Beatles vs. Stones

Review by Choice Review

Shattering myths about the relationships of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, McMillian (history, Georgia State Univ.) provides an enlightening, provocative look at a good-natured rivalry that continued until the breakup of the Beatles. The objectivity of the writing is refreshing, and readers are reminded that they should not always believe everything seen and heard; controlling the media is not new. For most of their careers, as McMillian writes, the members of the two groups kept each other abreast of what the other was doing in order to obtain the majority of press and sales--at least until Allen Klein entered their spheres, and the infamous Beatles' breakup occurred. From that point on, the Stones stopped echoing the Beatles' musical and visual creativity and absolved themselves of the Beatles' influence. McMillian notes that whereas the Beatles changed rock 'n' roll history, the Stones have outlasted them for "a staggering forty-nine years." A must read for any fan of either group or for anyone wanting insight into the making of two of the greatest bands in rock history. Both readers who experienced the rivalry as it unfolded and readers who are newcomers to the bands' history will appreciate this book. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. T. Emery Austin Peay State University

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.

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Review by New York Times Review

AS THE 50TH-ANNIVERSARY milestones for the Beatles and the Rolling Stones fly off like calendar pages in an old film, even the stuff of barroom debates gets elevated into book-length exegeses. At least that's true on the evidence of "Beatles vs. Stones," by John McMillian, and "Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones," by Bill Janovitz. The good news is that despite some flaws, each of them justifies its extended treatment of essentially irresolvable disputes. They manage to make their cases in balanced, informed, yet still passionate terms. And, best of all, when you're done, you don't need to worry about a crippling hangover. At a New York dinner party a couple of years back, a beautiful woman - who else would dare? - teased Mick Jagger: "Everybody's either a Beatles person or a Stones person. Which are you?" Characteristically inclined to repel even deadly serious questions with an eye roll and a shrug, Jagger took this one straight. "I'm a Stones person," he replied. That response is telling. Ever since they pulled ahead of the Fab Four on the hipness front in the late '60s, the Stones have been weary and resentful of Beatles comparisons. In fact, the bands were frenemies from the start. Jagger hilariously describes being intimidated by the Beatles in their leather coats when they came to see the Stones perform in their very early days. And as Londoners, the Stones would forever be gobsmacked by having to stand in the shadow of a quartet from, of all provincial places, Liverpool. While Allen Ginsberg asserted that the Beatles made Liverpool "the center of the consciousness of the human universe," Keith Richards saw it somewhat differently: "I mean, Liverpool is ... as far as London is concerned, it's Nome, Alaska." The Beatles, to be fair, could be equally dismissive of their surlier rivals: "I think Mick's a joke, with all that fag dancing," John Lennon once sneered. Nonetheless, the Beatles' pre-eminence is undeniable. Far more than a band that you might like or dislike in relation to any other, "the Beatles are a phenomenon," the Stones guitarist Brian Jones once evenly stated to a British journalist. In the '60s rock solar system, they were the sun around which everything else revolved, and the Stones benefited too much from the Beatles' reflected heat to be able to deny it. As far as America is concerned, without the Beatles' breakthrough, there could have been no Rolling Stones. When it counted, the Beatles wrote a hit song for the Stones, talked them up in interviews and helped get them a record deal. Later on, the two camps would stagger their record releases in order not to hurt each other's sales. John McMillian, who teaches history at Georgia State University, negotiates these thickets with insight, care and a willingness to unsettle clichés. He can be fussy at times, as when, for example, he asserts his objectivity about his book's subject with a blithe "I don't try to adjudicate the question here. ... I'm not a rock critic; I'm a historian." (True: He's far better at unearthing surprising material than making musical judgments.) And his writing can occasionally lurch into academese. Neither the Beatles nor the Stones, he observes, "articulated, or proved willing to defend, a coherent political cosmology." That said, even the most gnarled and intransigent veterans of the Beatles-Stones debates will emerge enlightened by this book. McMillian is a scholar