The Beatles/Stones debate is a purely White topic. If you grew up listening to Black music in the 60s and early 70s, like I did, it was all about R&B, funk, soul and disco, when disco was still primarily a Black musical style (I think that was for about the first year or so of its existence). Those White boys from England never did get the Funk. I read something interesting the other day about how the Beatles were the single most important factor in the re-segregation of popular music in the 1960s. Until 1966, since the late 1950s Black and White audiences in the US listened to the same music--rock and roll and R&B and soul with a strong African-American base. Everybody listened to the same radio stations and the same artists. So music was not segregated along racial lines the way it was after about 1965. The Beatles didn't get the Black vibe and so took most of the White audience with them when they broke big in the mid-60s. Ever since then, Black and White folks have been listening to different popular music on different radio stations. Kind of sad. Because I grew up listening to James Brown and Co. in the early to mid-60s and then went to junior high and high school at a majority minority (i.e., African-American) school, I never did become a fan of the Beatles or even the Stones much. I still don't get the incredible fascination with the Beatles. Those boys have no Soul!