The question of The Rolling Stones versus The Beatles is one all music fans have to face up to. The impossible decision of attempting to pick a favourite from arguably the two most influential British bands in history is a tough one. But Frank Zappa had his answer safely sat in his pocket.
Frank Zappa might not be a name that comes up when you think of the two British rock and roll bands. The leader of the band Mothers Of Invention, Zappa, led the freak wave that came in the mid-1960s as the hippies and rockers wanted something more than the relatively clean-cut sex appeal of the biggest bands around.
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As a totally self-taught musician and composer, Zappa’s work is hard to describe or categorise, other than saying it was totally wild. Mixing classic rock, doo-wop, jazz, blues, psychedelia and beyond, Mothers Of Invention burst onto the scene to shake up and, honestly, scare the music industry.
To Zappa, it was simply never that serious as his lyricism took joking hits at society, other musicians and culture as a whole. Often dubbed the “godfather of comedy rock”, he stood out as an antidote to the very serious rockstars that dominated his time, like Jim Morrison and Robert Plant.
Mick Jagger could probably join that list, but Zappa loved him. In a 1993 interview with Playboy, he said, “I liked The Rolling Stones.” Picking the Stones over The Beatles, he continued, “I did like his [Mick Jagger] attitude and the Stones’ attitude.”
In fact, Zappa credits the Stones for one of Mothers Of Invention’s most notable details. One of the most famous images of the band sees them all wearing dresses on the cover of Melody Maker, this decision was all thanks to Jagger. “We had a bunch of pictures taken with all the guys in the Mothers Of Invention wearing dresses because I think the Rolling Stones had just done a drag photo,” Zappa said.
“Only they tried to make it look glamorous,” he added, “and so, we had probably the ugliest band on the planet at that time. You want to see an ugly guy in a dress? Look at this son of a bitch.”
Zappa and Mick Jagger did cross paths. In 1968, Jagger visited Zappa at his home, The Log Cabin, and apparently helped him get a wooden splinter out of his toe. During this time, Zappa formed The GTOs, a girl group featuring Pamela Des Barres, a writer and infamous groupie that Jagger dated.
Laying out his opinion plain and simple, Zappa explained to SongTalk, “I generally liked the Rolling Stones better than the Beatles during that era; they were a little bit more to my taste because they were more involved in the blues.”
