The Beatles Will Battle the Rolling Stones in Arlington With a Joint Cover Band Show

For a few years, Dallas cover band Brixtina has given us the “versus” show we all wanted: Britney vs. Christina. (We also got a hip-hop showdown with a Drake vs. Kendrick night in May.) But your dad (and actually, cool grandma and smart kids) will be happy to learn that jukebox staples like “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” will be featured on the same bill as the racier “Let’s Spend the Night Together” in an upcoming show.

It’s a longstanding, tired debate among rock fans, but the question of whether The Beatles were better than The Rolling Stones has stayed alive among truly bored audiophiles. Stans of either band have found the space to love both, and know they were not rivals — there’s also group C, comprising the truly insufferable types who make hating The Beatles their biggest I’m-not-like-you “quirk.”

The Beatles win this non-fight regardless, on a few counts: in terms of rock lore (their story inspires a new film every five years — FYI, Hollywood suits, nothing will top the Beatles scene in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story); their enduring ubiquity on a far shorter lifespan (the Stones are still putting out new material today); better solo projects (please name a solo Keith Richards song); and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band being superior to the Stones’ LSD-laced album Their Satanic Majesty’s Request (though it gave us the deliciously trippy “2000 Light Years From Home and “She’s a Rainbow”).

Who had the better songs, who slept with most women, who did more drugs? We know the answer to the latter, but the rest is all up to debate.

This is (somewhat) the premise behind a cover band battle coming to Arlington called Beatles vs. Stones – A Musical Showdown, pitting Abbey Road, the Fab Four cover band, against Satisfaction, who cover  the Stones. The Brits are coming — on Saturday, Nov. 23, to Arlington Music Hall. The show will last two hours, and each band will play two sets.

“The Arlington show is part of a 125-stop tour of the U.S., Australia and Canada and has been touring since 2011,” reads a press release for the event.

Those fun folks who dress up for concerts will get to slather on that Anita Pallenberg eyeliner, wear their leather (faux, in Paul's honor) ankle boots and get to scream manically and pass out like it’s 1965, for $45 to $65. The Stones' catalog will extend until the 1980s, so hits like “Start Me Up” should make the cut.

The press release says the event promises to answer: "The argument at the time, and one that still persists, was that the Beatles were a pop group and the Stones were a rock band: the boys next door vs. the bad boys of rock. So who’s better?"

Maybe use your energy to debate whether Ringo contributed genius, gorgeous compositional elements through his drumming or his incessant peace-sign-giving, happy-clap campiness brought down the Beatles' musical sophistication. Although, the real food for thought is an internet post reminding the surviving members that “The Rolling Stones don’t have a drummer and a bassist, and The Beatles only have a drummer and a bassist.”

Stop having kids and call your old friends, Mick.

Beatles vs. Stones – A Musical Showdown is all-ages. It starts at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 23, at Arlington Music Hall, 224 N. Center St., Arlington.