Are you a Beatles or a Stones person? It’s no joke- author Steven Hyden wrote a book, Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me – What Pop Music Rivalries Reveal About the Meaning of Life, and discusses how such preferences say a lot about us as people and our world views. The stereotypes peg the Beatles as more “pop”, as somehow “safer”, perhaps more “intellectual”, while the Stones were seen as the “rockers”, “bad boys” and more “visceral”- an oversimplification, of course. The two bands, themselves, were never really rivals; indeed, Lennon – McCartney gave their friends, the Rolling Stones, their second song, “I Wanna Be Your Man”, to record.

         The original, bluesy Rolling Stones were Mick Jagger singing lead; Keith Richard playing lead and rhythm guitar (the two are also the main songwriters); Brian Jones, their early leader, was a multi-instrumentalist who drowned in his swimming pool in 1969, a month after he was dismissed by his bandmates; Bill Wyman played bass ’til leaving in 1993; and Charlie Watts was their steady drummer ’til his death in 2021. Mick Taylor, guitarist, played with the band from ’69 to ’74, during some of their glory years; while Ronnie Wood has been with them since 1975.  

         When “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” broke through as the biggest international hit of 1965, the Rolling Stones had arrived as a force, and they’ve never really gone away. Most fans and critics agree that the Rolling Stones, while an impressive live act to this very day, made their most interesting, groundbreaking, even revolutionary music between 1965 and 1972. The albums from this era are iconic — Beggar’s Banquet; Let It Bleed; Sticky Fingers; Exile on Main Street. Besides “Satisfaction”, this is the era of “Paint It Black” with its ominous sitar; the hard rocking “Jumpin’ Jack Flash”;  “Sympathy for the Devil”, with its sly plea for recognition in a world full of horrors; “Street Fighting Man”, with a nod to political action; “Wild Horses”, a great love ballad; and the incomparable “Gimme Shelter”, called by Jagger an “end-of-the-world song.” Certainly, there’d be more good music and perhaps nobody has had as many giant tours, but the question remains- Beatles or Stones?

         -Steve Williams (7/13/23) – Greatest Recording Artists Blog Post #27