Rolling Stones are a blues cover band, says Mccartney

SIR PAUL MCCARTNEY has described the Rolling Stones as “a blues cover band” and claimed The Beatles tapped into a wider array of musical influences.

The singer said “our net was cast a bit wider than theirs” when it came to making music, but added: “I’m not sure I should say it.”

His comments, made in an interview with The New Yorker, threaten to provoke another response from Sir Mick Jagger, the Rolling Stones’ frontman, after the pair traded words over their legacy in jest last year.

Sir Paul said in an interview with Howard Stern in April 2020 that the Stones were “rooted in the blues” and “The Beatles were better”, prompting Sir Mick to respond in a separate interview: “One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.”

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones were often framed as feuding with each other during the 1960s, but the two groups were actually on friendly terms.

In his latest interview, Sir Paul was questioned about the sophisticated composition of many Beatles songs, which has drawn praise from experts on classical music. Asked whether his band worked from a “broader range of musical language” than other bands, such as the Rolling Stones, he replied: “I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are. I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”

It comes after Sir Paul blamed John Lennon for the demise of The Beatles in a separate interview with the BBC.

Sir Paul has traditionally been viewed as the driving force behind the band’s split in 1970, after he revealed in a press release for his solo album that he was on

‘I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band. The Beatles’ net was cast a bit wider than theirs’

a “break” from the group. But he told a forthcoming episode of BBC Radio 4’s This Cultural Life: “I didn’t instigate the split. That was our Johnny.

“John walked into a room one day and said, ‘I am leaving the Beatles.’ And he said, ‘It’s quite thrilling, it’s rather like a divorce.’ And then we were left to pick up the pieces.”

“The point of it really was that John was making a new life with Yoko and he wanted... to lie in bed for a week in Amsterdam for peace. You couldn’t argue with that. It was the most difficult period of my life.”