3 Musicians Who Hated The Rolling Stones: ‘They Were Always S*** on Stage’
The Rolling Stones are one of the greatest classic rock bands by almost any measure. They won over millions of fans, but some fellow musicians hate The Rolling Stones. Their unbelievable career span, run of great albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and multiple No. 1 hits don’t mean much to other artists who couldn’t stand Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, and crew.
The Rolling Stones hated some of their own music
The musicians who hated The Rolling Stones clearly didn’t hide their disdain for the band’s music. Neither did Jagger and Richards. After more than 60 years as a group, the two lifelong members hated some of the music they made together.
Both Richards and Jagger hate Their Satanic Majesties Request. Unless they meant something different by calling it garbage. The 1967 album seemed to be a response to The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It contained some of the better songs in the Stones’ catalog and peaked at No. 2 in the United States.
Mick and Keith disagreed about the signature song “Street Fighting Man.” It’s one of Richards’ favorite Rolling Stones songs, probably because he held onto the riff for a few years and finished it quickly alongside Watts when inspiration struck again. Yet Jagger doesn’t like it much because the message doesn’t resonate more than 50 years later.
Keith, Mick, and the rest of the band earned the right to mock their music. The musicians who hate The Rolling Stones just seem to have petty gripes about the legendary band.
1. John Lennon
Paul McCartney once said the media manufactured the rivalry between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It’s not a far-fetched take considering Paul and John Lennon gave the Stones the song that became their first top-20 hit in England (“I Wanna Be Your Man”). Even when the bands traded insults, it appeared to be in good nature.
He wrote a song for them, he appeared in The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, and hung out with Jagger in New York in the 1970s, but John was one of the musicians who hated The Rolling Stones. At least for a while. He hated Mick as of 1971, saying he was a joke, as were his attempts at acting. John said the Stones weren’t in the same class as The Beatles.
The relationship between John and Mick eventually thawed, but the bespectacled Beatle had no love lost for The Rolling Stones in the early 1970s.
2. Ginger Baker
Baker and his Cream bandmates, Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, all hated Led Zeppelin. The band’s drummer apparently hated any band that became bigger than his.
In a 2013 Rolling Stone interview, he said every Rolling Stones member but Watts was not a good musician. Perhaps he meant the 21st-century iteration of the band. Many classic rock fans applaud founding member Brian Jones’ musical versatility, and they acknowledge Mick Taylor as being an underrated guitar player during his tenure (which overlapped with the band’s peak in the late 1960s and early 1970s).
3. Lemmy Kilmister
The Motörhead bassist and frontman grew up listening to the Stones and Beatles. He listened to and found inspiration from both bands, but Lemmy penned some words in his autobiography (via Far Out) that point to a love-hate relationship with The Rolling Stones. Motörhead covered “Sympathy for the Devil,” but that doesn’t mean their bassist loved everything about the band.
Lemmy called the Stones a bunch of “mummy’s boys” who manufactured hardship (living poor in London), as opposed to the Fab Four, who survived growing up in tough Liverpool neighborhoods.
The bearded bassist spared no hate for The Rolling Stones live act: “All they had was Mick Jagger dancing about. The Stones made great records, but they were always s*** on stage.”
Classic rock fans peg them as one of the best bands of any era. Yet a few fellow musicians hated The Rolling Stones with a fiery passion.
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