An unlikely band is to thank for the founding of The Rolling Stones, according to veteran guitarist Keith Richards.
The Mick Jagger-fronted group has enjoyed decades of chart-topping success and sold-out shows across the globe, and these achievements are, in part, thanks to their biggest rival. Richards confirmed as much when speaking to journalist Hunter S. Thompson about his time in the band, with John Lennon singled out by the guitarist as the “strong one” of the Fab Four. Though the two bands had a rivalry throughout the 1960s, it appeared to be a broadly friendly relationship between the two groups.
Richards told Thompson: “There was very little difference between The Beatles and ourselves. There would be no Stones without The Beatles. Have to take my hat off to John, he was the strong one. If they hadn’t kicked the door in there wouldn’t be a way through the door.”
The Beatles were instrumental in getting The Rolling Stones one of their earliest hits, with a taxi cab ride between Paul McCartney, Lennon, Mick Jagger, and Richards leading to one of the band’s earliest successes. McCartney recalled the moment he and Lennon offered The Rolling Stones I Wanna Be Your Man, which the group graciously accepted.
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.”
Jagger would also note The Beatles, while a friendly rival, were not the biggest for The Rolling Stones. Jagger told Rolling Stone Magazine founder Jann Wenner the relationship with other bands in the UK at the time was: “Super, highly competitive – but friendly.
“Because when you’re very young, it’s very hard. Looking back, thinking of all that competition, I hate it. But I suppose it’s all right, because I won out.
“But it wasn’t only between us and the Beatles but us and all the other bands. I remember one time playing in Philadelphia, and Herman’s Hermits were top of the bill, and we were second, and there was some argument about the dressing rooms. [Peter Noone] was complaining because he was top of the bill and his dressing room wasn’t good enough.
“Anyway, there we were, and he was top of the bill because the Herman’s Hermits were huge. And one of the most impossible things was going out to have a hamburger, and some guy would go, ‘Are you Herman’s Hermits?’ It would kill you. So you go, ‘Fuck you. Herman’s Hermits is shit.’”