of the '60s underground press, and his deft references to those far-flung sources demonstrate how profoundly these bands' songs, statements and actions roiled the counterculture. It's hard to imagine any artist, musical or otherwise, having as direct a social impact today. And even if McMillian refuses to "adjudicate" the argument he investigates, he provides plenty of ammunition for you to wage the war, whichever side you're on. Bill Janovitz, a musician (he sings, plays guitar and writes songs in the band Buffalo Tom) as well as a critic, has a somewhat different perspective from McMillian in "Rocks Off." In his introduction he writes, "And so that is how I present this book, as an unabashed fan." He lives up to that self-assessment. But do we really need six pages on "She Was Hot"? Urn, no. Still, as barroom raconteurs go, Janovitz is an extremely engaging companion. Like any list book, this one is an argument in search of a readership. Come on, "The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man"? Are you kidding? Where's "No Expectations"? "Plundered My Soul" makes the cut, but not "Keep Up Blues" or "No Spare Parts"? That's crazy! But just when you're about to suck down that fifth bourbon and close out your tab, you realize Janovitz has a larger aim. "The songs are not all necessarily my favorites; they were chosen, in part, to tell the story of 50 years of the band," he explains. Now, that rationale is no less a fire-starter than claiming to compile the 50 "best" Stones songs, but it does account for some of the book's strengths and weaknesses. Providing extensive historical context for 50 songs inevitably makes for a certain amount of repetition. That's less of a problem, of course, if you're not reading the book from start to finish, as this reviewer felt obliged to do, but dipping into it as curiosity and inclination lead you to particular songs. That historical context is an important aspect of the book's great appeal. In the section on "Sway," a lesser-known song on "Sticky Fingers" that is a favorite among Stones aficionados, Janovitz makes reference to the deaths of Brian Jones, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, as well as the drug problems of Keith Richards and Jagger's then-girlfriend Marianne Faithfull, all to demonstrate Jagger's tough-minded conviction that "if you live that 'demon life,' you have to expect such outcomes." The entry is both smart and feeling, and it deepens our comprehension of the song. Janovitz has a touching, and entirely uncritical, fondness for Richards's rickety ballads, and he often finds a rough-hewed poetry when writing about them. Discussing Nicky Hopkins's lovely piano part on "Coming Down Again," for example, he describes how the "guitars hang and flutter around it like a tattered cape on a scarecrow skeleton." Finally, the measure of "Rocks Off" is not how unassailable Janovitz's song choices are. They're not. His 50 differ from mine and very likely will from yours. But he is consistently illuminating, not only defending his songs well, but inspiring you to think more strenuously about the selections you would add or delete. His tone is neither truculent nor condescending; he just wants to expand your appreciation of a band and music that he loves. The ability to inspire such thought and feeling is why so many people still care about the Stones - and the Beatles - even after 50 years and counting. ? Asked if he was a 'Beatles person or a Stones person,' Mick said, 'A Stones person.' ANTHONY DECURTIS is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone and the co-author of Clive Davis's memoir "The Soundtrack of My Life." He is working on a biography of Lou Reed.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [December 1, 2013]

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Review by Booklist Review

It was the greatest rivalry in popular music: in one corner, the eclectic pop of the amiable Beatles; in the other, the raunchy blues-based rock of the sullen Rolling Stones. But the truth lies somewhere in between, as McMillian notes, since the Beatles were not as nice as they were supposed to be, nor were the Stones as thuggish as their reputation seemed to indicate. McMillian maintains that the gap between private reality and public facade was humongous. In this pleasurable romp through popular-music history, McMillian discusses what set the two groups apart and what brought them together. The rivalry between the two groups was real enough, but so was their mutual respect. And despite appearances to the contrary (Sgt. Pepper vs. Their Satanic Majesties Request, or Revolution vs. Street Fighting Man), their recording output wasn't always tit for tat either. Eventually each band went its own way. The Beatles broke up while at the top of their game while the Stones continue to tour. Fans of both groups will enjoy this musical duel.--Sawyers, June Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

