The Beatles vs Rolling Stones — which really is the best band of all time?
WHEN it comes to popping the biggest question in, er, pop, the debate over which band is better – The Beatles or the Rolling Stones – has rumbled on for decades.
And now Beatles legend Sir Paul McCartney, 77, has joined in too, saying: “I love the Stones but The Beatles were better.”
So we asked YOU to settle it in a Sun Online poll, and here are the results.
Now perhaps we can all just Let It Be.
The Beatles
FIRST UK No 1 single was From Me To You, in April 1963.
First No1 album was Please Please Me, released in March 1963.
First US No1 single was Love Me Do, in 1962.
First US No1 album was Meet The Beatles! in 1964.
Worldwide album sales top 600million.
They had 17 UK No1 singles including She Loves You, I Want To Hold Your Hand, A Hard Day’s Night, Hello, Goodbye, Help and Hey Jude, which spent 19 weeks in the charts.
They released 213 singles around the world.
Hey Jude has been covered more than 160 times officially.
Their penultimate studio album Abbey Road got to No 1 twice, in 1969 and 2019 – 49 years and 252 days apart.
And the band has nothing but love for… Eight Days A Week.
The Rolling Stones
THE Stones have released 30 studio albums, 28 live albums and 120 singles around the world.
Their first UK No1 single was It’s All Over Now, in July 1964.
Their first British No1 album was The Rolling Stones, released in the same year.
The following year their album Out Of Our Heads was their first US No1, and the same year (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction was their first US No1 single, also topping the UK chart.
Their worldwide album sales top 240million, including ten UK No1s.
They have had eight UK No1 singles including The Last Time, Get Off Of My Cloud, Paint It Black, Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Honky Tonk Women.
Satisfaction has been covered by other artists at least 98 times.
The Stones were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and the UK Music Hall of Fame in 2004.
The Beatles’ scandals
THEY came across as the boys next door in the early days – but behind the scenes The Beatles were a hotbed of scandal.
In the distant past Paul McCartney has admitted to a “wonderful experience” with two “hookers” – just days after saying he “saw God” during a drug-fuelled trip.
In 1970 John Lennon claimed the group had smoked cannabis in the toilets at Buckingham Palace, on the day they collected their MBEs in 1965.
Lennon’s heroin addiction also took its toll on the band.
McCartney has taken cocaine and LSD and has publicly called for the legalisation of cannabis.
In 1972 a Swedish court fined him £1,000 for cannabis possession and the following year he was fined £100 after marijuana plants were found growing on his Scottish farm.
In 1980 McCartney’s band Wings flew to Tokyo on tour and officials found cannabis in his luggage.
They arrested McCartney but after ten days he was released and deported without charge.
Ringo Starr – now booze and drug-free – claimed to have lost years to drink, saying: “I’ve got photographs of me playing all over the world but I’ve absolutely no memory of it.”
On a somewhat lighter note Sir Paul once admitted: “It was always amusing to see if we could get a naughty word on the record – ‘fish and finger pie’, ‘p***k teaser’, ‘t*t t*t t*t t*t’.”
Rolling Stones’ scandals
IN sharp contrast to The Beatles’ smart suits and wholesome image, the Rolling Stones defined bad-boy behaviour – portraying a lifestyle of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll.
In what became known as one of the Sixties’ most infamous drug busts, in 1967, 20 cops raided guitarist Keith Richards’s home, Redlands in West Sussex, where he, Mick Jagger and Marianne Faithfull, in nothing but a fur rug, were all coming down from a day-long acid trip.
“There’s a knock on the door, I look out the window, and there’s this whole lot of dwarves outside,” wrote Richards later.
“I’d never been busted before, and I’m still on acid.”
Later that year Jagger was given a three-month jail term for possessing four amphetamine tablets and Richards was jailed for a year for allowing cannabis to be smoked on his property.
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Both were released on bail the next day pending appeals, which overturned Richards’s conviction and reduced Jagger’s sentence to a conditional discharge.
Guitarist Ronnie Wood was reportedly so entrenched in his addiction that he would carry a Bunsen burner to parties to freebase cocaine, heating it and inhaling the fumes to achieve a purer “high”.
In 1969 guitarist Brian Jones drowned in his pool aged 27. The coroner’s report noted his liver and heart were heavily enlarged by drug and alcohol abuse.
Your verdict
YOU cast your vote on five key questions – and here are your verdicts.
You chose John Lennon over Sir Mick Jagger as who is the greater music legend – but it was a close call at 56.7 per cent for John.
Your greatest album choice was The Beatles’ 1967 classic Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band over the Stones’ 1971 album Sticky Fingers, with 62.9 per cent of votes.
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards trounced Ringo Starr as a bigger hell-raiser, with a whopping 89.7 per cent of votes.
Your greatest single was The Beatles’ Hey Jude, with 53.6 per cent over Honky Tonk Women – close again.
But your favourite most- covered song was The Stones’ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, with 55.9 per cent of votes over The Beatles’ Yesterday.
So with three wins out of five, The Beatles triumph . . . yeah, yeah, yeah.
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