Bob Stanley
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Pop stardom is never a given. No matter how big and famous you are, there’s always someone, often the “new you”, snapping at your heels. How do you deal with a Johnny-come-lately and keep your dignity, not to mention your place in the pantheon?
The Beatles are underrated – we all know that – but one of the reasons they’re underrated is because of the amount of help they gave to, and influence they had on, supposed neck-and-neck rivals The Rolling Stones. Around the time debut single Come On was in the Top 30, John Lennon was walking down Denmark Street when he heard his name being shouted from a taxi. It was Mick and Keith. He got in and they told him that they were struggling to come up with a second single. Lennon offered them “Ringo’s song”, I Wanna Be Your Man, which they duly released just ahead of its appearance on With The Beatles. They then spent the next six years driving Lennon nuts by, as he saw it, copying every move The Beatles made. Sitar on Norwegian Wood? There it is a few weeks later on Paint It Black.