‘The Rolling Stones‘ understood they had to distinguish themselves in the early 1960s by creating their own music. However, as singles like ‘Love Me Do’ propelled ‘The Beatles‘ to stardom, they realised they needed to appeal to a wider audience than just blues fans.

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Keith Richards stated in his BBC iPlayer broadcast of ‘My Life as a Rolling Stone,’ “We were working the clubs in London and The Beatles just came out and had a hit, Love Me Do. And we said, ‘Oh man, what a great record.”

“The Beatles suddenly explode and there you are going, ‘Oh, yeah. But we’re a blues band. The Beatles changed this whole thing,” Mick Jagger recalled.

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“Our job was to be like the premier rhythm and blues band in London and we managed that! But we had no idea of progressing beyond that stage,” Richards explained.

“Keith, he’d play The Beatles all the time. It’d drive me absolutely batty! And why he was playing The Beatles wasn’t because he didn’t want to listen to anything else. Keith wanted to write these pop songs cos we’re undeniably the blues band. But we knew we had to be a pop band,” Jagger admitted.

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“We were just envious, too, man, y’know? I mean, they’re doing what we want, y’know, they got it. They could make records. The Holy Grail was to make records, to be able to get into a studio. It was like diamonds. Y’know, you’d think it was a gold mine, which in a way it was, y’know what I mean? But you’d think you were invading Fort Knox just to make a record,” Richards acknowledged.