Former The White Stripes frontman Jack White, has said that he thinks The Rolling Stones “constantly” copied The Beatles throughout their musical career.
Speaking to MOJO magazine, White said that The Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger fed “off whatever the hippest thing was”, including “copying” some of their biggest competitors.
“People want The Rolling Stones to be cool, dirty, raucous,” he said.
“They don’t want to understand that The Rolling Stones were chasing a hit constantly and feeding off whatever the hippest thing was, copying whatever The Beatles did last week. That disrupts the fantasy. And the fantasy’s amazing – I have indulged many times with those kinds of bands. That’s not an insult. That’s them being smart and figuring out a way to keep a train moving.”
Elsewhere in the interview, White mentioned that his favourite Beatle was “Absolutely 1,000 per cent Paul McCartney and went as far as to say that “without Paul, there’s no Beatles”.
He added: “Everybody else is out-of-this-world incredible. But you could theoretically take any other Beatle out of that band and still have The Beatles. You want to be on George’s side, for coolness. But it’s easy to be the guy in the room who doesn’t want to do anything. It’s really hard to be the one in the room who’s trying to motivate everybody. They don’t come off as cool. It’s a shame, because those are the people who make things happen. I’m not a fan of people who don’t want to do things. That’s demotivating.”
White released his fourth studio album Fear of the Dawn this week. On the same day that he released his album, he got engaged to musician Olivia Jean and then married her during his show at Detroit’s Masonic Temple.
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