the Stones at the beginning. Jones was a decided blues practitioner when Jagger and Richard first met him, and he'd already fathered a couple kids. It was he who named the Stones after the Muddy Waters song. The Stones realized that going to the south side of Chicago to hear Muddy Waters was just a bit dangerous, and the mission remained and the image fit. Jagger began wearing eye make-up, and intuitively realized that the Stones couldn't top the Beatles by emulating them, so they had to play their opposites.
The early Stones exhibited genuine misfit behavior upon which Oldham capitalized. Jones couldn't keep a day job because he kept stealing stuff and Richards started a lot of brawls in clubs. But more importantly than their images, consider their early sound, and song selection and performance. The Stones went to Chess Records to record the first chance they got upon landing in America in 1964. The session is mythological, but generally, it is reported that the five kids from England won the begrudging respect of the Chicago bluesmen when they played. Chess talent, on a very basic level, was impressed that these kids had devotedly learned their music from so far away. This is long before the Internet, and the scene in Richards' recent biography of meeting Mick Jagger on a subway platform in London, Jagger carrying Chicago blues albums which he had mailed away for, is explosive cultural history. Cite them for aping, call them derivative (which they clearly were), but the Stones evolved from the start as a British blues band, but one with panache, originality and a consistent edge. They played well, rough-edged and with heart and soul.
You could easily laud the Beatles for being the more original band. Tellingly, they gave the Stones their first original single, "I Wanna Be Your Man," written by Lennon & McCartney. Still, we see decidedly more schmaltz in the early Beatles records, Burt Bacharach covers, etc. But don't overlook their early peaks, like Lennon screaming on "Twist & Shout", Rock if ever there was Rock. Meanwhile, Mick Jagger was trying to sing like a black man (look at a great black soul singer covering a Stones song, Otis Redding singing "Satisfaction" in the Monterey Pop film, and you can readily see, as if you needed this evidence, that Jagger's whole career was largely an attempt.
K & D note that the Stones were taking another generation's music and selling it to their peers, and there was a good deal of excitement in the process. They helped a lot of kids discover Bo Diddley, Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf, not to mention the all-influential Chuck Berry. The Beatles, of course, covered the likes of Berry also, and who can forget Lennon's tribute: "As for rock n' roll, you might as just well call it 'Chuck Berry'."
The Beatles were very much a pop group from the outset. The Stones first great hit was "Satisfaction" , in 1965, which melded R & B and blues influences with giant pop hooks and rattled the windows of postwar suburbia. "Satisfaction" was subversive Rock at its best, and the Beatles never presented such an overt agenda. The Stones in the mid-Sixties were still doing covers, but cooler covers, like "Hitch Hike" by Marvin Gaye and "Good Times" by Sam Cooke. The Beatles, even early on, exhibited a broader range, where the Stones knew what they wanted to do and what they did best and focused. And Oldham continued to market their darker image. The famous "Would You Let Your Sister Go Out with a Rolling Stone" was a headline written by him for Melody Maker.
G & K both acknowledge and say the Stones knew and they resented at that time, that the Beatles records by the mid-60s had far superior sound. The Stones had no George Martin or Abbey Road. By the end of 1965, "the scope of the Beatles' sonic invention is blowing the Stones away..." The Stones were more of a singles band until 1966, when they released Aftermath, their first great album beginning to end and the first on which Jagger and Richard wrote all the material. But the Beatles at the same time released Rubber Soul, a nod to the folk movement, again outpacing the Stones in studio innovation. Shortly after that, the Stones relinquished attempts to gain great strides in studio technique and dedicated their efforts to mood and attitude. Rock at its best should be simple, direct and that's where I believe the Stones succeeded beyond the Beatles as a rock band. Kot writes: "The Stones had no patience for [studio manipulations]. Can you imagine Keith Richards massaging backward tape loops for days at a time? The Beatles almost over-compensated for their dissatisfaction with live performance by going nuts in the studio..."
The last time you might compare the two bands playing live is to watch clips of their Ed Sullivan performances in the mid-60s. The Stones show far more rock energy, tension and dangerous sexuality. Sullivan disliked them, but had to book them because of their popularity. Considering the bands on film further, understand that the Beatles' best film was "A Hard Days Night" (a great movie), but the Stones' best movie has to be "Gimme Shelter". Different types of films, no doubt, but in terms of sheer coolness (not to mention eeriness), not much comparison. The Stones trump the boys from Liverpool again.
Comparing the two groups at the end of the Beatles' career, the late sixties, early seventies. At this point, the Rolling Stones, with "Beggars Banquet", "Let it Bleed", "Sticky Fingers" and "Exile on Main Street" achieve the greatest four-album run in rock history (and not included is their superb live release "Get Yer Ya Ya's Out"). Though the Beatles are winding down and breaking up at the time, the Stones, hitting their stride, doing what they do best, leave them in their dust. Despite what's incorrectly called the greatest rock album, "Sgt. Pepper", released around this time, the Stones rock and soar while the Beatles whine and prance in the studio. To me, "Exile on Main St." is about the best rock album of all time, and the Beatles produce nothing anywhere close.
Still, it's always a good debate.
Lindsay
Chicago, 2011
PS A Beatles vs. Stones Musical Shoot Out, featuring renowned tributes Abbey Road and Jumping Jack Flash, will be performed Dec. 9 at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano, CA. www.thecoachhouse.com
