The Beatles vs. The Rolling Stones

Interesting question, I thank the gods of music it's only hypothetical. The respective contributions of each band are so different, it's hard for me to compare them. The Beatles seem to have had huge influence on the mainstream of popular songcraft, much deeper than the Stones. That said, my personal tastes greatly incline me towards respecting the Stones musical legacy. They assimilated and reinterpreted the gritty and raw aspects of the blues and R&B with vastly more authentic passion to my ears. The only white guys to ever play guitar as funky and with as much groove as Keith I can think of offhand are Stevie Ray and maybe Steve Cropper. Keith's style is rather low key though, he often says that he doesn't think in terms of lead or rhythm guitar, it's all groove in service of the song. The tag of being followers is a misnomer, they took longer to develop into their prime. They didn't do most of their best work until the Beatles has ceased to exist. Sure "Satanic Majesties" and some of their neodisco stuff smelled to death of trend following, but that doesn't negate their other contributions. I can't imagine the history of rock without "Satisfaction" or "Yesterday." In the end, each bands' respective contributions appeal to rather opposite poles of personalities and musical tastes. What a poorer musical legacy we'd have lacking either.

Yoko will sing.

Give up??

In the context of your question, the Beatles are more important, for several reasons.

First, the Beatles had George Martin as a producer. He literally created production techniques that had never been tried, and set the standard for the multi-tracking and invented studio techniques and tricks later to be expanded upon by many big name groups in the late 1960's and early 1970's.

Second, the Beatles had Brian Epstein as a manager. He recognized their raw talent, groomed them through the dumpy clubs in Hamburg and Liverpool, and got them ready for "game-day"...their 1964 American tour. I also believe that he was the one who replaced Pete Best with Ringo.

Third, the Beatles were "nice boys"...charming, humorous, witty, and not "scary looking". Even in their early days, the Stones were pretty rough looking. The Beatles were more marketable than the Stones. After Elvis was inducted into the Army, the "Payola" scandal, the persecution of Alan Freed, and the religious backlash in which R&R music was either the work of Satan, or "N..ger music" to seduce and ruin the chastity of young white woman, by 1963 there was no true R&R on the American airwaves [other than small market stations]. It took a likable, non-threatening group to revive R&R. The Beatles opened the "British Invasion" floodgates.

Fourth Beatles had a legendary song-writing duo [Lennon-McCartney]. I think that their competitiveness, and different styles resulted in a tension that made the sum of their songs greater than the parts. Lyrically, the Stones weren't even close to the depth and range of material that the Beatles wrote.

Fifth, as alluded to before, the Beatles set the standard; everyone else tried to follow. Remember the sitar craze after the Beatles went to India? Short lived [thank God!] as it was, dozens of artists had to include a sitar on one of the album songs [if you hear a sitar on a R&R album it was recorded in either 1966 or 1967]. Remember the production competition between the Beatles and the Beach Boys [Brian Wilson]? "REVOLVER" followed by "PET SOUNDS" followed by "SGT. PEPPERS". I have heard that a bunch of prominent musicians [including Brian] got together to hear a pre-release tape of "SGT. PEPPERS...they listened so many times that the tape actually wore out! Someone in the group of listeners glumly proclaimed, "Now what do we do?!!!"

The Beatles were originally a R&R/blues band that transformed into what I classify as an "Art" band. The Stones have stayed a R&R/Blues band. I like both groups, but the Beatles definitely had more influence on the acceptance and evolution of R&R music, and studio production.