Roger Daltrey has branded The Rolling Stones a “mediocre pub band”.
The Who frontman, 77, made the comment after Sir Paul McCartney labelled Sir Mick Jagger’s band “a blues cover band”.
Speaking to the Coda Collection, Daltrey said: “Mick Jagger, you’ve got to take your hat off to him. He’s the number one rock ‘n’ roll performer.”
He then quipped: “But as a band, if you were outside a pub and you heard that music coming out of a pub some night, you’d think, ‘Well, that’s a mediocre pub band!'”
The Beatles legend, 79, has made no secret of the fact he believes the ‘Let it Be’ hitmakers were better than the ‘Honky Tonk Women’ group, and last month, he insisted they had more range than the blues-orientated band.
He said: “I’m not sure I should say it, but they’re a blues cover band, that’s sort of what the Stones are.
“I think our net was cast a bit wider than theirs.”
Jagger, 78, continued the pair’s back-and-forth at the ‘Paint it Black’ rockers’ SoFi Stadium gig in Los Angeles recently, where he quipped on stage: “Paul McCartney is here. He’s gonna join us in the blues cover band.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Daltrey admitted he has always envied Led Zepellin frontman and close pal Robert Plant.
He explained: “I managed to get the short straw of all the singers in all the bands.
“No solos! Who songs are all lyrics. Robert Plant — Percy, as we call him — he’s a very good friend of mine, and we do joke about it. He said you could go off and read a book when [Jimmy] Page started up on a guitar solo or [John] Bonham stated on a drum solo. And I suddenly thought, ‘I wonder what it would have been like being in a band like that!'”
And in the wide-ranging chat, the ‘My Generation’ hitmaker predicted that the internet will be “probably the end of our civilisation”.
He said: “I never thought any good would come of it, and I still don’t think anything good’s come of it. I think if we’re not careful it’s probably the end of our civilisation.”