The Beatles vs. The Stones? It’s an age-old debate among music fans. According to John Lennon, however, the answer might be simpler. He once argued that The Beatles influenced The Rolling Stones, even claiming that a “throwaway” song he wrote inspired them to start composing their own music.
Lennon and Paul McCartney sit as music history’s most fearsome songwriting duo. Between the two friends, they wrote timeless anthems that are still loved today and feel sure to stay in the collective cultural heart forever. It goes without saying that they’re both written into history books thanks to their limitless talent and natural collaboration, which were born out of a tight friendship.
Perhaps that’s the key to greatness. The two Beatles boys learnt their craft together, spending their youth working away at early songs in their family kitchens, getting better and better until they became the sensations we know them as. It’s a similar story for the pair that comes in at a close second place in the competition of music’s finest. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ origin is pretty much the same, being a tale of long-term friendship and how two people can grow together as artists.
Both songwriting teams have earned their spot at the very top, being some of the most respected and revered songwriters in history. But according to Lennon, that might not have been the case for the Stones if it wasn’t for the Beatles.
Back in 1963, right as the Stones were getting underway, cutting their teeth around London’s various clubs and venues, The Beatles were already paying attention. One night, Lennon and McCartney went along to watch the band perform live, leading to one of the most miraculous and wild tales of their songwriting abilities.
“They wanted a song and we went to see them to see what kind of stuff they did,” Lennon said. There had already been talks of the duo writing a track for Jagger’s lot, a song when they first started out and before they picked up a pen themselves.
“Mick and Keith had heard that we had an unfinished song — Paul just had this bit and we needed another verse or something. We sort of played it roughly to them and they said, ‘Yeah, OK, that’s our style’,” Lennon continued. But while it might be expected that a song would need time and space and a clear mind to be finished. Lennon and McCartney needed nothing but themselves and their talent.
“So Paul and I just went off in the corner of the room and finished the song off while they were all still there talking,” Lennon said, so humbly as if it was nothing. To him, this was a turning point for Jagger and Richards, who looked on at the process in awe. “We came back and that’s how Mick and Keith got inspired to write, because, ‘Jesus, look at that. They just went in the corner and wrote it and came back!’” Lennon recalled. “Right in front of their eyes we did it. So we gave it to them.”
The track was ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, released by the Rolling Stones in 1963.
The song really meant nothing to them as the musician said, “It was a throwaway,” admitting, “We weren’t going to give them anything great, right?” But according to him, merely witnessing Lennon and McCartney at work was the push the Stones needed to get serious, start writing, and work to become a songwriting duo that could compete with the Beatles pros.
