Free Beatles vs. Stones by John McMillian Page A

it.”
“They’re into the same blues thing as us,” said Brian. “We’ll have to listen to see what they do later.”
I liked the song and I could hear the harmonies, but I did not think the music sounded anything like the Stones. Brian’s point was that the Beatles were using the bluesy sound and that if they took off successfully, everyone else would copy it. The Stones would be just another group, it was important to be first. The Beatles did some more songs and later in the broadcast the Stones’ spirits dropped further when they performed a Chuck Berry song. Mick heard this too and much debating was to take place later about whether the Beatles had professional arrangements or whether they were that good on their own account. The overall answer was a bit of each.
    “It was an attack from the North,” Keith Richards said. “We thought we were the only guys in the world.” Twenty-five years later, when he inducted the Beatles into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jagger likewise admitted that he was taken aback when he first heard about the Beatles.“They had long hair, scruffy clothes but—they had a record contract!” he said. “And they had a record in the charts, with a bluesy harmonica on it, called ‘Love Me Do.’ When I heard the combination of all these things, I was almost sick. ” However strenuously the Stones would argue later on that their rivalry with the Beatles was invented on press row, it is plainly evident that when they heard the Beatles for the very first time, they felt deflated and threatened.
    In subsequent months, though, the Stones learned to respect the Beatles begrudgingly, if only because of the resounding impact the Liverpool foursome was having on the British music scene. By the early spring of 1963, the entire landscape for beat and rock ’n’ roll music was shifting under the Beatles’ influence. In virtually every city and town, fresh-faced teens began assembling themselves into new groups, many of them bent on composing their own material. Mail-order companies that sold guitars and drum kits did booming business. Nightclubs and dance halls emerged to accommodate this sudden spike in interest. Suddenly, attention shifted to the North, where talent scouts could be found scampering to try to sign The Next Big Thing. Meanwhile, the local and national press was turning volte-face from its previous attitudes toward pop and rock; now they began treating it all seriously, rather than from on high. By April, the Beatles were atop the British music charts with “From Me to You”—another original song that featured Lennon playing the mouth organ.
    It is little wonder, then, that Gomelsky had left the Beatles at their taping and rushed back to Richmond, where he found the Stones conversing over sandwiches before their first set.
    “That’s when I told them, ‘Hey, something nice might happen today,’ ” Gomelsky said.
    “What?”
    “The Beatles might come to . . .”
    Brian responded with an astonished whisper: “ ‘What? The Beatles? You’re joking! What, wha? ’ This was all the encouragement they needed.”
    Gomelsky continues: “The club used to open at seven, the Stones used to go on first time at eight-fifteen to nine o’clock. Then a break, have to finish by ten-thirty, Sunday pubs close, and be out of the place by eleven. So first set they didn’t come. Brian came and said, ‘They didn’t come, they didn’t come.’ I said, ‘Brian, I told you they’re probably finishing now they’ll be here by nine-fifteen, nine-thirty.’ He said ‘all right.’ He was so nervous.”
    Sure enough, shortly after the Stones launched their second set, Wyman says he was “staggered” to look up and see “four shadowy figures” standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the audience, all of them dressed in matching suede overcoats and leather caps.“Shit, that’s the Beatles! ” he exclaimed to himself. Richards tells the story similarly.“We were playing a pub,