ON THIS DATE (58 YEARS AGO) August 20, 1965 - The Rolling Stones: "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" b/w "The Spider And The Fly" (Decca F 12220) 45 single is released in the UK. "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is a song by The Rolling Stones, released in May 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. It reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed there for four weeks. In the UK, the song initially was played only on pirate radio stations, because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive. When it was finally released in August 1965 in the UK, it reached #1 on the Singles chart. In 2004, Rolling Stone magazine placed "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in the second spot on its list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time". The song was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress in 2006. _________ NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS (UK), August 20, 1965 ROLLING STONES Satisfaction Here it is - the disc which topped the American charts and won a Gold Disc for the Stones -"Satisfaction". Recorded in the States, it opens with a buzzing, rasping guitar, which permeates the entire record, then in comes Mick Jagger in a hushed whisper, which suddenly explodes into full pelt with the boys joining in spiritedly. It's highly repetitive and therefore registers quickly. Runs for nearly four minutes, with rattling tambourine and that insistent, nagging guitar riff throughout. Once you've heard it, you just can't lose the extremely simple melody line. Perhaps their most compulsive disc to date. "The Spider And The Fly" (like the top side, a Jagger -Richards number) is a lazy, relaxed, bluesy item. Opens with a lengthy harmonica solo then leads into a casual, reflective, tongue-in-cheek Jagger vocal. Decca. __________ MELODY MAKER AUGUST 28, 1965 People don't hate us as much.. With "Satisfaction" a worldwide phenomenon, by August THE ROLLING STONES are in the throes of stardom: managing recordings, tours, movies and the media. Only one Stone is unconvinced. "They can do a follow-up story on us," says Charlie of the newspapers. "When we're dustmen..." +++++ “SATISFACTION” WILL NO doubt be a giant hit for The Rolling Stones in Britain – just as it already has been in the States. But why the long delay before British fans can catch up with their American counterpart? I asked Mick Jagger to explain. “We cut ‘Satisfaction’ in Los Angeles when we were working there,” said Mick. “We cut quite a lot of things and that was just one – contrary to some newspaper reports it only took us just half-anhour to make. We like it, but didn’t think of it as a single. Then London said they had to have a single immediately because ‘The Last Time’ was long gone and we had a Shindig TV date and had to have something to plug. So they just released “Satisfaction” as a single. “In England we already had the EP all pressed, the covers done and the plugs lined up before we ever knew that ‘Satisfaction’ was going to be a single. We weren’t too happy about the single, as we hadn’t thought of it that way, but now, of course, we are happy. Anyway, after the EP, The Beatles had ‘Help!’ and it seemed silly to issue ‘Satisfaction’ then. If ‘Help!’ hadn’t come out then, we would have brought ours out a month ago.” Did Mick think the sales of “Satisfaction” would be affected by the long advance plugging of the American disc on pirate radio? “That is just one of those things,” shrugged Mick. “We didn’t really know what to do – we were between the deep blue sea and frying fat, or whatever the expression is. In fact, advance orders for ‘Satisfaction’ are very good. The point is that the Stones aren’t in control of everything – some things are out of our hands. We make the records and have a large say in what is released in this country. But America is so different. In the States they will put out an album made up of already-released singles. So what do we say? If it sells a lot in America then we are forced to bring it here. I don’t want anybody to think we are putting America before Britain – it’s just a case of looking after the needs of one country at a time.” “Satisfaction” is a successful songwriting collaboration by Jagger and Keith Richards. How do they set about writing a song? What comes first, title, lyric or melody? “I get the idea for a lyric quite separately from the songs. And Keith gets his ideas quite separately from my lyrics,” explained Mick. “Keith may play a phrase and it fits with one of my ideas for a lyric. In the case of ‘Satisfaction’, we thought of a phrase and the riff first and worked from there.” Did Mick hear anything new on his visit to the States last week? “I was only there a couple of days, so I didn’t get the chance to go anywhere much – except the Beatles concert and the party afterwards,” said Mick. “Keith and I had a lot of trouble in New York. We were only there two days, but there were a lot of kids outside the hotel – and of course, we didn’t have the security that The Beatles had.” __________ SONGFACTS On May 6, 1965, The Rolling Stones played to about 3,000 people at Jack Russell Stadium in Clearwater, Florida while on their first US tour. According to an article in the St. Petersburg Times, about 200 young fans got in an altercation with a line of police officers at the show, and The Stones made it through just four songs as chaos ensued. That night, Keith Richards woke up in his hotel room with the guitar riff and lyric "Can't get no satisfaction" in his head. He recorded it on a portable tape deck, went back to sleep, and brought it to the studio that week. The tape contained his guitar riff followed by the sounds of him snoring. Richards was staying at the Fort Harrison Hotel (known at the time as the Jack Tar Harrison Hotel) when he rolled out of bed with the idea for this song. The hotel still exists. In 1975, it was bought by the Church of Scientology and frequently hosts religious