GIVE TIL IT HURTS

The continued existence of this site depends entirely on contributions from its readers. If you're able to, please consider donating or subscribing to CF. Thanks!


  

THANKS!

The eternal debate

You geezers like me will remember the forever-burning question of Beatles or Stones; you young ‘uns, if any, won’t. But Mick Jagger has just settled it for all of us. First, though, we’ll let Sir Paul (harrumph) get what licks he can in.

Paul McCartney, 77, says it’s clearly The Beatles.

In an interview with Howard Stern on his Sirius-XM radio show last week, McCartney said “I love the Stones but The Beatles were better.”

“Their stuff is rooted in the blues, whereas we had a lot more influences. Keith [Richards] once said to me, ‘You were lucky man. You had four singers in your band. We got one.’”

McCartney, who sang and played bass and piano for the group, and wrote dozens of the group’s songs, said The Stones sometimes copied The Beatles. “We started to notice that whatever we did the Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter,” he said.

“We went to America and had huge success, then the Stones went to America,” he said. “We did Sergeant Pepper and the Stones did a psychedelic album. There was a lot of that.”

Well, okay then. Now do understand, I loved the early Beatles stuff, and I still do. I can just remember my dad getting me out of bed to watch their first Ed Sullivan appearance when I was all of four years old, and I was enthralled. In fact, it was only when the Beatles went off the pop rails into the mondo-weirdo psychedelic ditch that they lost me. But let’s see what Jagger has to say.

Appearing on  Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show on Friday, Jagger said there was “obviously no competition” between the two, adding about McCartney, “He is a sweetheart. I’m a politician.”

“The big difference, though, is that The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour,” Jagger said. “They broke up before the touring business started for real… They did that [Shea] stadium gig [in 1965]. But the Stones went on.”

“We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now,” Jagger said. “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.”

Yeah, there’s that. Actually, I never have cared all that much for the Stones, although it’s basically less a question of who’s the better band than it is of whether you prefer rock to pop. Nonetheless, I do love me some Keef. And Charlie Watts still ranks as one of the greatest rock & roll drummers ever.

I may have mentioned before here that my beloved mother-in-law in NYC insisted on flying me and my late wife up to see the Stones on the Meadowlands date of their 2006 tour; neither Christiana nor I were very enthusiastic about the proposition, sharing an opinion of the Stones which could be summed up most pithily as: meh. But Xenia, who had seen the Stones their very first time in the States, stood firm. And BOY, was I glad she did. The show featured the Stones with the Uptown Horns, Chuck Leavell, and a whole slew of other top-flight guest artists as well. I admit it was truly one of the best shows I ever saw in my entire life.

Jagger in particular was a thing of wonder to behold. He ran—not walked or jogged, literally RAN—from one end of the huge stage to the other and back again…for more than two friggin’ hours. Nonstop. While, umm, “singing.” As I told the ladies, I couldn’t have done that shit when I was thirty, and he would have been, what, in his late 60s at the time? Incredible.

But longevity ain’t the only weight on the Stones’ side of the scale. Hate to get so personal and all, but with rock and roll royalty, this is the sort of thing that matters. This is who Paul married:

linda-louise-mccartney-2.jpg

Just to be downright cruel about it, certain ungentlemanly scoundrels once referred to her as “the dog with Wings.” Ahem.

Now have yourself a gander at the one-time Mrs Mick:


JerryHall.jpg


Uhh, YEAH.

All things considered, though, the Beatles/Stones debate is made forever moot for me, nothing more than small potatoes, by a whole ‘nother, far more weighty consideration. See, even the Beatles and the Stones at one time or another hied themselves to Graceland to genuflect in justified awe and pay due obeisance to the once and forever King. And friends, there can only ever be just one.



Argument settled, sez I.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

1 thought on “The eternal debate

  1. There is the point that The Stones did a Beatles cover and the Beatles never did a Stones cover.
    George married Patti Boyd.
    McCartney continues to tour playing Beatles and Solo tunes. Plus I think he was the last of any of them to hit the Top 40.
    I love Elvis though it can’t be compared. Elvis was a solo artist. The Stones never were for any of them, aside from a hit side project or two.
    Aside from Paul the Beatles solo stuff was hit or miss and basically done by 1975.
    Then there’s Chuck Berry. Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Performer and inspiration to about as many people as Elvis.
    And both the Beatles and the Stones and the Beach Boys and so many more worshipped him.
    I choose Chuck Berry.

Comments are closed.

Latest Posts

Latest Comments

CF Archives

Categories

Comments policy

NOTE: In order to comment, you must be registered and approved as a CF user. Since so many user-registrations are attempted by spam-bots for their own nefarious purposes, YOUR REGISTRATION MAY BE ERRONEOUSLY DENIED.

