Meanwhile, Pete Townshend is trying to figure out how he can defend his band’s honor. Using the quarantine era to ignite a feud from a safe distance away, noted purveyors of outstanding rock music Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney (you know, from the Rolling Stones and the Beatles) are using their free time to go to trial and see whose band was the best. First to present his opening statement was McCartney, who, on Howard Stern’s radio show earlier this month, said that the Beatles “were better” than the Stones, owing to the fact they were less blues-driven and “had a little more influences” to work with. “We started to notice that, whatever we did, the Stones did it shortly thereafter,” McCartney added. “We went to America, we had huge success. Well then, the Stones went to America. We did Sgt. Pepper, the Stones did a sort of psychedelic album. But we were great friends. Still are. But the Beatles were better.”
Jagger, fresh from releasing a new virus-adjacent song, arrived for his Apple Music cross-examination on Friday rather unamused. “That’s so funny, he’s a sweetheart,” he said about McCartney, noting that the Stones “is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when the Beatles never even did an arena tour.” Just last year, the Stones embarked on a multi-city stadium tour that was set to be revived this summer before the coronavirus pandemic halted their plans. The Beatles broke up in the late 1960s, and their only stadium gig, at Shea Stadium in 1965, is the stuff of music legend. (Which is rudely not streamable anywhere! Legally, that is.) “That’s the real big difference between these two bands,” Jagger concluded about longevity. “One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.” Well, 50 percent of their members are dead, so …
