In Blur vs Oasis in the 1990s, Blur were considered middle-class, and Oasis working-class. Was there a similar distinction made between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones in the 1960s?

The mid-1990s Britpop phenomenon was an explicitly retro, and explicitly British, phenomenon which specifically looked back at the 1960s era of Swinging London as a kind of golden age (and a period, of course, when members of Blur and Oasis were infants or as yet unborn - Noel Gallagher was born in 1967, Damon Albarn in 1968). This perhaps becomes even more obvious when contrasted with some of the other British music forms of the era - the electronica of the Prodigy and the Chemical Brothers, or the trip-hop of Massive Attack and Portishead, or the jungle and drum & bass scenes that birthed the likes of Goldie and Roni Size - all of which were futurist in focus and distinctively putting a British spin on American music, and much of which was more multiethnic than Britpop.

Oasis certainly did not hide their Beatlemania, and Blur’s debt to 1960s British groups like the Small Faces and The Kinks was fairly clear (both bands also had more modern influences, but the Sixties influence was particularly blatant). And the Blur vs Oasis thing pushed by the music magazines was fairly obviously also a knowing analogue to the Beatles vs Stones rivalry of the 1960s.

Because, yes, there absolutely was a very well-known ‘Beatles vs Stones’ rivalry in the 1960s, which music magazines and publicity people pushed, which painted the Rolling Stones as the bad working class boys and the Beatles as nice and middle-class.

The truth was more complicated. The Beatles were from a Northern port town, Liverpool, and the Stones were from London, closer to the centre of power and influence. The Beatles largely came from very working class backgrounds; their drummer Ringo Starr in particular grew up in the Dingle, one of the poorest areas of Liverpool. George Harrison and Paul McCartney, too, grew up in government housing with parents with working class occupations; George Harrison’s father was a bus driver, while Paul McCartney’s father was basically a delivery man in the cotton trade (and his mother was a nurse). John Lennon was largely raised by his Aunt Mimi and Uncle George; Uncle George’s family had owned and operated dairy farms, and they had means; if you do a Beatles tour in Liverpool, you’ll see that John ‘Working Class Hero’ Lennon very clearly had the most middle-class upbringing of the Beatles; the house he grew up in is much nicer looking.

Some of the Rolling Stones had quite middle-class upbringings. Brian Jones’s father was an aeronautical engineer, while Mick Jagger was the son of teachers and became a student at the London School of Economics. Keith Richards’ grandmother had been a Mayor. Other members of the group had more working-class backgrounds, sons of factory workers or truck drivers.

Early pictures of the Beatles as a group - i.e., the famous ones of the Beatles in Hamburg taken by Astrid Kirchherr - show a group whose style of dress is jeans and leather, with slicked back hair - a ‘bad boy’ rock’n’roll image in the context of the times. Reports about their Hamburg shows also suggest the group played up to that image, with a fairly chaotic stage show, led by a group leader, John Lennon, with a penchant for the controversial and outrageous, for stirring up their German clientele.

But at the point they returned to Liverpool and got the attention of Brian Epstein, the owner of NEMS (the biggest record store in Liverpool at the time), who offered to manage them, the Beatles’ image changed. Epstein was convinced that the Beatles needed a much more professional image to become successful in the U.K. in 1962-1963, and he convinced the group that they had to wear chic tailored suits. It was wearing the suits that they became famous both in the U.K. and in the U.S.; part of their early success was partly because their fresh, professional face offset the fairly raw hard-edged throwback rock’n’roll they were making in the context of 1962-1963, a time when, according to one Decca record executive who famously told Brian Epstein that he was declining to sign the Beatles, rock’n’roll groups were on the way out.

After the phenomenal success of the Beatles first in the U.K. in 1963 and in the U.K. in 1964., there was suddenly a larger space in pop culture for rock’n’roll bands - they were the new norm. The Rolling Stones, in contrast to the Beatles, were effectively blues purists fascinated with Chicago blues in particular, who had come from a jazz background (Charlie Watts, the Rolling Stones’ drummer, still prefers jazz to rock). The Chicago blues of the likes of Muddy Waters or Howlin’ Wolf has a particular sullen, defiant masculinity which the Rolling Stones attempted to emulate, and the Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and their record company (Decca, who had recently told Epstein that rock’n’roll was in its way out) marketed the Rolling Stones as an edgier Beatles.