If you are in fact a legit hooman bean desirous of registering yourself a CF user name so as to be able to comment only to find yourself caught up as collateral damage in one of my irregularly (un)scheduled sweeps for hinky registration attempts, please shoot me a kite at the email addy over in the right sidebar and let me know so’s I can get ya fixed up manually.

ALSO NOTE: You MUST use a valid, legit email address in order to successfully register, the new anti-spam software I installed last night requires it. My thanks to Barry for all his help sorting this mess out last night.

Comments appear entirely at the whim of the guy who pays the bills for this site and may be deleted, ridiculed, maliciously edited for purposes of mockery, or otherwise pissed over as he in his capricious fancy sees fit. The CF comments section is pretty free-form and rough and tumble; tolerance level for rowdiness and misbehavior is fairly high here, but is NOT without limit.

Management is under no obligation whatever to allow the comments section to be taken over and ruined by trolls, Leftists, and/or other oxygen thieves, and will take any measures deemed necessary to prevent such. Conduct yourself with the merest modicum of decorum, courtesy, and respect and you'll be fine. Pick pointless squabbles with other commenters, fling provocative personal insults, issue threats, or annoy the host (me) and...you won't.

Should you find yourself sanctioned after running afoul of the CF comments policy as stated and feel you have been wronged, please download and complete the Butthurt Report form below in quadruplicate; retain one copy for your personal records and send the others to the email address posted in the right sidebar.

Please refrain from whining, sniveling, and/or bursting into tears and waving your chubby fists around in frustrated rage, lest you suffer an aneurysm or stroke unnecessarily. Your completed form will be reviewed and your complaint addressed whenever management feels like getting around to it. Thank you.

Ye Aulde CF Blogrolle–now with RSS feeds! (where available)

"Mike Hendrix is, without a doubt, the greatest one-legged blogger in the world." ‐Henry Chinaski

Subscribe to CF!

Support options

Shameless begging

If you enjoy the site, please consider donating:

Become a CF member!

Correspondence

Email addy: mike-at-this-url dot etc
All e-mails assumed to be legitimate fodder for publication, scorn, ridicule, or other public mockery unless specified as private by the sender

Allied territory

Alternatives to shitlib social media: A few people worth following on Gab:

Fuck you

Kill one for mommy today! Click to embiggen

Notable Quotes

"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards."
Claire Wolfe, 101 Things to Do 'Til the Revolution

Claire's Cabal—The Freedom Forums

FREEDOM!!!

"There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters."
Daniel Webster

“When I was young I was depressed all the time. But suicide no longer seemed a possibility in my life. At my age there was very little left to kill.”
Charles Bukowski

“A slave is one who waits for someone to come and free him.”
Ezra Pound

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”
Frank Zappa

“The right of a nation to kill a tyrant in case of necessity can no more be doubted than to hang a robber, or kill a flea.”
John Adams

"A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves."
Bertrand de Jouvenel

"It is terrible to contemplate how few politicians are hanged."
GK Chesterton

"I predict that the Bush administration will be seen by freedom-wishing Americans a generation or two hence as the hinge on the cell door locking up our freedom. When my children are my age, they will not be free in any recognizably traditional American meaning of the word. I’d tell them to emigrate, but there’s nowhere left to go. I am left with nauseating near-conviction that I am a member of the last generation in the history of the world that is minimally truly free."
Donald Surber

"The only way to live free is to live unobserved."
Etienne de la Boiete

"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid."
Dwight D. Eisenhower

"To put it simply, the Left is the stupid and the insane, led by the evil. You can’t persuade the stupid or the insane and you had damn well better fight the evil."
Skeptic

"There is no better way to stamp your power on people than through the dead hand of bureaucracy. You cannot reason with paperwork."
David Black, from Turn Left For Gibraltar

"If the laws of God and men, are therefore of no effect, when the magistracy is left at liberty to break them; and if the lusts of those who are too strong for the tribunals of justice, cannot be otherwise restrained than by sedition, tumults and war, those seditions, tumults and wars, are justified by the laws of God and man."
John Adams

"The limits of tyranny are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress."
Frederick Douglass

"Give me the media and I will make of any nation a herd of swine."
Joseph Goebbels

“I hope we once again have reminded people that man is not free unless government is limited. There’s a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts.”
Ronald Reagan

"Ain't no misunderstanding this war. They want to rule us and aim to do it. We aim not to allow it. All there is to it."
NC Reed, from Parno's Peril

"I just want a government that fits in the box it originally came in."
Bill Whittle

Best of the best

Finest hosting service

Image swiped from The Last Refuge

2016 Fabulous 50 Blog Awards

RSS feed

RSS - entries - Entries
RSS - entries - Comments

Boycott the New York Times -- Read the Real News at Larwyn's Linx

Copyright © 2024