An assistant professor of history at Georgia State University, McMillian has created what amounts to an extended compare-and-contrast essay by juxtaposing the careers of the two greatest rock 'n' roll bands of the 20th century. He hopes to uncover whether these two bands were rivals or allies, and whether the Beatles were truly the good boys and the Stones were really the bad boys as each was respectively portrayed. McMillian builds a case for both sides of each argument, using existing interviews, an impressive bibliography, and some little-known sources. While the history of both bands is oft-covered territory, the author turns up some great nuggets, like the true origins of the Beatles' name; police information about one of the Stones' famous drug busts; and how Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote their first song together. In the end, McMillian has written an informative look at music's image machine-a powerful combination of media, marketing, and celebrity. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

This carefully researched book uses the supposed rivalry between the Beatles and Rolling Stones as a jumping-off point to compare and contrast the two bands and place both in their sociohistorical context. McMillian (history, Georgia State Univ.; Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America) dispels both the idea that the groups were engaged in a tense and bitter competition and the concept that their enmity was entirely manufactured by the press, instead carving out a far more nuanced middle ground. Readers will delight in this narrative, which relies heavily on revealing-often humorous-quotes and colorful anecdotes. However, this is no light band biography; the author turns his critical historian's eye on his subjects, carefully evaluating evidence for the accuracy of various stories related by the key players. McMillian sheds new light on many old chestnuts (for instance, the enduring myth that Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham locked Mick Jagger and Keith Richards in a kitchen in an attempt to spark their songwriting career) by analyzing them through this intriguing framework. VERDICT Casual and serious pop music fans, as well as readers of history, will enjoy this intelligent and original work.-Mahnaz Dar, Library Journal (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A history professor makes a case for a professional and artistic rivalry between the two bands but presents no new evidence and reaches no absolute verdict. "Who wants yesterday's papers?" Mick Jagger sang with the Rolling Stones and then answered his own question: "Nobody in the world." The framing of this book's title requires the analysis by McMillian (History/Georgia State Univ.; Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America, 2011) to end with the disbanding of the Beatles in 1970, before dismissing the Stones' "outlandishly undignified" money grab as an oldies band and concluding abruptly with the murder of John Lennon. The author's tone balances the academic ("Rock 'n' roll had always been a popular and performative art") with the colloquial ("At least the Beatles didn't break up because they started to suck"). But what the author describes as "a joint biography" offers little except for occasionally misguided opinion and unsupported conjecture that far more exhaustive and deeply reported biographies of each band (and its individual members) have illuminated. Readers won't be surprised to learn that the Beatles weren't the lovable, cuddly mop tops of their popular image and that the Stones were more patrician than naughty in comparison with their purported rivals (who usually appeared to be pretty good friends, or at least foxhole buddies). It isn't much of a critical stretch to show that the Stones often seemed to follow a Beatle template in terms of their creative progression. What skews the parallel analysis is that the Stones reached their peak as recording artists after (though not because of) the Beatles' breakup, leading to speculation such as, "even if the Beatles had stayed together, some find it hard to imagine that their output in the very early 1970s would have matched what the Stones accomplished. Of course we'll never know." Nothing new or particularly provocative in this retelling of well-known stories.