The Great Debate: Exiled on Abbey Road

In a song by the band Metric, "Gimme Sympathy" (from their most recent album Fantasies)...

...the chorus is this:

Gimme sympathy
After all of this is gone
Who'd you rather be
The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?
Oh seriously
You're gonna make mistakes, you're young
Come on, baby, play me something
Like 'Here's Comes the Sun'

While the song sounds little like the Fab Four or Mick and Keith, it is interesting to hear a younger band referencing the "Beatles or Stones?" debate—something that was going on before even I was born.

For rock music fans (at least those of the applicable proclivities), one's choice in the dichotomy is not merely a preference for the music; it's a window into the personality.  Of course, now that we decades to analyze, the answer reveals as much about how one interprets what both bands are.

As far as the music itself goes, I am a bigger Beatles fan.  It's not that I don't also like the Stones' music, but it's not to the same degree.  However, it's not exactly a fair fight.  I have more of a nostalgic appreciation for John, Paul, George, and Ringo.  When I was in middle school I had a quarter of music appreciation, and the teacher was a Beatles fanatic who breezed through Mozart and Beethoven to get to the lads from Liverpool.  Then a few years later I helped a friend (with whom I'm still friends to this day) discover the Beatles, and arguably that friend turned into a bigger Beatles fanatic than my middle school teacher.  So for me, beyond liking the brilliant songs, I associate the Fab Four with personal experiences. 

I am not a fanatic, however.  I own all the CDs of the Beatles studio albums (the ones released around 1987, including the Past Masters volumes), but I don't have all the other material that was released (with outtakes and live tracks, etc.).  Not that I lack a foundation for appreciating that, but it was not such that I had to have it. (And I'm on the fence about the new remastered versions that were just released. I do have a wedding I'm still paying off.)

With the Stones, I own Exile on Main St., and a couple greatest hits collections.  I acknowledge their talent and their place in rock history, but that appreciation is almost a bit more academic than deeply emotional.  I think the lilty guitar opening of "Gimme Shelter" is phenomenally good—I mean, in a way that it should be studied in music classes 200 years from now—but it doesn't hit me the same way as even "And Your Bird Can Sing."

That said, who would I rather be?  Probably the Stones.

But what does that mean? 

In some circles the distinction might be that the Beatles were pop purity and the Stones were blues grit; in short, the Stones were the bad boys, and therefore had more fun.  However, that's not how I think about it.

The Stones were immensely popular, and continue to be, but the Beatles reached a level of popularity that approached deification; as John Lennon astutely noted, they were bigger than Jesus in their heyday.  It's not that they sought that status; that's merely how people responded to them.  It reached the point where they stopped touring.  They were too big.  They couldn't possibly stay together into the 1970s; their fire had burned too hot in the '60s.  (Yes, I know their last album got pressed up in 1970, but that scarcely constitutes the full decade.)

The Stones had longevity.  Check that: they have longevity.  They continued touring through five decades, and probably have another one in them.  They have put out some material that just does nothing for me, but as I noted they've put out some true classics.  But ultimately, they represent the fact that they're not dead; they may never have burned quite as hot, but that meant they didn't burn out.  They cannot really claim to be "bad boys" any more (or "boys" in any context), but they lasted long enough that such an association ceased to be apropos.

So, this suggests that I am not interested in being worshipped.  I'd rather have a more measured but protracted existence.  I may not be a man of wealth and taste, but I do not seek to be the Sun King.

But the bigger question may be this:  What the heck is someone in his 40s doing listening to Metric?

(Actually, that's an easy one: they remind me of the '80s--a decade for which I was around.)