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Paul McCartney claimed his bandmate George Harrison got The Rolling Stones a recording contract with the label that turned The Beatles down. That isn’t all the Fab Four did to kick-start their friends’ careers. Later, The Beatles gave The Rolling Stones a hit song.

Paul McCartney of The Beatles and Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones on a train in 1967.
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney of The Beatles | Victor Blackman/Express/Getty Images

George Harrison helped The Rolling Stones get a recording contract with the label that turned The Beatles down

In The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present, Paul recalled a day in the summer of 1963, shortly after The Beatles moved to London, when he and John Lennon admired the guitars on display in shops on Charing Cross Road.

The Beatles were fairly new and they’d only been a part of the EMI family for about a year. They didn’t have any No. 1 hits in the U.S. yet, but they did have a No. 1 in the U.K., “Please Please Me.” Then came their second, “From Me To You” (their first No. 1 on the official U.K. chart).

As Paul and John looked through the shop windows, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards drove by. The Rolling Stones invited to drive them up town. In the car, Jagger told Paul and John that they’d finally landed a recording contract.

Paul wrote that he and John knew this already because George “had got it for them.” The Rolling Stones had signed with Dick Rowe at Decca, the same record label that turned down The Beatles a year prior.

At a cocktail party, Rowe asked George if he knew any good groups and that he’d “made one mistake” already. George replied, “Yeah, they’re called The Rolling Stones. You should try and sign them.” He told Rowe The Rolling Stones frequented the Station Hotel in Richmond. When Rowe saw them perform, he signed them “pretty much on the spot.”

The Rolling Stones got their first hit from The Beatles

Richards once said to Paul, “You had four singers in your group. We only had one.” It’s true. The Beatles also paved the way. However, they gave more to The Rolling Stones than any other band. They didn’t just get a recording contract from The Beatles; they also got a hit song, “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

Paul called the song “pretty basic,” but it was cool enough for their drummer Ringo Starr to sing. The Beatles recorded the song for their upcoming album, With The Beatles, and had no plans of releasing it as a single. When Jagger told Paul their newest problem was getting a new single, Paul and John offered The Rolling Stones “I Wanna Be Your Man.”

“Our version was a bit more of a Bo Diddley shuffle; theirs is quite raw and distorted, almost punk-like, and it was their first big hit,” Paul wrote.

The Rolling Stones owed a lot to The Beatles, and they became friends, despite whatever the press wrote.

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There wasn’t a rivalry between the bands, at least according to Paul McCartney

After The Beatles helped The Rolling Stones get a recording contract and a hit song, the bands became friends. Paul wrote that they hung out together and talked about what music they were making. Paul hung out at Richards’ flat, and he and John sang on The Rolling Stones’ “We Love You.” There were great friends.

So, the idea that The Rolling Stones and The Beatles were rivals was just untrue. It was just something that the press started. “Mick used to come over to my house in London so that I could play him all the new American records while all this was being written,” Paul wrote.

Whatever the press wrote stuck. Paul added, “Stones, Beatles – we were big buddies, forever and ever, but the fans started to believe there was some truth in the manufactured rivalry. There never was.”

However, Paul has said that The Beatles were better. On The Howard Stern Show, Paul said he and The Beatles started to notice that whatever they did, The Rolling Stones would do it shortly after.

Later, Jagger inducted The Beatles into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. During his speech, he said that in those early days, when he realized The Beatles, who weren’t that different from The Rolling Stones, had a recording contract and a song in the charts, he was almost sick. However, the two bands became friends and helped each other. They gave fans some great music.

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