Initially in public appearances, the Rolling Stones took the Beatles’ lead and wore suits, but Oldham had the idea that where the Beatles were family friendly, the kind of band that might cheekily ask royalty to rattle their jewellery, the Stones should be ‘the band your parents love to hate’. This wasn’t necessarily true to life; Sean O’Mahony, publisher of both band’s official fan magazines, is quoted as saying ‘the Beatles were thugs who were put across as nice blokes, while the Rolling Stones were gentlemen who were made into thugs [by Andrew Loog Oldham]’. But the Rolling Stones stopped wearing suits, and grew their hair longer than the Beatles - and once the Rolling Stones grew confident in their songwriting ability - wrote songs with less melodic skill but more masculine-focused themes, further forming the band’s image (some of their more misogynistic lyrics of the mid-1960s are perhaps best seen as playing to their stereotype).

The Rolling Stones became, effectively, the second most popular British band by carving out that ‘band your parents love to hate’ niche; Melody Maker - one of the biggest U.K. magazines of the age - used headlines like ‘Would You Let Your Sister Go a With A Rolling Stone’. and so ‘the Beatles or the Stones?’ became a talking point of the age. There was a distinct gender difference in the group’s fandoms; where the Beatles had a significant female following, the Rolling Stones’ following was more masculine. The Rolling Stones became seen as working class in attitude, the Beatles as middle class in attitude - both had long hair and rebellious attitudes, but the Rolling Stones had longer hair - gasp - and were sullen where the Beatles were cheeky.

Remember too, that this difference in attitudes towards The Beatles and The Stones comes down to some very British attitudes about ‘working class’ and ‘middle class’ and what those terms represent to different people; as John Lennon later claiming in song to be a working class hero suggests, there are some complicated politics behind what the working class represents (and what the middle class represents) to each other and to themselves. The focus on authenticity that would prize a Stones over a Beatles is itself something of a middle-class attitude; working class attitudes towards music are often suggested to be more functional - can I dance to it? - but both broader classes as always contain a variety of different ways of interacting with pop culture. These British attitudes about class, at the time, were complicated to explain to Americans who had very different attitudes towards class (the Rolling Stones in the context of 1960s American Anglophilia - where ‘I’m Henery The Eighth I Am’ by Herman’s Hermits was a hit where it was received more with groans in England - played up the louche aristocracy thing a bit more). On the other hand, the nice boy vs. bad boy thing is perhaps more universal.

In terms of actual rivalry - unlike Blur and Oasis, where members of the bands genuinely despised each other - the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were generally friendly with each other by all accounts - after all, this was another band who got it, who understood where they were coming from, and who they could commiserate about the insanity of being a 1960s rock star with. But they were also competitive, trying to outdo each other musically (more than one person noticed a pattern of the Rolling Stones following the Beatles’ progression through styles, something most obvious with the Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones’ unsuccessful equivalent to Sgt. Peppers.

If I remember correctly, George Harrison who had suggested to Decca that they should check out the Rolling Stones (who eventually signed to Decca). John Lennon was happy to be a part of the Rolling Stones’ Rock’n’Roll Circus. Jagger and Richards appear in the live broadcast of the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, while Lennon and McCartney sung backing vocals on Rolling Stones’ equivalent single ‘We Love You’, and of course gave the Rolling Stones an early hit with their song ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’.

And one of the most revealing things that Mick Jagger has ever said on tape is when interviewed by the makers of the Rutles documentary ~1977-1978, discussing the Beatles through a thin veil of discussing the mockumentary parody of the band, The Rutles; in that, Jagger discusses being present when the ~~Beatles~~ Rutles play ~~Shea Stadium~~ Che Stadium, which the Rutles doco narrator explains is named after the Cuban guerilla leader, Che Stadium. Jagger talks about the strangeness of the whole thing, and is very amused to let slip just how many girls were backstage, and what exactly the ~~Beatles~~Rutles were about to do to them in plain sight, apparently at once. What’s revealing about this, beyond Jagger’s irreverentness, is that he was clearly enough of an insider to be trusted to witness such Beatles depravity (and perhaps that they might have even been attempting to show off to one of their competitors, assuming the thinly disguised story is true).