Beatles vs. Stones

by John McMillian

Overview

A lively examination of the most legendary (and least understood) rivalry in the annals of rock ’n’ roll: “Beatles vs. Stones is one of the best rock biographies I have seen this year…If you thought you knew everything there was to know about these two groups, think again” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer).

In the 1960s an epic battle was waged between the two biggest bands in the world—the lovable Beatles and the bad-boy Rolling Stones. Both groups liked to maintain that they weren’t really “rivals”—that was just a media myth, they politely said—and yet they plainly competed for commercial success and aesthetic credibility. On both sides of the Atlantic, fans often aligned themselves with one group or the other. In Beatles vs. Stones, John McMillian gets to the truth behind the ultimate rock and roll debate.

Painting an eye-opening portrait of a generation dragged into an ideological battle between Flower Power and New Left militance, McMillian reveals how the Beatles-Stones rivalry was created by music managers intent on engineering a moneymaking empire. He explores how the Beatles were marketed as cute and amiable, when in fact they came from hardscrabble backgrounds in Liverpool. By contrast, the Stones were cast as an edgy, dangerous group, even though they mostly hailed from the chic London suburbs. For many years, writers and historians have associated the Beatles with the gauzy idealism of the “good” sixties, placing the Stones as representatives of the dangerous and nihilistic “bad” sixties. Beatles vs. Stones is “balanced, informed, yet still passionate…Even the most gnarled and intransigent veterans of the debate will emerge enlightened by this book….McMillian negotiates these thickets with insight, care, and a willingness to unsettle clichés” (The New York Times Book Review).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439159705
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	11/11/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,064,603
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

John McMillian is assistant professor of history at Georgia State University and author of the critically acclaimed Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America. His writing has appeared in scholarly journals, magazines, and major newspapers. He lives in Atlanta, Georgia.

Read an Excerpt

Beatles vs. Stones

In the summer of 1968, Mick Jagger attended a birthday party in his honor at a hip, new Moroccan-style bar called the Vesuvio Club—“one of the best clubs London has ever seen,” remembered Tony Sanchez, one of its proprietors. Under black lights and beautiful tapestries, some of London’s trendiest models, artists, and pop singers lounged around on huge cushions and took pulls from Turkish hookahs, while a decorated helium-filled dirigible floated aimlessly around the room. As a special treat, Mick brought along an advance pressing of the Stones’ forthcoming album, Beggars Banquet, and when it played over the club’s speakers, people flooded the dance floor. Just as the crowd was “leaping around” and celebrating the record—which would soon win accolades as the best Stones album to date—Paul McCartney strolled in and passed Sanchez a copy of the Beatles’ forthcoming single, “Hey Jude” / “Revolution,” which had never before been heard by anyone outside of the group’s charmed inner circle. As Sanchez remembered, the “slow thundering buildup of ‘Hey Jude’ shook the club,” and the crowd demanded that the seven-minute song be played again and again. Finally, the club’s disc jockey played the next song, and everyone heard “John Lennon’s nasal voice pumping out ‘Revolution.’ ” “When it was over,” Sanchez said, “Mick looked peeved. The Beatles had upstaged him.”

“It was a wicked piece of promotional one-upsmanship,” remembered Tony Barrow, the Beatles’ press officer. By that time, the mostly good-natured rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones had been going on for about four years. Although the Beatles were more commercially successful than the Stones, throughout the 1960s the two groups nevertheless competed for record sales, cultural influence, and aesthetic credibility. Teens on both sides of the Atlantic defined themselves by whether they preferred the Beatles or the Stones. “If you truly loved pop music in the 1960s . . . there was no ducking the choice and no cop-out third option,” one writer remarked. “You could dance with them both, but there could never be any doubt about which one you’d take home.”

Initially the rivalry was strongest in England. The Beatles began inspiring mass adulation among young teenage girls in the spring of 1963, but it soon became apparent that the group’s invigorating music and seductive charm worked on adults as well. The Fab Four couldn’t quite win over everyone—they were too unusual for that—but conventional wisdom held that the Beatles were a wonderful tonic to a society that was finally ready to shed the last vestiges of Victorian Era restraint. Their effect on British popular culture was said to be salutary, pitch-perfect, and perfectly timed.

The Rolling Stones provoked a different reaction. Pale and unkempt, they did not bother with stage uniforms, and they were not often polite. Instead of laboring to win the affection of the broader public, they feigned indifference to mainstream opinion. Musically, they favored American electric blues—an obscure genre in England that was championed by adolescent males as well as females, and that was most suitably performed in dark ’n’ sweaty, smoke-filled rooms. Those who were faint of heart, or who enjoyed a prim sense of propriety, knew to stay away from the Stones. Adults regarded them as a menace.

