The Beatles and the Rolling Stones have known each other since the 1960s and the 'friendship' of its members have long been rumored by the press both in rock music and gossip columnists alike.Sparked by the bands' rivalry perhaps,both the fab four and the bad boys of rock shared a unique relationship with one another.
(photo left:Mick Jagger and John Lennon,1967)
John Lennon as we all know it,is the leader and founding member of the Beatles,it goes back with him forming a skiffle group called Quarry Men named after their school Quarry Bank.On the other hand,the Rolling Stones were often mistaken with Mick Jagger as its leader,with a few online bloggers but not really fans of the band often citing him as such.For the record,the Rolling Stones were founded by its leader Brian Jones,the multi-instrumentalist fellow who later had a feud with both Jagger and Richards which nearly caused the band to break up and resulted instead of him being booted out of the band.
[For my other article featuring Beatles and Rolling Stones friendships click here ]
While George Harrison and Brian Jones share an awesome brotherly friendship,I guess one can compare John Lennon and Mick Jagger's friendship to that of Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono.Paul had always cited Yoko as a not so good friend."We're friends-sort of" says Paul on one of his interviews.One can pinpoint the rivalry between the two groups combined with the rumors that endlessly kept on spreading which made a little pressure to the most prominent bands in the universe.
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| John Lennon and Mick Jagger at the Rolling Stones' Rock N' Roll Circus,1968 |
An angry John Lennon can be heard while being interviewed by Jann Wenner-the founder of Rolling Stone magazine in 1971.It was only a year after the Beatles had broken up,the hurt was still fresh and Lennon just couldn't stop swearin' as he spit all the poison out against his former bandmates.And as a reply to Mick Jagger's declining remarks about the Beatles,he managed to burst out what he has been bottling up for ages.
The following was taken from Jann Wenner's interview of John Lennon,Rolling Stone magazine,1971 showing the upset former Beatle over Jagger's declining remarks about the Beatles.
What do you think of the Stones today?
I think it's a lot of hype. I like ``Honky Tonk Women,'' but I think Mick's a joke with all that fag dancing; I always did. I enjoy it; I'll probably go and see his films and all like everybody else, but really, I think it's a joke.
Do you see him much now?
No, I never do see him. We saw a bit of each other when Allen [Klein, Beatles' late-period manager] was first coming in - I think Mick got jealous. I was always very respectful of Mick and the Stones, but he said a lot of sort of tarty things about the Beatles, which I am hurt by because, you know, I can knock the Beatles, but don't let Mick Jagger knock them. I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every fuckin' album. Every fuckin' thing we did, Mick does exactly the same - he imitates us. And I would like one of you fuckin' underground people to point it out. You know, Satanic Majesties is Pepper; ``We Love You,'' it's the most fuckin' bullshit, that's ``All You Need Is Love.'' I resent the implication that the Stones are like revolutionaries and that the Beatles weren't. If the Stones were or are, the Beatles really were, too. But they are not in the same class, musicwise or powerwise, never were. I never said anything, I always admired them, because I like their funky music, and I like their style. I like rock & roll and the direction they took after they got over trying to imitate us. He's obviously so upset by how big the Beatles are compared with him, he never got over it. Now he's in his old age, and he is beginning to knock us, you know, and he keeps knocking. I resent it, because even his second fuckin' record, we wrote it for him. Mick said, ``Peace made money.'' We didn't make any money from peace.
It was known that Jagger had called the Beatles "Four headed monsters" even in the early days.Jagger even admitted this when he inducted the band to the Rock N' Roll Hall Of Fame in 1988.Though taken as a joke by other members such as George Harrison and Paul McCartney,with George even joking to Jagger that he was nervous coz he just might said some bad things about them before the ceremonies.
Paul McCartney on the other hand,also mentioned Jagger calling them as such on one of his interviews but just shrugged his shoulders even pointing out that they all wear the same clothes, having the same hairstyle and that they were indeed the four headed monsters.Other quotes made by Jagger which Lennon had mentioned were unpublished and was probably heard personally and by spread of mouth.Well other members of the Stones like Keith Richards for example had also said something against John Lennon and the Beatles on one interview made in 1973.Perhaps he was hurt by John Lennon's comment about the Stones two years earlier,though Richards' sincerity was questioned in that interview with both Beatles and Stones fans alike taking it as a joke coz both bands were indeed friends with one another.And for the fact that we all knew that the early seventies was the time when Richards is in the peak of his drug-ravaged lifestyle.Keith Richards was John Lennon's bass player in a supergroup called The Dirty Mac along with Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell.
Its quite amazing that with these interviews and remarks with one another,one would describe John Lennon and Mick Jagger's relationship as "Frenemies"--a term used to call a friend who is also an enemy.Well,we all do know that the Rolling Stones had their first hit in 1963 with a song called "I Wanna Be Your Man" written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.With the latter's awesome songwriting prowess,one would argue that the Beatles were indeed a lot better than the Stones.John and Paul had been writing songs since their teens while Mick and Keith was already past their first album of blues covers when asked by their manager Andrew Loog Oldham to write new material.To come up with something and make things out of nothing has indeed put the two of them in some kind of a pressure.
With the heavy competition among these bands in the 1960s I guess being intimidated by the Lennon and McCartney songwriting team is common and Mick Jagger is not an exception.I guess what John Lennon had said about Jagger was probably true that Mick indeed got jealous of the Beatles' extreme popularity.
Or perhaps the John Lennon-Mick Jagger headlines in the press was only a publicity stunt between the two of them to further "enhance" their respective band's fame.Who knows?
Comical enough,despite of what John Lennon had said about Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones and of claiming of not seeing him that much.The two were reportedly hanging around together along with Lennon's friends David Bowie and Harry Nilsson in the early up to mid seventies. Mick Jagger even made a few attempts to buy a unit at the Dakota to be as close to John Lennon as possible.But sadly,Yoko Ono blocked the applications made by Jagger,perhaps his much publicized womanizing has made her worry that he could be a further bad influence to her husband.
*-photo by Bob Gruen
(c) Keith Vernon Adagio