It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones
July 28, 1965
“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100, July 10 – August 6, 1965
For a group that ended the ’60s as the second-biggest rock band of the decade, the Rolling Stones got off to a bit of a slow start, at least in America. In the group’s native UK, they chalked up hits at a fast and furious rate: a Top 40 debut (“Come On”), followed by a Top 20 single (“I Wanna Be Your Man”), a Top 5 hit (“Not Fade Away”), and, within the span of just over a year, no fewer than five consecutive #1s (including “Little Red Rooster”). It’s only fitting that the group’s American debut album, released mid-1964, labeled them England’s Newest Hit Makers.
Whether the Stones would become America’s newest hit makers, however, seemed far less certain. The group’s US debut single, “Not Fade Away,” peaked at an underwhelming #48. Subsequent singles charted a little higher, but only “Time is on My Side,” released in autumn 1964, cracked the Top 10. For a time, it looked as though the Rolling Stones’ British R&B style wouldn’t translate to American shores. After all, soul music was regularly crossing over into the US pop charts in the early ’60s, thanks largely to Motown’s runaway success. Unlike the Beatles, who helped revitalize ’50s-style rock ‘n’ roll, blending it with a variety of other musical styles, the Rolling Stones were trying to import a style of music that was already plentiful in the States, and often of a higher quality. If the Stones were going to break through in America, they would need to develop their own distinctive sound.
In the summer of 1965, the Rolling Stones released a single that immediately elevated them to the top of the pack. Even after five decades of incessant airplay, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” still sounds electrifying. The record nods to the band’s R&B roots — imagine the main fuzz guitar riff being played on horns, as Keith Richards originally intended — but adds a ferocious, raw edge all its own. Every instrument seems to be playing so taut that it threatens to snap, apart from Mick Jagger’s chewy, salivating, overly-underenunciated drawl. Richards’ guitar riff loops endlessly without changing, Bill Wyman’s bass circles in place, Charlie Watts’ snare drum snaps on every beat, and Jack Nitzsche’s tambourine gets its three shakes in at the end of each measure. You don’t need to hear the lyrics to know the song’s about being stuck in a rut with no release.
As long as there has been pop music, there’ve been songs about sexual frustration — but few before “Satisfaction” had been so direct about it. At the same time, however, there’s more going on with “Satisfaction” than a guy complaining about not being able to get off. The hero of the song is unsatisfied with society as a whole, down to its cheesy TV advertising and banal radio chatter. That he doesn’t strike against any larger political threats just shows up how self-centered he is in his quest for satisfaction; he’s just an average guy, not the conscience of a generation.
Yet “Satisfaction” manages to be both a tribute to sexual/societal frustration and a caricature of it. A line like “he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me” seems to parody the self-righteous folkie moralist, while the sneering vocals frame the complaints in quotation marks, as if to acknowledge the absurdity of a rock star whining about how hard he has it. The Rolling Stones didn’t just score a hit with an anti-establishment message; they mocked the self-indulgence of it, made it seem as solipsistic as moaning about not getting laid. Perhaps it’s this duality that’s helped the song withstand 50 years of over-exposure. “Satisfaction” is pro-hedonism and anti-consumerism, social commentary and a mockery of social commentary, and a blues song for middle class white kids self-aware enough to know they don’t have real problems. That, and it’s got a massive guitar riff.
It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.