That is one of the reasons that the debate over which band was better, the Beatles or the Stones, was freighted with such deep significance. To say that you were a Beatles fan was to imply that (just like the Fab Four) you were well adjusted, amiable, and polite. You were not a prig, necessarily, but nor were you the type to challenge social conventions. For the most part, you conformed. You agreed. You complied. When you looked upon the world that you were bound to inherit, you were pleased.

To align with the Rolling Stones was to convey the opposite message. It meant you wanted to smash stuff, break it and set it on fire. “The Beatles want to hold your hand,” journalist Tom Wolfe once quipped, “but the Stones want to burn down your town.”

Fans registered their loyalty in readers’ polls conducted by music papers such as New Musical Express and Record Mirror. Whenever one group displaced the other at the top of the music chart, the news ran under a screeching headline, as if the Beatles and the Stones were football rivals or opposing candidates in a high-stakes election. People also tended to be deeply entrenched in their opinions. Beatles fans were often so devoted to the group that they would hear nothing against the Beatles. Youths who were in thrall to the Stones tended to be equally intransigent; they simply would not abide any criticism of their idols.

It is sometimes said that the “rivalry” between the Beatles and the Stones was just a myth, concocted by sensationalizing journalists and naïve teenyboppers. In reality, we are told, the two groups were always friendly, admiring, and supportive of each other. It is doubtful, however, that their relations were ever so cozy or uncomplicated. The two groups clearly struck up a rapport, but that never stopped them from trying to outperform each other wherever and however they could. And as most people understand, emulous competition rarely nourishes a friendship; more often it breeds anxiety, suspicion, and envy.

It is little wonder, then, that in some respects the Beatles and the Stones simply could not help but act like rival bands. Ensconced in West London, the Stones fancied themselves as hip cosmopolitans. They were obsessed with a particular style of “cool”—which they associated with reticence and self-possession—and so they were bemused by the Beatles’ amiable goofball shtick: their corny repartee and their obvious eagerness to please. Furthermore, the Beatles came from the North Country: the industrialized and economically depressed region in England that the young Stones had always assumed was a culturally barren wasteland. Not only were they wrong about that, but like most Merseysiders, the Beatles were sensitive to even the hint of condescension. That may help to explain why when the two groups were first getting acquainted, the successful Beatles sometimes seemed to lord it over the Stones.

Before long, however, the Beatles began to feel stifled by their cuddly, mop-top image, and they envied the Stones for their relative freedom of movement. The Beatles may also have been rankled as the Stones gained greater credibility with the “right” types of fans: discerning bohemians, as opposed to hysterical teenyboppers. Of all the Beatles, John Lennon especially hated to have to stifle his personality the way he often did. Later, he would be annoyed by the way that underground newspapers portrayed the Stones as left-wing political heroes, while the Beatles were associated with the hippies’ soft idealism.

The Beatles and the Stones also represent two sides of one of the twentieth century’s greatest aesthetic debates. To this day, when people want to get to know each other better, they often ask: “Beatles or Stones?” A preference for one group over the other is thought to reveal something substantial about one’s personality, judgment, or temperament. The clichés about the two groups are sometimes overdrawn, but they still retain a measure of plausibility. With some qualifications, the Beatles may be described as Apollonian, the Stones as Dionysian; the Beatles pop, the Stones rock; the Beatles erudite, the Stones visceral; the Beatles utopian, the Stones realistic.

None of the other famous dueling paradigms—say, in literature, painting, or architecture—tend to draw people into conversation like the Beatles and the Stones. How could they? The Beatles and Stones were popular artists of unprecedented magnitude; their worldwide record sales are by now uncountable.

Obviously the two groups shared a great deal in common; so too did their fans. Had he lived long enough, Sigmund Freud—that master of unmasking human motivations—might have understood the Beatles-Stones debate in terms of “the narcissism of small differences.” “It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of hostility between them,” Freud wrote. Nevertheless, it is the opposing qualities of the Beatles and the Stones—which are widely known and well understood—that make comparison irresistible. Chances are, if you’re reading this book, you already have an informed opinion about which group was better.

Moi-même, I don’t try to adjudicate the question here. Many others have already done so and anyhow, I’m not a rock critic; I’m an historian. In this joint biography, I’ve merely juxtaposed the Beatles and the Stones, examined their interrelations, and shown how their rivalry was constructed. That is not to say that I don’t hold a preference for one group over the other (of course I do), but rather that it is outside the purview of this book.

