Paul McCartney Goes There in New Yorker Interview: Rolling Stones are ‘a Blues Cover Band’

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Paul McCartney is, once again, sparking up one of rock and roll’s greatest rivalries.

McCartney threw some serious shade at the Rolling Stones while speaking to David Remnick for a New Yorker profile, suggesting that the Beatles had a more impressive range of musical language than their peers.

“I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are,” McCartney said. “I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”

The dig comes after McCartney told Howard Stern that the Beatles were better than the Stones during an April 2020 interview.

“They are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues,” McCartney said. “We had a little more influences … There’s a lot of differences and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.”

The comment even caught Mick Jagger’s attention, who called McCartney a “sweetheart” before insisting that “there’s obviously no competition” between their two bands.

“The big difference, though, is, and sort of slightly seriously, is that the Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas, when the Beatles never even did an arena tour, or Madison Square Garden with a decent sound system,” said Jagger. “They broke up before that business started, the touring business for real.”

Jagger went on to note that the Beatles did do a Shea stadium gig in 1965, yet added that the Stones were able to continue playing in larger arenas.

“We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now,” he added. “That’s the real big difference between these two bands. One band is unbelievably luckily, still playing in stadiums, and then the other band doesn’t exist.”