Macca: Rhythm and loser

BEATLES legend Paul McCartney has devastatingly dismissed his old rivals the Rolling Stones as a “blues cover band.”

“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 in the devious dig, adding, “I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”

McCartney got on his rock ’n’ roll high horse in The New Yorker just as the Stones continue on what feels like their millionth US tour.

And it is not the first time he took a dig at the band. In April 2020, McCartney claimed to Howard Stern that The Beatles were better than the Stones, who he said “are rooted in the blues. When they are writing stuff, it has to do with the blues.”

“We had . . . more influences,” McCartney went on. “There’s a lot of differences and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.”

Stones frontman Mick Jagger later responded to the comments on Zane Lowe’s Apple Music show, calling McCartney a “sweetheart” and saying that “there’s obviously no competition” between the 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.”

“[The Beatles] did that [Shea] Stadium gig [in 1965]. But the Stones went on,” he said. “We started stadium gigs in the 1970s and are still doing them now.”

Indeed, the Stones still are still touring, even without longtime drummer Charlie Watts, who died in August.

“That’s the real big difference between these two bands,” Jagger added. “One band is unbelievably luckily, still playing in stadiums, and then the other band doesn’t exist.”