Mick Jagger says The Beatles influenced one clear period of The Rolling Stones’ career

The Beatles are to thank for one of The Rolling Stones‘ most exciting periods, according to the band’s frontman Mick Jagger.

Jagger cited the Fab Four as influential on The Rolling Stones during an interview with BBC Radio to promote Foreign Tongues. The band’s first album since Hackney Diamonds, and their second since the death of drummer Charlie Watts, features bass guitar work from The Beatles member Paul McCartney. But the overlap between the two bands began long before this, with Jagger sharing how The Beatles‘ attitude to touring heavily influenced how The Rolling Stones wanted to perform, and who to. Jagger would share how they moulded the way the band performed and who to by following in the footsteps of The Beatles.

He said: “Well in the beginning before we got into the studio, we were like a college band, really. Now you would say that’s the kind of audience we attracted. That wasn’t pop, that was more like a jazz crowd kind of, and then I think the whole example of The Beatles and others who were also cover bands of a certain kind, they kind of showed you that they were appealing to these very young people.

“We made this transition very quickly from being a grown up band into being a kind of teenage band which is kind of weird for us because we were quite serious about our music. And then we were still serious about it but it was just another vibe completely and that’s the comedy section of our career in my opinion.”

McCartney would share in a separate interview that the two bands would change their album release dates so as not to affect the other’s release window. Speaking to Marc Maron, McCartney says there was no such thing as a “big rivalry” between the two, and instead, the two bands were more than willing to help one another. Both groups were willing to push release dates back and even pull albums and singles forward, so that the pair didn’t clash with one another.

He said: “People thought that there was a big rivalry. But it was the opposite, if we had a record coming out August 28, we would ring them and say, ‘Have you got anything coming out?’ And they would say: ‘Yeah, we got something August 17, so we will put ours back a little bit’.

“There was a very friendly scene. I remember one evening, we used to hang out in each other’s places, Mick was living with Keith and a few other people. I was there hanging out and they were in the studio, in the recording session, when they came back (they had a recording) and it was Ruby Tuesday (So they played for us) and I was like “I like that one’.”

Listen to The Rolling Stones special edition of Tracks Of My Years today on Radio 2 at 5am (or on BBC Sounds and iPlayer from 6am).