The debate between who's better – The Rolling Stones or The Beatles – rages on

Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney made playful digs at one another in recent interviews

Some things never change: The battle as to which band is better, The Beatles or The Stones, is still going.

The latest instalment in the 60-year debate is between Mick Jagger and Sir Paul McCartney, both of whom have always claimed their band is the best of the two.

McCartney told Howard Stern in an interview earlier this month that he agreed with the host’s assertion that The Beatles were the better band.

“[The Stones] are rooted in the blues,” he said. “When they’re writing stuff, it has to do with the blues. We had [more] influences.”

He added: “There’s a lot of differences, and I love the Stones, but I’m with you. The Beatles were better.”

Jagger has since responded in his own interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music.

Asked what he thought of McCartney’s comments, he said: “That’s so funny. [McCartney’s] a sweetheart. There’s obviously no competition.”

“The big difference, though, is and sort of slightly seriously, is that The Rolling Stones is a big concert band in other decades and other areas when The Beatles never even did an arena tour, Madison Square Garden with a decent sound system,” he said. “They broke up before that business started, the touring business for real.”

He continued: “So that business started in 1969 and the Beatles never experienced that. They did a great gig, and I was there, at Shea stadium. They did that stadium gig.

“But the Stones went on, we started doing stadium gigs in the Seventies and [are] still doing them now. That’s the real big difference between these two bands. One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums and then the other band doesn’t exist.”

Jagger did not address McCartney’s claim that the Stones copied Sgt Pepper for their album Their Satanic Majesties Request.

“We started to notice that whatever we did, the Stones sort of did it shortly thereafter,” McCartney said.

“We went to America and we had huge success. Then the Stones went to America. We did Sgt. Pepper, the Stones did a psychedelic album. There’s a lot of that.”

Both McCartney and the Stones took part in the recent One World Concert, which was organised by Lady Gaga with Global Citizen and the World Health Organisation as a “thank you” to those on the frontline in the battle against coronavirus.