retreats. +++++ Mick Jagger (1968): "It sounded like a folk song when we first started working on it and Keith didn't like it much, he didn't want it to be a single, he didn't think it would do very well. I think Keith thought it was a bit basic. I don't think he really listened to it properly. He was too close to it and just felt it was a silly kind of riff." +++++ Richards ran his guitar through a Gibson Fuzz Box to create the distortion effect. He had no intention of using the sound on the record, but Gibson had just sent him the device, and he thought the Fuzz Box would create sustained notes to help sketch out the horn section. The band thought it sounded great and wanted to use the sound because it would be very unusual for a rock record. Richards thought it sounded gimmicky and did not like the result, but the rest of the band convinced him to ditch the horn section and use the distorted guitar sound. __________________ The Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by Performing Songwriter website On May 7, 1965, Keith Richards woke up in the middle of the night with a melody in his head. He was in a room at the Gulf Motel in Clearwater, Florida. His guitar was on the bed beside him. Fumbling around in the dark, he found his portable cassette recorder on the nightstand. He pushed the record button and played an eight-note riff. It was accompanied by the mumbled vocal line, “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Then he fell back asleep. “On the tape, you can hear me drop the pick,” Richards recalled. “The rest is me snoring.” The Rolling Stones were in the middle of their second US tour as headliners. The band had already scored two Top 10 hits – “Time Is On My Side” and “The Last Time” – but in the ranks of the British Invasion, they were still a notch below Herman’s Hermits. They needed a defining single that would put them over the top. Keith didn’t initially recognize that his motel room riff was exactly what the Stones were looking for. “I never thought it was anything commercial enough to be a single,” he told Philip Norman in Sympathy For The Devil. Indeed, Stones bassist Bill Wyman later said that Richards had conceived it “as a folk song, probably a good filler track for our next album.” “I think Keith thought it was a bit basic,” Mick Jagger has said. “I don’t think he really listened to it properly. He was too close to it and just felt it was a silly kind of riff.” But Jagger was inspired by the idea and quickly wrote a lyric. During their tour, the Stones had been making pit stops at various American studios to record their ideas. On May 10, just three days after Richard’s midnight ramble, they entered Chess Studios in Chicago. As home to some of their biggest influences—Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters—Chess seemed the perfect location to lay down their new song-in-progress (it couldn’t have been lost on Jagger and Richards that Muddy had once cut a song called “I Can’t Be Satisfied”). With manager Andrew Loog Oldham producing, the group did an acoustic country-ish version of “Satisfaction” that sounded more like Bob Dylan. The sexy swagger that would mark the finished version was completely absent. Oldham diplomatically called the chorus hook “subliminal.” Two days later, in Los Angeles, the Stones checked into RCA Studios on Hollywood Boulevard. Inspired by the potential of Richards’ recently acquired Maestro FuzzTone pedal, the Stones launched into a much more aggressive feel. “Charlie [Watts] put down a different tempo,” Richards told Blender, “and with the addition of the fuzzbox on my guitar, which takes off all the treble, we achieved a very interesting sound.” In addition to the band, famed LA arranger Jack Nitzsche pitched in with tambourine and piano, adding a kind of Motown four-on-the-floor propulsion. The band was elated with the result. But Richards wasn’t convinced. He said that his fuzz guitar line was intended only as a sketch for a horn section when the band came to record the final version (he was now hearing the song as a tribute to Martha & the Vandellas “Dancing In The Street”). “I left it in the studio thinking, ‘This is good, but it needs working up,’” Richards said. As the Stones resumed touring, Oldham started promoting the new song. Richards told Blender, “I guess he thought, ‘They can work it up all they want, but it’s about the freshness and the timing.’ Which is, after all, everything.” Knowing that the song’s suggestive lyric (especially the line about “trying to make some girl”) might prevent the song from getting airplay, Oldham decided to bury it in the mix. “I never heard the damn lyrics to ‘Satisfaction’ for years,” said RCA engineer Dave Hassinger. “They kept telling me to bring the voice down more into the track. I thought they were crazy. I didn’t know it had to do with the lyric and getting radio play.” The single was released on May 27. Despite the murky vocals, the song became a target for the anti-rock establishment. Newsweek dubbed the Stones a “leering quintet” and said “Satisfaction” was full of “tasteless themes.” A select ban in certain cities couldn’t stop the song’s rise. On July 10, it hit number one for the first of four weeks. In 1988, when Rolling Stone voted it the greatest pop single of the past 25 years, Richards confessed, “I hear ‘Satisfaction’ in ‘Jumping Jack Flash.’ I hear it in half of the songs that the Stones have done.” In 1990, the Stones’ former manager Allen Klein signed a $4 million deal allowing the song to be used in a TV commercial for Snickers candy bars. In 2000, a VH1 poll of 700 music-industry movers and shakers voted “Satisfaction” as the top rock song of all time. Though he’s been happily playing the song in concert for the last 40 years, Richards admits, “If I’d had my way, ‘Satisfaction’ would never have been released. The song was as basic as the hills, and I thought the fuzz-guitar thing was a bit of a gimmick.” — By Bill DeMain #TheRollingStones #ICantGetNoSatisfaction #satisfaction