Long before the Beatles and the Rolling Stones became two of rock’s greatest legends, John Lennon and Paul McCartney made a surprising decision that helped give the Stones one of their earliest chart hits—a gesture that revealed their relationship wasn’t quite what many fans imagined.

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63 Years Ago, John Lennon and Paul McCartney Gave a Song to the Rolling Stones

While the two groups are renowned as early rock rivals, John Lennon and Paul McCartney offered them an early hit as an act of friendship.

The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards (left) and Brian Jones, chat with Beatle Paul McCartney, in the early hours (7th July) at the Dorchester Hotel London, to celebrate the premiere (6th July) of The Beatles first film, A Hard Day’s Night, The Stones were celebrating too, their disc, It’s All Over Now, is top of the charts, pictured 2am Tuesday 7th July 1964.
The Rolling Stones, Keith Richards (left) and Brian Jones, chat with Beatle Paul McCartney, in the early hours (7th July) at the Dorchester Hotel London, to celebrate the premiere (6th July) of The Beatles first film, A Hard Day’s Night, The Stones were celebrating too, their disc, It’s All Over Now, is top of the charts, pictured 2am Tuesday 7th July 1964.

By late 1963, the Beatles were by far Britain’s biggest pop group. Just months shy of breaking America and Beatlemania becoming a worldwide phenomenon, the Fab Four’s first 4 hits had all had significant chart success in just under 12 months.

Their debut singles “Love Me Do” and “Please Please Me” cracked the UK’s top 20, with their subsequent releases, “From Me to You” and “She Loves You,” hitting the coveted number one spot. The skyrocketing success of the Beatles left the band so confident, in fact, that they gave away a potential hit they had on their hands to their biggest competitors, The Rolling Stones.

When The Beatles wrote a hit song for The Rolling Stones - Gold Radio

“I Wanna Be Your Man,” which was released by the Stones on November 1, 1963, was the London-born group’s first foray into the UK top 20, peaking at number 12 and remaining there for 16 weeks. Although the band hadn’t reached any breakthrough success before late 1963, the two bands, despite being purported as rivals in popular culture, were well acquainted with one another. Both bands’ members were key figures in the emerging Swinging London scene, where youth-driven trends and rock music began to dominate the British capital.

“You looked at all of the other bands on the scene,” McCartney recalled in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone. “We knew who was no good. We knew who was competition. It paid to know what was going on.”

Even early into the band’s career, McCartney recognized the Rolling Stones as a standout. “We’d hear about the Stones,” he continued. “They played at the Station Hotel [in London]. We went down to see them one night, just stood in the audience. I remember Mick onstage in a gray jacket doing his hand-clappy thing.”

When the two bands began to know each other personally, the agreement to gift the song to group was made. “The guy who turned The Beatles down at Decca Records happened to ask George [Martin, Beatles producer] if he knew anyone worth signing,” McCartney continued “We were friends with them, and I just thought ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’ would be good for them. I knew they did Bo Diddley stuff. And they made a good job of it.”

McCartney did, however, admit he had a little ego in the decision to donate the song. “And I like to show off, say we gave them their first hit. And we did.”

In what may have been an act of good karma, “I Wanna Be Your Lover” was later released on Meet the Beatles!, the 1964 album that formally introduced the Beatles to American audiences, as Beatlemania began to get in full swing, weeks before their first touchdown at the newly-named JFK Airport.

Ironically, the stamping, swaggering sound on the Beatles’ version sounds more similar to the songs the Stones would later become globally renowned for, perhaps proving that the two British groups were inextricably influential on one another’s music during their years of co-existence in the 1960s.