Paul McCartney recalls the ‘very friendly’ scene with The Rolling Stones – and the song he gave Mick Jagger

A “very friendly” music scene in the 1960s led to Paul McCartney of The Beatles giving The Rolling Stones‘ Mick Jagger a song.

McCartney, the legendary frontman of Wings and Fab Four member, recalled giving the song to Jagger in an interview reflecting on the music scene of the times. While fans may have pitted a rivalry between the two groups, it was a rather friendly scene. McCartney recalled a taxi trip alongside John Lennon and members of The Rolling Stones, which led to the two groups sharing some music. In an interview reflecting on the times and friendly music scene, McCartney confirmed he shared a song with Jagger and company which proved to be one of The Rolling Stones’ biggest, earliest hits.

McCartney said: “John and I were walking down Charing Cross Road in London, in the early sixties, and two guys were going past in a taxi and shouted ‘Oi! Oi!’ and it was Mick [Jagger] and Keith [Richards] of The Stones and they were going along this way. So we said ‘ey, give us a lift’ you know, so we bunked into their taxi and Mick was saying ‘oh we’ve got a recording contract, you know, we’re with Decca now.’

“We said ‘ah great, congratulations,’ because it was a very friendly scene. There’s not a lot of rivalry, actually, you know, it now seems like there was this bitter feud, The Stones were the dirty, you know, horrible longhairs, and we were the cute, real nice guys, but it wasn’t like that at all.

“We were very similar in tastes and in clothes and everything. So Mick said, ‘Have you got a song?’ and I said, ‘Have we got a song? There’s this Ringo song,’ and I knew they were into Bo Diddley, Not Fade Away and stuff like that, we knew they did that stuff.

“So I said, ‘I know a song, we’ve got this Ringo song off of the album and it’s not going to be a single for us, but maybe you guys could take it.’ So that’s what they did, and it was their first single I think.” The song in question was I Wanna Be Your Man, which Lennon and McCartney wrote for The Beatles’ With The Beatles album.

Starr would provide lead vocals on the classic track, though it was The Rolling Stones’ version which is perhaps as well known as the original. Jagger reflected on the relationship with The Beatles around this time and suggested it was thanks to McCarteny’s suggestion that they managed to break through with a “completely crackers” song.

He said: “We knew [the Beatles] by then, and we were rehearsing, and Andrew [Loog Oldham] brought Paul and John down to the rehearsal. They said they had this tune; they were really hustlers then. I mean, the way they used to hustle tunes was great, ‘Hey Mick, we’ve got this great song.’

“So they played it, and we thought it sounded pretty commercial, which is what we were looking for, so we did it like Elmore James or something. I haven’t heard it for ages, but it must be pretty freaky ’cause nobody really produced it. It was completely crackers, but it was a hit and sounded great onstage.”