Oh, SNAP!
The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger has fired back at Paul McCartney’s recent belittling comments about the British rock band.
McCartney, 79, recently slammed the Stones as a “blues cover band” in an interview with The New Yorker.
Jagger, 78, and his mates played at the LA’s SoFi Stadium on Thursday, where he called out the plethora of celebrities that were at his concert, including A-listers like Megan Fox, Lady Gaga and Leonardo DiCaprio.
Then Jagger added, “Paul McCartney is here. He’s gonna join us in the blues cover band.”
In his New Yorker interview, McCartney also added, “I think our net was cast a bit wider than [the Stones.’”
However, this was the ex-Beatle’s first verbal beatdown of the Stones. In April 2020, McCartney slammed the rival rock band during a talk with Howard Stern.
“They are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues,” McCartney said at the time. “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.”
Thursday’s concert also wasn’t the first time Jagger has responded to McCartney’s words. On Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show just weeks after the Stern chat, Jagger congenially called McCartney a “sweetheart” and said that “there’s obviously no competition” between the two music groups.
“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,” Jagger explained. “They broke up before that business started, the touring business for real.
“They broke up before the touring business started for real … They [The Beatles] did that [Shea] stadium gig [in 1965]. But the Stones went on,” he continued. “We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now.”
The Rolling Stones also recently retired one of their iconic hits, “Brown Sugar.”
“You picked up on that, huh?,” Stones member Keith Richards, 77, told the LA Times when he was asked if the group had cut one of their most recognizable — if controversial — songs.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to figure out with the sisters quite where the beef is,” he said. “Didn’t they understand this was a song about the horrors of slavery? But they’re trying to bury it.” The song alludes to slaves being sold and beaten in Louisiana, with references to a “slaver” who whips “women just around midnight.”