Paul McCartney Calls The Rolling Stones a 'Blues Cover Band'

The Beatles' Paul McCartney has a few opinions about The Rolling Stones.

The music icon, 79, referred to Mick Jagger's rock group as a "blues cover band" in a recent interview with The New Yorker.

"I'm not sure I should say it, but they're a blues cover band, that's sort of what the Stones are," McCartney said.

"I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs," he continued, referring to the hugely popular and eclectic musical stylings of The Beatles.

The 78-year-old Stones frontman, however, has his own feelings when it comes to the longstanding debate among music fans: Beatles or Stones?

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In April 2020, Jagger along with his bandmate Keith Richards went on Zane Lowe's Apple Music show to promote new music, and while there, he shared his own opinion on how his band stacks up to the Fab Four.

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"One band is unbelievably luckily still playing in stadiums, and then the other band doesn't exist," Jagger said at the time.

His comment followed McCartney's appearance on The Howard Stern Show, during which he told Howard Stern that "the Beatles were better" than the Stones.

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McCartney has had a lot to share in recent days. In a separate interview with the BBC this week, the Wings frontman also commented on the breakup of The Beatles back in 1970, saying it was the late John Lennon –– not him, as it was previously believed –– who "instigated" the split.

"I didn't instigate the split. That was our Johnny," McCartney revealed to interviewer John Wilson. "I am not the person who instigated the split."

"Oh no, no, no. John walked into a room one day and said I am leaving the Beatles. And he said, 'It's quite thrilling, it's rather like a divorce.' And then we were left to pick up the pieces."

"The point of it really was that John was making a new life with Yoko [Ono, Lennon's widow] and he wanted... to lie in bed for a week in Amsterdam for peace. You couldn't argue with that. It was the most difficult period of my life," the music legend later added.

"This was my band, this was my job, this was my life," he said. "I wanted it to continue. I thought we were doing some pretty good stuff — Abbey Road, Let It Be, not bad — and I thought we could continue."