The Great Debate: George Carlin on The Beatles vs The Rolling Stones
Ah, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, the ongoing debate that every classic rock fan insists on having to this day. As much as the Fab Four and The Stones were worlds apart in how they formed and the type of music they played, there are always going to be those few artists that still like to pin them against each other as to who had the better songs, performed better, and left a greater impact on the world at large. While most people have their minds made up, George Carlin admitted that The Beatles have The Stones beat without a shadow of a doubt.
If for nothing else, just look at The Stones’ discography. Before they had even started working on their own, they had played a multitude of covers of old blues legends. Nothing out of the ordinary, but if you look at their first official hit single, you’ll see a few familiar names on the songwriting credits: John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
While that shouldn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, it’s a lot easier to go to bat for The Beatles than it is for The Stones. Despite keeping up with the Fab Four throughout their career, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards definitely found their core sound and proceeded to stick with it since the 1970s. There were still great songs to go around, but sometime after around 1978, you didn’t have to necessarily care about a full Rolling Stones project anymore.
Even when they did try to mix up the formula on albums like Dirty Work, fans weren’t exactly thrilled to see their favourite band suddenly making something completely different. They had a formula at that point, and Jagger and Richards were more than happy to play the kind of music they loved.
While The Stones have made it a close fight for their massive longevity, Carlin admitted that there were too many great moments in The Beatles’ career that he couldn’t pass up, saying, “There are things the Stones did that I couldn’t ignore, but I’ve always listened to the Beatles four to one over the Stones”.
Granted, one of The Beatles’ greatest strengths was never being tied down to one genre. Even if you were to remove all of the straight-ahead rock from their catalogue, their experimental songs like ‘I Am the Walrus’ and beautiful ballads like ‘Eleanor Rigby’ put them one notch above any of their contemporaries.
And it’s not like The Beatles couldn’t outdo The Stones at their game. Richards has one of the greatest rock and roll riffs of all time to his name in ‘Satisfaction’, but it took a matter of months for Lennon to match him when coming up with the central riff of ‘Day Tripper’.
Much like Carlin’s standup, though, The Beatles had their best moments when they tried to push against the system. For every artist that liked to get to the top and ride the wave of success, the Fab Four knew the power they could gain from taking their listeners on a journey rather than just throwing another milquetoast rocker at them. Carlin was all about subverting the traditional means of comedy, and in The Beatles, he saw a band with the same desire to push the envelope.