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Beatles vs. Stones INTRODUCTION In the summer of 1968, Mick Jagger attended a birthday party in his honor at a hip, new Moroccan-style bar called the Vesuvio Club--"one of the best clubs London has ever seen," remembered Tony Sanchez, one of its proprietors. Under black lights and beautiful tapestries, some of London's trendiest models, artists, and pop singers lounged around on huge cushions and took pulls from Turkish hookahs, while a decorated helium-filled dirigible floated aimlessly around the room. As a special treat, Mick brought along an advance pressing of the Stones' forthcoming album, Beggars Banquet, and when it played over the club's speakers, people flooded the dance floor. Just as the crowd was "leaping around" and celebrating the record--which would soon win accolades as the best Stones album to date--Paul McCartney strolled in and passed Sanchez a copy of the Beatles' forthcoming single, "Hey Jude" / "Revolution," which had never before been heard by anyone outside of the group's charmed inner circle. As Sanchez remembered, the "slow thundering buildup of 'Hey Jude' shook the club," and the crowd demanded that the seven-minute song be played again and again. Finally, the club's disc jockey played the next song, and everyone heard "John Lennon's nasal voice pumping out 'Revolution.' " "When it was over," Sanchez said, "Mick looked peeved. The Beatles had upstaged him." "It was a wicked piece of promotional one-upsmanship," remembered Tony Barrow, the Beatles' press officer. By that time, the mostly good-natured rivalry between the Beatles and the Stones had been going on for about four years. Although the Beatles were more commercially successful than the Stones, throughout the 1960s the two groups nevertheless competed for record sales, cultural influence, and aesthetic credibility. Teens on both sides of the Atlantic defined themselves by whether they preferred the Beatles or the Stones. "If you truly loved pop music in the 1960s . . . there was no ducking the choice and no cop-out third option," one writer remarked. "You could dance with them both, but there could never be any doubt about which one you'd take home." Initially the rivalry was strongest in England. The Beatles began inspiring mass adulation among young teenage girls in the spring of 1963, but it soon became apparent that the group's invigorating music and seductive charm worked on adults as well. The Fab Four couldn't quite win over everyone--they were too unusual for that--but conventional wisdom held that the Beatles were a wonderful tonic to a society that was finally ready to shed the last vestiges of Victorian Era restraint. Their effect on British popular culture was said to be salutary, pitch-perfect, and perfectly timed. The Rolling Stones provoked a different reaction. Pale and unkempt, they did not bother with stage uniforms, and they were not often polite. Instead of laboring to win the affection of the broader public, they feigned indifference to mainstream opinion. Musically, they favored American electric blues--an obscure genre in England that was championed by adolescent males as well as females, and that was most suitably performed in dark 'n' sweaty, smoke-filled rooms. Those who were faint of heart, or who enjoyed a prim sense of propriety, knew to stay away from the Stones. Adults regarded them as a menace. That is one of the reasons that the debate over which band was better, the Beatles or the Stones, was freighted with such deep significance. To say that you were a Beatles fan was to imply that (just like the Fab Four) you were well adjusted, amiable, and polite. You were not a prig, necessarily, but nor were you the type to challenge social conventions. For the most part, you conformed. You agreed. You complied. When you looked upon the world that you were bound to inherit, you were pleased. To align with the Rolling Stones was to convey the opposite message. It meant you wanted to smash stuff, break it and set it on fire. "The Beatles want to hold your hand," journalist Tom Wolfe once quipped, "but the Stones want to burn down your town." Fans registered their loyalty in readers' polls conducted by music papers such as New Musical Express and Record Mirror. Whenever one group displaced the other at the top of the music chart, the news ran under a screeching headline, as if the Beatles and the Stones were football rivals or opposing candidates in a high-stakes election. People also tended to be deeply entrenched in their opinions. Beatles fans were often so devoted to the group that they would hear nothing against the Beatles. Youths who were in thrall to the Stones tended to be equally intransigent; they simply would not abide any criticism of their idols. It is sometimes said that the "rivalry" between the Beatles and the Stones was just a myth, concocted by sensationalizing journalists and naïve teenyboppers. In reality, we are told, the two groups were always friendly, admiring, and supportive of each other. It is doubtful, however, that their relations were ever so cozy or uncomplicated. The two groups clearly struck up a rapport, but that never stopped them from trying to outperform each other wherever and however they could. And as most people understand, emulous competition rarely nourishes a friendship; more often it breeds anxiety, suspicion, and envy. It is little wonder, then, that in some respects the Beatles