Stones Vs Beatles (Part 1)

I recently spotted an interesting page on my never-ending search for Rolling Stones information on the net. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville has a fascinating class called The History of Rock Music (Music 120). The course covers everything from the roots of Rock to Alternative music in 14 weeks. Along the way there are weekly discussion assignments. It was one of these that caught my eye: Compare and contrast the family, educational, and musical backgrounds of the Beatles with the Rolling Stones. According to the class syllabus, the readings the essays were to be based on were: Bangs, "The British Invasion" (199); Marcus, The Beatles (209) Christgau, "The Rolling Stones"(238); Ward, "The Blues Revival" (343). These readings might be found in the required text: DeCurtis, Anthony, and James Henke with Holly George-Warren eds. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, Third Edition, 1992.

I haven't read any of these readings but from looking at some of the student essays I can guess at what they say. I tried to contact the professor for this class, Leslie C. Gay, Jr., Ph.D., but he did not respond to my email request for an interview. I thought I'd give a response to some of the "facts' presented in the essays. Before I begin, I will admit that I know almost nothing about the Beatles so I will concentrate on the Stones.

The Stones are upper class while the Beatles were lower class.
The Beatles made much of their working class roots so I guess I have to say that that part of the sentence was true. As for the Stones, it is true that Brian came from and upper middle class family, it is not so for all Stones. Keith's family was working class. Bill's father was a bricklayer and Charlie's a lorry driver. Mick's father was a Physical Education instructor making him solidly middle class. The essays seem to imply that the Stones being "upper-class" made their music less valid than that of the struggling Beatles. I don't quite understand how this is so.

The Stones were from London while the Beatles from Liverpool (a couple state they were both from London).
Technically Mick and Keith were from Dartford, Kent. Brian was from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Bill came from Penge, Kent and Charlie was born in Wembley, Middlesex.

Beatles fans were mostly women and Stones fans were mostly male.
According to Bill Wyman, a lot of girls liked the Stones, especially in the bedroom. I

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