The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show" (AP file photo)/Mick Jagger and Keith Richards perform in 2006 (AP photo)

In “The Beatles vs. the Rolling Stones: Sound Opinions on the Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Rivalry” (Voyageur Press), Tribune music critic Greg Kot and Jim DeRogatis,  cohosts of the nationally syndicated public-radio show “Sound Opinions,” tackle one of the liveliest debates in rock history: Who’s cooler, the Beatles or the Stones? The dueling critics discuss and debate the bands’ hard-scrabble beginnings in Britain during the early ‘60s, make head-to-head comparisons of iconic albums (which is the better double album, the Stones’ “Exile on Main Street” or the Beatles’ self-titled “white album”?), evaluate the band members’ individual contributions (who’s really the more accomplished drummer, Charlie Watts or Ringo Starr?) and assess the bands’ legacies as trend-setters, image-makers and musical visionaries. In the following excerpt about the bands’ psychedelic phase, Kot (GK) and DeRogatis (JD) dish on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and the Stones’ “Their Satanic Majesties Request.” 

JD: When it comes to the psychedelic years, I have to say that it always bugs me that the Beatles are portrayed as the “Acid Apostles of the New Age,” leading rock ’n’ roll into the psychedelic flowering of the mid-‘60s. The Rolling Stones are considered to have sneered at the genre — the drugs, the sounds, and the whole "peace and love" hippie movement — dabbling in it reluctantly, at best, and laughing at it, at worst. Conventional wisdom is that the Stones were mocking “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” with “Their Satanic Majesties Request,” never really buying into the idea of using psychedelic drugs as the portal to journey "toward the white light," to use the phraseology of the time. I’m going to argue that this view isn’t right at all, and that the Beatles and the Stones really got to psychedelia at pretty much the same time, beginning in 1965 and coming to full fruition in 1966.

GK: Yes, the Stones did more than just dabble in the sounds of that era, and the key was Brian Jones. Many remember him as being the purest of the blues purists among the Stones, at least initially, but he was also the guy visiting Morocco to study and record the Master Musicians of Joujouka. During the Stones’ middle period (1965-67), Jones’ influence on those records was profound in the way he was able to bring in all these exotic instruments and help Mick Jagger and Keith Richards turn this blues-rock band into a Swinging London pop group — edgy and nasty, sure, but still a force on the pop charts with distinctive-sounding singles (“Paint It, Black,” “Ruby Tuesday,” “Lady Jane,” “Under My Thumb”). A lot of these instruments, most of them played by Jones, influenced the psychedelic sound that you’re talking about: dulcimer, sitar, marimba, recorder, oboe, Mellotron.