and the Stones simply could not help but act like rival bands. Ensconced in West London, the Stones fancied themselves as hip cosmopolitans. They were obsessed with a particular style of "cool"--which they associated with reticence and self-possession--and so they were bemused by the Beatles' amiable goofball shtick: their corny repartee and their obvious eagerness to please. Furthermore, the Beatles came from the North Country: the industrialized and economically depressed region in England that the young Stones had always assumed was a culturally barren wasteland. Not only were they wrong about that, but like most Merseysiders, the Beatles were sensitive to even the hint of condescension. That may help to explain why when the two groups were first getting acquainted, the successful Beatles sometimes seemed to lord it over the Stones. Before long, however, the Beatles began to feel stifled by their cuddly, mop-top image, and they envied the Stones for their relative freedom of movement. The Beatles may also have been rankled as the Stones gained greater credibility with the "right" types of fans: discerning bohemians, as opposed to hysterical teenyboppers. Of all the Beatles, John Lennon especially hated to have to stifle his personality the way he often did. Later, he would be annoyed by the way that underground newspapers portrayed the Stones as left-wing political heroes, while the Beatles were associated with the hippies' soft idealism. The Beatles and the Stones also represent two sides of one of the twentieth century's greatest aesthetic debates. To this day, when people want to get to know each other better, they often ask: "Beatles or Stones?" A preference for one group over the other is thought to reveal something substantial about one's personality, judgment, or temperament. The clichés about the two groups are sometimes overdrawn, but they still retain a measure of plausibility. With some qualifications, the Beatles may be described as Apollonian, the Stones as Dionysian; the Beatles pop, the Stones rock; the Beatles erudite, the Stones visceral; the Beatles utopian, the Stones realistic. None of the other famous dueling paradigms--say, in literature, painting, or architecture--tend to draw people into conversation like the Beatles and the Stones. How could they? The Beatles and Stones were popular artists of unprecedented magnitude; their worldwide record sales are by now uncountable. Obviously the two groups shared a great deal in common; so too did their fans. Had he lived long enough, Sigmund Freud--that master of unmasking human motivations--might have understood the Beatles-Stones debate in terms of "the narcissism of small differences." "It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of hostility between them," Freud wrote. Nevertheless, it is the opposing qualities of the Beatles and the Stones--which are widely known and well understood--that make comparison irresistible. Chances are, if you're reading this book, you already have an informed opinion about which group was better. Moi-même, I don't try to adjudicate the question here. Many others have already done so and anyhow, I'm not a rock critic; I'm an historian. In this joint biography, I've merely juxtaposed the Beatles and the Stones, examined their interrelations, and shown how their rivalry was constructed. That is not to say that I don't hold a preference for one group over the other (of course I do), but rather that it is outside the purview of this book. Besides, when rational criticism prevails, both groups are lauded. When they were in their prime, the Beatles and the Stones were both irreducibly great. Is that to repeat a dogma? Sure. But that doesn't make what they accomplished any less remarkable. Somehow, the young men who made up the Beatles and the Stones managed not only to find each other, but also to burnish their talents collectively. Both groups melded and alchemized into huge creative forces that were substantially greater than the sum of their collective parts. They came of age during one of the most fertile and exciting periods in the history of popular music, and they exerted a commanding presence. That, anyhow, is my own view. And I know I'm not alone. Marianne Faithfull, who dated Mick Jagger in the late '60s, recalled the evening that I mentioned earlier, when members of the Beatles and the Stones turned up at that trendy nightclub and showed off their latest creations for all their friends: Beggars Banquet, and "Hey Jude" and "Revolution." "Vesuvio closed a couple of weeks later," Marianne said, "but the feeling in the room that night was: aren't we all the greatest bunch of young geniuses to grace the planet and isn't this the most amazing time to be alive? And I don't think it was just the drugs." Excerpted from Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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