Besides, when rational criticism prevails, both groups are lauded. When they were in their prime, the Beatles and the Stones were both irreducibly great. Is that to repeat a dogma? Sure. But that doesn’t make what they accomplished any less remarkable. Somehow, the young men who made up the Beatles and the Stones managed not only to find each other, but also to burnish their talents collectively. Both groups melded and alchemized into huge creative forces that were substantially greater than the sum of their collective parts. They came of age during one of the most fertile and exciting periods in the history of popular music, and they exerted a commanding presence.

That, anyhow, is my own view. And I know I’m not alone. Marianne Faithfull, who dated Mick Jagger in the late ’60s, recalled the evening that I mentioned earlier, when members of the Beatles and the Stones turned up at that trendy nightclub and showed off their latest creations for all their friends: Beggars Banquet, and “Hey Jude” and “Revolution.” “Vesuvio closed a couple of weeks later,” Marianne said, “but the feeling in the room that night was: aren’t we all the greatest bunch of young geniuses to grace the planet and isn’t this the most amazing time to be alive? And I don’t think it was just the drugs.”

Table of Contents

Soundtrack xiii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Gentlemen or Thugs? 7

Chapter 2 "Shit, That's the Beatles!" 41

Chapter 2 A Particular Form of Snobbery 81

Chapter 4 Yankophilia 117

Chapter 5 Politics and Imagecraft 149

Chapter 6 Wheel-Dealing in the Pop Jungle 193

Epilogue 225

Shout Outs 233

Notes 235

Selected Bibliography 281

Index 289

Editorial Reviews

Balanced, informed, yet still passionate . . . Even the most gnarled and intransigent veterans of the Beatles-Stones debates will emerge enlightened by this book. . . . [McMillian] negotiates these thickets with insight, care, and a willingness to unsettle clichés.

The New York Times Book Review Anthony DeCurtis

"Smart, fantastically gossipy, and utterly compelling . . . The best parts of McMillian's story are his careful re-creations of various Beatles-Stones interactions"

Harper's Tom Bissell

What is there that's left to be said about such a tired debate in 2013? As it turns out, there's still plenty to be said. . . . Beatles vs. Stones takes on a wholly different angle on how the greatest rock 'n' roll rivalry of all time was fostered by the fans, the music industry, the media, and by the bands themselves. By bringing to light mounds of source materials that most scholars and critics have never mined, namely the alternative newspapers and fan magazines of the late '60s and early '70s, McMillian taps into the stories of both bands as they unfold. By tracing their evolutions, side-by-side, as they appeared in the underground publications of the times, McMillian offers fresh insight into the dynamics of both groups as they grew and changed, with a real-time and palpable sense of excitement.

Creative Loafing

A delightful read . . . I’ve no idea whether universities still offer classes on the great rock and roll acts of the ’60s and ’70s, but McMillian’s Beatles vs. Stones ought to be included in any such curriculum.

Splicetoday.com Russ Smith

Fun and eye-opening . . . If you thought you knew everything there was to know about these two groups, think again. . . . John McMillian has done something I thought was no longer possible. He has written a book with a fresh perspective about these rock legends. . . . Beatles vs. Stones is one of the best rock biographies I have seen this year."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Engaging . . . Nuanced . . . McMillian uses historical rigor to pull this conversation out from the jaws of celebrity memoir. His account pulls no punches, and injects new vitality into a well-worn subject. . . . McMillian’s greatest success here is his ability to dispense with the tidy, nostalgia-soaked versions of the counterculture that are so prevalent in rock history.

Salon

Incisive . . . Masterful . . . McMillian works a certain magic here. . . . Beatles vs. Stones is the best kind of pop culture study, revivifying familiar material while stimulating the reader to question his own assumptions and tastes.

American Spectator

Fun and eye-opening . . . If you thought you knew everything there was to know about these two groups, think again. . . . John McMillian has done something I thought was no longer possible. He has written a book with a fresh perspective about these rock legends. . . . Beatles vs. Stones is one of the best rock biographies I have seen this year."

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

John McMillian…negotiates these thickets with insight, care and a willingness to unsettle clichés…even the most gnarled and intransigent veterans of the Beatles-Stones debates will emerge enlightened by this book…And even if McMillian refuses to "adjudicate" the argument he investigates, he provides plenty of ammunition for you to wage the war, whichever side you're on.

