Music
The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger had the privilege of knowing both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The “Ruby Tuesday” star discussed the differences between the two of them.
The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger had the privilege of knowing both John Lennon and Paul McCartney. The “Ruby Tuesday” star discussed the differences between the two of them. On top of that, Jagger revealed the impact he had on John’s music.
The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger: John Lennon was more ‘acerbic’ than Paul McCartney
During a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger discussed the “Instant Karma!” singer. Jagger had a lot more to say about John than he did about Paul McCartney. “[John] was educated and very smart and cynical and funny and really amusing company,” the “Dancing in the Street” singer said. “He had a very funny take on the rest of The Beatles. If they boasted too much about how great they were, he had ways to shut them up. He’d say, ‘Don’t worry, he’s just getting used to being famous. Shurrup!’
“As if he’d been famous longer, you know,” he added. “But I used to get on with Paul as well. Paul is very nice and easy to get on with — didn’t have the acerbic side. You always knew with John, you’re gonna be on the end of a lot of sarcastic remarks that you weren’t always in the mood for.”
The Rolling Stones’ Mick Jagger said he had a musical impact on the ‘Imagine’ singer
Jagger said that John desired to be the most famous person in the world. In Jagger’s opinion, John wanted to surpass the fame of Elvis Presley. On top of that, Jagger was sympathetic to John’s infamous statement that The Beatles were “more popular than Jesus.” That probably isn’t true, but The Beatles eclipsed The Rolling Stones in popularity, even if The Rolling Stones lasted much longer as a band.
Jagger said that his relationship with John had a musical component. “There was a professional thing above the friendship,” he said. “You could talk about problems, bounce things off each other, and get a different take on it. Later, when John wasn’t in The Beatles anymore, he was bouncing more ideas off me than ever before.” Jagger noted that John ran ideas by other people, too, but he stressed that John ran ideas by him a lot.
John Lennon loved 1 Rolling Stones song
John had plenty to say about Jagger as well. In a 1980 interview from All We Are Saying: The Last Major Interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the former Beatle said he helped inspire The Rolling Stones’ “Miss You.” In John’s opinion, his song “Bless You” from the album Walls and Bridges was the model for “Miss You,” though he was not sure if Jagger drew from “Bless You” consciously or not.
While John noticed a similarity between the two songs, he had no hard feelings about it. In fact, John loved “Miss You,” deeming it the better song. That shows you how open-minded John was. At a time when a lot of rock ‘n’ rollers dismissed disco music outright, he thought a disco hit was better than one of his songs! Beyond that, John felt that his songs — and all of music — belonged to everybody and that only music publishers thought otherwise.
Jagger had some things to say about John and Paul — but John seems to have made a bigger impression on him.
