Rolling Stones warm up gig

[Dave W]

Five decades later and it's still the Beatles vs. Stones debate. Amazing.

[nofi]

while the stones never broke new musical ground, the beatles blew the place to pieces. to me the stones were always just a boring bar band who happened to hit it big.

[Big_Stu]

Five decades later and it's still the Beatles vs. Stones debate. Amazing.

Not really - I don't have any great enthusiasm for them - apart from great musicianship and fantastic songs - though like all bands it's selective, any band with a large catalogue will have it's share of filler. One thing that the Stones did for me is after watching Hail hail RnR is I read up on music history - with relevance to them initially, put Chuck Berry & Bo Diddley into their rightful places as the true originators for everything RnR since - but not before! Their sources in turn have to be recognised for what they begat even though they have varying recognition today.
It's all just an ever-expanding thing.

[Aussie Mark]

I love both the Beatles and the Stones.  The Stones haven't done hardly anything worthy since the early 1980s, but that doesn't diminish their importance and their stellar output throughout the 60s and 70s.

[uwe]

You can't really compare the two. The early Beatles had more to do with the Everly Brothers than anything else - right down to how John's and Paul's harmonies worked against each other. The Stones were archivists of the blues and unlike Led Zep they gave credit to their inspiration. While the Beatles' music became a bit blacker over time too, they were never as committed to black music as the Stones.

It is also true that the Stones took a good while longer than the Beatles to produce coherent albums, not that even all their albums today are coherent. The Stones invented the filler track! But even on their most non-descript albums, a few tracks generally make the grade.

To be fair, if the Beatles were still around today we wouldn't know whether their output would have held the same standards - they were not above putting out a duff album, Let it Be, whether naked or in full Spector mode is barely okayish.

But I have to disagree that the Beatles couldn't rock. There is no song in the canon of the Stones as hard and heavy as Helter Skelter - even the Wings' Live and Let Die is harder than anything the Stones ever put out - and I have yet to hear a Chuck Berry cover by the Stones as energized as the Beatles' cracker version of Rock'n'Roll Music. That doesn't make the Stones a lesser band though, their covers of black artists always tried to retain a black feel, loose, sexy and groovy (the Beatles could have never done I'm a King Bee like the Stones did it on their debut), the Stones were never about being hard or heavy for the sake of it. Their whole band feel rolls more than it rocks. And they are probably the only white band that was ever complimented on their groove by black artists.

[Big_Stu]

The Stones invented the filler track!

I would have thought that was Elvis - or at least Parker - or possibly Glen Miller, or Bill Haley, or Little Richard..........

[uwe]

Up to Beggars Banquet or so the Stones to me were more a singles than an an album band - great singles, mind you.

And may I say that Exile on Main Street is overrated? A jammy nothingness of an album, pale in comparison to Sticky Fingers and certainly worse than the much derided Goatshead Soup which at least had some decadent charm.

[Big_Stu]

You're not trying to say it's their "Magical Mystery Tour" are you!!  There were so many others to choose from!

[uwe]

My fave albums are Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Black and Blue (which I hated at the time, but it has aged well), Some Girls, Tattoo You and Vodoo Lounge. Steel Wheels wasn't bad either, but then it came after two comparatively weak albums so anything would have been a relief.

Goatshead Soup was varied, you can say that for it. Rambling in places, but varied. And it contains with Star Star the best Chuck Berry song Chuck didn't write! It epitomizes Stones rock'n'roll to me and admittedly nobody does that type of music better.

I believe the only Rolling Stones album that I've never heard front to back is It's Only Rock'n'Roll, somehow that fell through all cracks with me!

Frankly, I don't think the Stones ever recorded anything approaching Magical Mystery Tour. But if the songs from Sgt. Pepper and Magical Mystery Tour (the album, not the EP) had been a double album, then no other band could have ever matched that either. And this is coming from a card carrying DP fan.

[patman]

I received a copy of Some Girls as a gift last year. i tried and tried...loved the first cut, but so much of it sounded so amateur that it kind of put me off. i never really made it all the way through.

[uwe]

You missed (no pun intended) those two then:






Add Miss You and it would be a great album if it otherwise consisted of white noise.

[Big_Stu]

Frankly, I don't think the Stones ever recorded anything approaching Magical Mystery Tour.

That would depend on which direction you thought it was being approached from. It's just been "celebrated" on UK TV as one of their biggest most indulgent mistakes - including as least partly by Sir P.

[patman]

Maybe I'll pop the top off a cold one and try again tonight...I think it was the vocal harmonies that put me off...

[uwe]

That would depend on which direction you thought it was being approached from. It's just been "celebrated" on UK TV as one of their biggest most indulgent mistakes - including as least partly by Sir P.

Sure it was indulgent. So was Sgt. Pepper (which probably started * decade of pop and rock indulgencs all the way up to punk, no Sgt. Pepper, no Tales of Topographic Oceans). But it worked. Your Mother was Born was one of my very first favorite Beatles songs. My older brother had the EP and I would listen to it again and again. I never bothered about the film, I just liked the music.

[westen44]

The Fool on the Hill
Your Mother Should Know
I Am the Walrus
Hello, Goodbye
Strawberry Fields Forever
Penny Lane
Baby, You're a Rich Man
All You Need is Love

All great songs.  In fact, the Magical Mystery Tour album is probably underrated, if anything.