Greatest writing team?

I was listening to Howard Stern today and he defended his position that Mick and Keith were a better writing team than Lennon-McCartney w the argument that John and Paul really didn't even write together. Certainly not to the extent that Mick and Keith did and still do. After I gave it some thought, he had point.

I don't know Col. That's a difficult judgement to make. By saying that John and Paul 'NEVER' wrote together. is factually inaccurate. We all know that. Now, if by being so prolific and having a much longer duration of time together makes them a better team. Then they would win hands down. No argument. If being a better team is measured by the quality and memorability of the songs composed, then I would have to argue that Howard's POV is full of holes. We know that Mick and Keith were inspired to write by John and Paul. I wanna be your lover baby, I wanna be your man. My take on it.

Jagger & Richards were not a better writing team than Lennon-McCartney. They were good but 2nd tier. The Stones were a one dimensional band based on the lead singer. Very different to the Beatles. The "Beatles", Harrison did have a great influence, were "composers" in a league all their own, leaving all classical and popular music composers for dead at the time.

Look at composer Howard Goodall's video I posted about The Beatles. He states that only three composers in history changed the direction of music and they were Beethoven, Wagner and The Beatles. Goodall appears to rate the Beatles better as they fused classical and popular music, and added their own, which before them had drifted way apart. He states The Beatles saved Classical music.

Goodall goes into a technical analysis and does not use opinion of taste.

Nobody's disputing that Lennon-McCartney isn't the gold standard of songwriting. The only bone of contention is in the word "team". And yes, they did write together early on. But what essentially they became was a staff of writers more than a collaborative effort. That being said, Jagger-Richards wrote Their Satanic Majesties Request. And they are still in the conversation?

That's pretty funny about Their Satanic Majesties Request! LOL! The Stones venture into psychedelia was very brief!

I thought about posting something on this topic a while ago, but didn't want to get into a whole Beatles/Stones debate.

I'm not overly familiar with much of the Stones' catalogue, so I asked my brother-in-law, a dedicated Stones fan, as to a good "way in" to their work.
I mean, I know their big hits and have played many of them in bands over the years, but I had never actually sat and listened to a Stones album from start to finish.

He suggested a few, so I chose Beggar's Banquet, simply for the fact that it came out just a bit after the Beatles' Hey Jude. I thought it might be instructive to compare songs and styles from the same year (incidentally, the year I was born).

I had a hard time sitting through Beggar's Banquet. I find it to be badly performed, badly recorded and badly mixed. It sounds like a teenage band in a garage with an old 4-track cassette recorder. The songs are just not up there: they lack finesse, melodic control and internal variety.
I know fans of the Stones love them for that reason: I always hear the word "raw" from Stones fans. "Raw"--as if primitive rock sounds can disguise a lack of songwriting ability.
Yes, they have had their hits. I recognise that. Some of them were very, very good. I think "Ruby Tuesday" is one of the loveliest melodies in popular music.
The thing is, by 1968, they were wealthy. They had just as much access to high-end producers and engineers as the Beatles did. Their fans deserved better, I think. If Beggar's Banquet is anything to go by (and it was well-received), I'm not inclined to listen to much else.

All this is to say that I cannot believe that Jagger/Richards are even mentioned in the same sentence as Lennon/McCartney.

I know that when you look at the Anthology liner notes, they point out that a song is take 8 of 24. Or take 12 of 30. The Beatles were definitely into a precise take of a song. My guess if we looked at the Stones' studio logs. It would look more like take 2 of 3 or 3 of 5. Not to mention you'd see photos of the Stones in studio and it would be littered w half empty bottles of booze. And most of us know the stories about the police raids and having to flush the contraband. The Beatles certainly had their indescretions, but not like the Stones. They had to toss a member, he was so addled. How bad off do you have to be that Keith Richards thinks you're outta control? The Stones may have been driven, but the Beatles were ambitious.

The Beatles were professionals and took their work seriously. They never stopped working. McCartney is over 70 and still going like a 20 year old.

I reckon John and Paul are the better partnership. I can take the point but I don't accept it.

Lennon & McCartney very much WERE a team. They wrote together through the late 50s and early 60s, they influenced each other's work and added ideas during the mid 60s, and when they finally wrote alone they were constantly inspiring one another. If Paul wrote a great song John felt the need to do the same.
Even in the 70s they listened to each other's music to see how to better themselves.

I tend to think that part of Lennon's decision to "retire" was largely due to his relatively tepid solo career in contrast to McCartney's wildly successful solo career. Even George's. There was a time just before John's death when there was an anti Beatles climate. Paul's albums were getting ravaged by the critics. Great albums like Back to the Egg was getting slammed. Even the initial response to Double Fantasy was brutal.

I dunno. They may not have written every song together but they did influence each other. To me even just tossing in a lyric or whatever still counts as collaborative.