“I really love it”: The John Lennon song he thought The Rolling Stones did better
The heated rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones is most likely never going to go out of style amongst rock fans. Although the bands themselves were always cordial towards each other, they each represented one piece of the British invasion, with the Fab Four playing up their looks as the softer version of rock and roll, and The Stones being the kind of band that no mother wanted to see their daughter involved with. While those images were the furthest thing from the truth, John Lennon admitted that The Stones could make it look a lot better from time to time.
This is strange, coming from the biggest critic of the band in the Beatles circles. Lennon was more than willing to help his old friends out in their early days, but when looking back at how their career panned out, Lennon became more and more disappointed at the way that they leeched off of his band. He and Paul McCartney were happy to sing on tracks like ‘We Love You’, but it had to sting seeing them make their take on Sgt Pepper with Their Satanic Majesties Request.
However, the real rivalry often came from Mick Jagger and Keith Richards making something that could go toe-to-toe with what Lennon and McCartney had done. ‘Day Tripper’ was already a great bluesy riff without any backstory, but it’s hard to think that Lennon felt the need to write something a bit heavier had he not heard what Richards did with the riff to ‘Satisfaction’.
By the early 1970s, though, The Stones had settled into a comfortable middle ground of becoming old bluesmen in their golden years. Exile on Main Street is one of the greatest double albums of its time, and Let It Bleed showed that they could break free of The Beatles connections on tracks like ‘Midnight Rambler’ and ‘Monkey Man’, but Jagger knew that he had to keep up with the times to be current, and every rock fan felt a chill go up their spine when the band came out with their version of a disco song.
Even though ‘Miss You’ is either beloved or reviled, depending on which stripe of Stones fan you ask, Lennon himself still heard pieces of his material in what they were doing. It had only been a few years since Walls and Bridges came out, and considering how the song ‘Bless You’ used a similar chord progression, Lennon did mind taking a few swipes at Jagger for copying his notes.
“‘This is a hit song if you’d just do it fast.’ He was right because, as ‘Miss You’, it turned into a hit. I like Mick’s record better. I have no ill feelings about it.”
John Lennon
In this case, though, Lennon thought that his former rivals actually bested him on his track, saying, “The engineer kept wanting me to speed that up – he said, ‘This is a hit song if you’d just do it fast.’ He was right because, as ‘Miss You’, it turned into a hit. I like Mick’s record better. I have no ill feelings about it. I think it’s a great Stones track, and I really love it. But I do hear that lick in it.”
Listening back to both tunes, there are certain similarities, but Lennon had admittedly cooled on holding a grudge by this point. Hell, he wasn’t even safe from stealing from himself, given the fact that ‘Steel and Glass’ features a retread riff from ‘How Do You Sleep’, using his diss track towards McCartney and reusing the music to aim at his former manager, Allen Klein.
So while Lennon has been coy about the number of times that The Stones were looking at any Beatle’s playbook, he could still admit when they made a great tune. Keith Richards may have never wanted to go down the disco rabbit hole, but as long as it had the signature touch of a Beatle, it basically had the words ‘hit song’ prestamped on it.
