The Rolling Stones – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
About The Song
By early summer 1965, the Rolling Stones had visited Billboard’s Hot 100 six times, but the Top 10 only twice. They made that grade late the year before with “Time Is On My Side,” then in May with “The Last Time.” On June 12, the Stones made the US chart with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” an undeniable classic with one of the most famous intros in rock music. It became their first American No.1, and the first to top the charts on both sides of the Atlantic.
“Satisfaction” has a riff that Keith Richards famously came up with in a motel room. Bill Wyman later recalled: “Keith woke up in the middle of the night with the riff in his head and put it down on tape. In the morning Mick said the words for the riff were ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.”
When the band first recorded the song on May 10, at their spiritual home of Chess Studios in Chicago, the track featured harmonica by Brian Jones. Keith remembered: “I didn’t think much of ‘Satisfaction’ when we first recorded it. We had a harmonica on then, and it was considered to be a good B-side or maybe an LP track.”
Two days later, at RCA Studios in Hollywood, they cut the version we all know, and rock history was made. “Charlie put down a different tempo,” said Keith to the NME in September 1965, “and with the addition of a fuzz-box on my guitar, which takes off all the treble, we achieved a very interesting sound.”