Three songs that The Rolling Stones ripped off The Beatles: “You can imitate everyone you know”
The world is built on rivalries. Some have a habit of pushing each member into destructive patterns that leave only ash and ashen faces while others can encourage the two warring parties to find their way to even greater success. Some rivalries are forced while others occur naturally. However, there was only one that dominated the music scene of the 1960s. The stories of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones will be forever entwined whether they want to or not.
While both outfits were scrappy live bands playing in England in the early 1960s, it wasn’t until a few years later that they got pitted against each other in a pseudo-rivalry during what is now dubbed as the ‘British Invasion’. As much as they might have enjoyed the free publicity, finding themselves as The Beatles’ apparent mortal enemies despite the fact they shared a lot of likes and dislikes, the Stones did pick up a few tricks from the Fab Four on their travels.
Before they even started to create original material, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were inspired to try songwriting when The Beatles gifted them one of their offcuts. When chatting with the Stones after an impromptu meeting, John Lennon and Paul McCartney went into a backroom and finished the song ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, which turned up on their second album With the Beatles and became one of the Stones’ first major singles.
Although Lennon always dismissed the song down as a throwaway, its relevance is now more significant given that it encouraged Jagger and Richards to write their own material, pumping out a more sinister version of what The Beatles were doing. As years passed, the Stones also started to borrow a few songs from The Beatles’ playbook.
Once Lennon, McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr started to expand their songwriting on Rubber Soul, the Stones weren’t far behind on the song ‘Paint It Black’. Despite Brian Jones’ ability to play nearly any instrument he touched, the sitar on the song is remarkably similar to Harrison introducing the instrument to the world a few months before on ‘Norwegian Wood’.
One similar song might have been enough, but the Stones weren’t done cribbing from their favourite new band. Throughout the rest of the ‘60s, albums like Their Satanic Majesties Request were clear homages to The Beatles during their Sgt Pepper run, down to having similar album artwork. On a song like ‘She’s A Rainbow’, The Beatles’ worship is bleeding through every note, almost like a comical updating of the wholesome pop songs that Paul McCartney was known for writing.
Then again, The Beatles were listening right back, making songs with more edge to them as well. On reflection, ‘Day Tripper’ could easily be Lennon trying to beat Richards’ riff to ‘Satisfaction’. Even during that psychedelic era, songs like ‘2000 Light Years From Home’ has the same energy as ‘It’s All Too Much’ from Yellow Submarine.
However, the one blatant copy came towards the decade’s end with ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’. Bringing Let It Bleed to a close, the song starts simple on guitar before opening up to a grand finale with choirs and strings brought in as the final chorus chant carries the tune out. Sound familiar? It should be because The Beatles did the same thing on ‘Hey Jude’.
Although there was a friendly tone between each band, Lennon did have some bitter feelings towards the band as the years went on, telling Rolling Stone: “I would like to just list what we did and what the Stones did two months after on every fuckin’ album. Every fuckin’ thing we did, Mick does exactly the same — he imitates us”. That same sentiment is on The Beatles’ track ‘Dig a Pony’, where he sings, “Roll a stoney/you can imitate everyone you know”.
By the end of the decade, things were on better terms between everyone, with Lennon making an impromptu supergroup called The Dirty Mac with Keith Richards. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were always two sides of the same coin, but when they were cutting their teeth on the club circuit, both Jagger and Richards had the best tutors for becoming the ultimate rock stars.
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