Much has been said about the Rolling Stones vs. The Beatles. Which one was the better band, the most innovative, the loudest, the most anti-establishment?
No need to enter hat discussion here. For a recent talk, listen to this podcast: http://beatlesfanclub.nl/fab4cast-90-the-stones-the-beatles/ (in Dutch).
Although the Beatles launched the Stones’ career by giving them I Wanna Be Your Man (the Stones’ first hit single), they parted ways musically thereafter. The Beatles never covered a Stones song, and the Stones covered Beatles tracks very rarely (recently they performed Come Together). But the bands remained friends and they sometimes attended each other’s recording sessions.
One song where the Stones and the Beatles appear to be approach each other is Sympathy for the Devil, and Hey Jude. The ‘na na’ section uses the same chord sequence as the verses of Sympathy for the Devil. Both songs were released in 1968; hey Jude was composed around June 1968, while Sympathy was recorded on June 4th. Hence, Sympathy was probably composed earlier, but there is no indication that McCartney had heard it before he wrote Hey Jude.
No need to cry about plagiarism; this chord sequence is very common, listen to I Can’t Explain (the Who), if I Were a Carpenter (Bobby Darin), Fortunate Son (Creedence CR), All Right Now (Free), and many others.
Sympathy tells about several atrocities (wars, murders) committed throughout the history of humanity as if they were somehow inspired by the Devil. No link with the Beatles, although one line might refer to them: The “troubadours who got killed before they reach Bombay” might refer to the Beatles visit to the Maharishi in India, but – fortunately – the Beatles didn’t get killed on the way….
This remix plays bot songs together. The Stones were well aware of the similarity of the chords; in a concert in Baltimore Nov 26, 1969 Mick Jagger actually sang ‘nana na’ and Hey Jude’ over the end of Sympathy. This fragment concludes this remix.