The Beatles against the Rolling Stones was the title of a play by Jordi Mesalles and Miquel Casamayor, premiered in 1981 at the Teatre Romea in Barcelona, not without some scandal: Jordi Pujol's Generalitat was then trying to quell the riotous Barcelona of the 70s and found some of the expressions in the text to be objectionable, because they were offensive.
The book concerned the rivalry between fans of the two bands. No other antagonism in popular music has generated so much literature and so much commotion: neither that of Aretha Franklin and Patti Labelle, nor that of Oasis and Blur, nor that of Taylor Swift and Katy Perry... well, we would have to exclude that of the rappers from the East and West coast of the United States, which ended with shots being fired and notorious singers dead.
In some way, the rivalry between Beatles and Rolling Stones will be revived in the Barça-Real Madrid match on October 28 thanks to the agreement with Spotify, the Barça sponsor.
On the one hand, the men's section of FC Barcelona will wear the tongue logo on its shirt (Alexia and Aitana's team will do so later against Sevilla). On the other hand, Madrid has recovered this year a Beatles anthem, Hey Jude, which the Bernabeu sings to encourage its new star, the charismatic Jude Bellingham. He doesn't sound as in tune as that distant She Loves You from the Kop stands at Anfield Road, but the truth is that he impresses.
A complete Beatles against Rolling Stones in the era of reggaeton, after it was Rosalía who gave the name to the shirt in the last classic at the Camp Nou.
The tongue-lashing is just one more chapter in the history of the rivalry between two antagonistic cities (a goal for the squad, some will say). The Spanish chronology of the Rolling Stones overlaps with the trajectory of two cities that never stop competing, despite how much they have in common. Let's see.
Those of Jagger and Richards landed in 1976 in the effervescent post-Franco and libertarian Barcelona with the help of the promoter Gay Mercader. That '76 show at the Monumental, with Ronnie Wood dressed as a bullfighter, has become over time the symbol of a Barcelona that was the Spanish gateway to modernity arriving from Europe. The image of young people without a ticket confronting the police contributed to fueling the legend. It is an icon of post-Franco Barcelona.
Madrid would take revenge six years later. In 1982, what had to be a double Stones concert in both cities became a Madrid monologue, since Espanyol refused at the last minute to give up the old Sarrià stadium and the two performances ended up being scheduled at the Vicente. Calderón of Atlético, in the midst of the Movida. One of them, with thousands of people braving an intense downpour, is considered by the capital's fans to be the best concert that has ever been held in Spain...
Since then there has been a certain alternation. The promoters have preferred not to burn down a city with two consecutive performances. Because, as much as we get excited when our idols tell us from the stage that we are the best, the truth is that tours are decided based on cold calculations of profitability, with no room for feelings. Artists are polygamous by nature, capable of declaring their faithful and unconditional love for three cities in the same country in just one week. Even if their name is Bruce Springsteen.
Madrid and Barcelona are also less than three hours away by train, which is how long it takes to travel from one end of a large global metropolis to the other. You schedule the concert in one and the audience comes to you from the other. In fact, the Vicente Calderón of '82 was full of displaced Catalans. The only thing the singer has to do is not screw up. As Jagger once said, “I've learned over the years that before you say 'Hello Seattle' you should make sure you're in Seattle.”
Barça fans celebrated the new shirt on Thursday as a success for the team and the city. The promotional impact is undoubted. But Madrid now has the advantage in the chant. What Rollingston anthem can Barça oppose to the unappealable Hey Jude of the whites?
They are not missing from Jagger's repertoire
What cannot be argued is that with that shirt on you have no right to lose, so the responsibility lies with the Barça players.
