“I wanna hear the hits”: The three songs Paul McCartney would want in his ideal Rolling Stones setlist
Rock ‘n’ roll first reared its head in the 1950s with a riotous attitude apt for a post-war climate. The first half of the 20th century was marred by two world wars separated by a period of economic instability, but the second was going to be different. Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ gave the world a good ol’ kick up the behind, zapping a generation of baby boomers into action. Among the stimulated youths were members of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.
The Beatles took a lion’s share of credit for the development of pop culture in the 1960s, and rightly so. Naturally, we have countless icons to thank for the decade’s artistic flourishes, from William S. Burroughs to Andy Warhol, but The Beatles were the perfect package in the music world. These four cheeky personalities entered play early in the decade, bringing skiffle to the masses, and by 1964, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had pushed their songwriting exploits to the top of the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
After achieving their first Billboard number one with ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ and performing on the Ed Sullivan Show, The Beatles lit a path that several major British bands would soon follow. Later, in 1964, The Rolling Stones embarked on their first tour of the US, and The Kinks disturbed the Billboard top ten with ‘You Really Got Me’ and ‘All Day and All of the Night’.
There was a palpable degree of friendly rivalry between the British invasion frontrunners but also plenty of mutual respect that the media mostly ignored. Andrew Loog Oldham posed the Stones as the bad boy alternative to The Beatles, but beneath this shrewd marketing strategy was a brotherhood of sorts. After all, Lennon and McCartney gave the Stones their first top-20 hit with ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ in November 1963.
Speaking to Rolling Stone in 2016, McCartney recalled helping the Stones out after realising their shared passion for American rhythm and blues music. “We were friends with them, and I just thought ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ would be good for them,” he noted. “I knew they did Bo Diddley stuff, and they made a good job of it.”
Throughout the 1960s, the Stones kept a careful eye on The Beatles’ success, mirroring their psychedelic endeavours in 1967, releasing Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesties Request in response to Revolver and Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This is generally regarded as a misstep in the Stones’ discography, predating their most successful period in the late 1960s and early ’70s. Meanwhile, The Beatles faltered under internal disputes, finally calling it quits in April 1970.
In The Beatles’ closing months, Lennon famously formed the supergroup The Dirty Mac alongside Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell and Eric Clapton for a one-off show as part of The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus. Meanwhile, McCartney maintained more elusive ties with the Stones.
McCartney caused a media storm in 2021 when comparing the two bands. “I’m not sure I should say it, but [The Rolling Stones] are a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are,” he said. “I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”
Although the comment seemed provocative, McCartney has long maintained this position. “The Stones are a fantastic group,” he told Howard Stern in 2020. “They are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues. Whereas we had a little more influences. There’s a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but The Beatles were better.”
Jagger, who invited McCartney to collaborate on a song for 2023’s Hackney Diamonds, responded to the comments passively. “There’s obviously no competition,” he told Zane Lowe, referring to major differences between the bands. “The Rolling Stones have been a big concert band in other decades and other eras when the Beatles never even did an arena tour. […] That’s the real big difference between these two bands. One band is, unbelievably, luckily, still playing in stadiums, and the other band doesn’t exist.”
In 2015, McCartney mentioned his appreciation of The Rolling Stones while discussing his approach to setlists. He noted that, while promoters and fans always want to hear Beatles hits like ‘Yesterday’ in his solo setlists, he didn’t “want to rely on the Beatles’ stuff.” McCartney conceded that, as much as he would like to retire most Beatles material from his repertoire, he understands the attraction. “If I’m in an audience, I wanna hear the hits,” he told Esquire. “I don’t want to see the Stones do their new album. I want ‘Satisfaction’, ‘Honky Tonk Women’, ‘Ruby Tuesday’.”
Listen to The Rolling Stones’ ‘Honky Tonk Women’ below.