The New York Times Book Review - Anthony DeCurtis

08/12/2013
An assistant professor of history at Georgia State University, McMillian has created what amounts to an extended compare-and-contrast essay by juxtaposing the careers of the two greatest rock ’n’ roll bands of the 20th century. He hopes to uncover whether these two bands were rivals or allies, and whether the Beatles were truly the good boys and the Stones were really the bad boys as each was respectively portrayed. McMillian builds a case for both sides of each argument, using existing interviews, an impressive bibliography, and some little-known sources. While the history of both bands is oft-covered territory, the author turns up some great nuggets, like the true origins of the Beatles’ name; police information about one of the Stones’ famous drug busts; and how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote their first song together. In the end, McMillian has written an informative look at music’s image machine—a powerful combination of media, marketing, and celebrity. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

It’s more than a battle of the bands—it’s a great divide in cultural history whose meaning has continuing relevance. With a sharp edged sensibility and a provocative style, McMillian has redefined it, undermined it, and even if you find points to disagree with (as I do on occasion), he makes jumping into the argument irresistible reading.

author of The Shakespeare Wars and How the End Begins - Ron Rosenbaum

I didn’t read this book—I inhaled it. This is a terrific new take on a great old rock ’n’ roll story, a clash of the musical titans. The book is a boombox full of surprises and even if you have stacks of Beatles and Stones books, you will find hidden tracks of new information. This is a dual biography, telling the Beatles’ story wrapped up in the saga of the Stones. Take a magical mystery tour, through the past, darkly. It’s rock history held up to a funhouse mirror, with emphasis on the fun.

author of Outlaw Journalist: The Life and Times of Hunter S. Thompson - William McKeen

[A] pleasurable romp through popular-music history . . . Fans of both groups will enjoy this musical duel.

Booklist

Entertaining history . . . McMillan’s breezy, insightful chronicle of a decade-defining battle of the bands—and, maybe, who won it—is a fascinating trip through pop music history.

Shelf Awareness

"John McMillian's rich, engaging, and thoroughly researched new book is a grand story . . . [He] displays the sure professional touch of a serious historian. His use of obscure teen magazines, offbeat underground newspapers and inside-the-band accounts animates a 'you are there' Norman Mailer-style knowledge. That, coupled with what can only be called a journalist's nose for noise, makes Beatles Vs. Stones that most precious thing—a prize potboiler with the poise and crescendo of first-rate cultural history."

The Wichita Eagle

"A fascinating tour of rock history . . . Insightful and entertaining."

The Buffalo News

Praise for Smoking Typewriters:
"The story that John McMillian tells in Smoking Typewriters and the lessons he implies are at once admonitory and inspirational; this is a work of serious scholarship that suggests both a call to resurgent action and a demand that people do better next time."

—Roz Kaveney, Times Literary Supplement

“McMillian turns the clock back to the college radicals who shaped the influential underground press to give voice to the disfranchised, in his highly detailed book. Not only does he show the rich yet erratic contribution of the publications and their founders, but he reveals FBI Director Hoover's plots against them, employing infiltrators, wiretaps, forged documents, and smear campaigns… McMillian has contributed a solid and informed commentary on the New Left's independent press.” —Publishers Weekly

"Readable, richly detailed study of the hundreds of anti-establishment 1960s newspapers . . . A welcome book on the '60s—a nostalgia trip for those who were there and a vivid work of history for anyone curious about the journalism that jolted a decade."

—Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"Meticulously researched and richly written with humor, tragedy, and grace." —Library Journal

“A lively chronicle of the dedication, ecstasies, nuttiness, pathologies, and generational cockiness of the 1960s left that the decade's underground press reported and embodied." —The American Prospect

From the Publisher

2013-09-15
A history professor makes a case for a professional and artistic rivalry between the two bands but presents no new evidence and reaches no absolute verdict. "Who wants yesterday's papers?" Mick Jagger sang with the Rolling Stones and then answered his own question: "Nobody in the world." The framing of this book's title requires the analysis by McMillian (History/Georgia State Univ.; Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, 2011) to end with the disbanding of the Beatles in 1970, before dismissing the Stones' "outlandishly undignified" money grab as an oldies band and concluding abruptly with the murder of John Lennon. The author's tone balances the academic ("Rock 'n' roll had always been a popular and performative art") with the colloquial ("At least the Beatles didn't break up because they started to suck"). But what the author describes as "a joint biography" offers little except for occasionally misguided opinion and unsupported conjecture that far more exhaustive and deeply reported biographies of each band (and its individual members) have illuminated. Readers won't be surprised to learn that the Beatles weren't the lovable, cuddly mop tops of their popular image and that the Stones were more patrician than naughty in comparison with their purported rivals (who usually appeared to be pretty good friends, or at least foxhole buddies). It isn't much of a critical stretch to show that the Stones often seemed to follow a Beatle template in terms of their creative progression. What skews the parallel analysis is that the Stones reached their peak as recording artists after (though not because of) the Beatles' breakup, leading to speculation such as, "even if the Beatles had stayed together, some find it hard to imagine that their output in the very early 1970s would have matched what the Stones accomplished. Of course we'll never know." Nothing new or particularly provocative in this retelling of well-known stories.

Kirkus Reviews