100 Records That Shook The World, #65

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

The Rolling Stones

During the Stones' third tour of the USA in1965, Keith Richards woke up in the middle of the night with the opening riff from Satisfaction running through his mind. He turned on a tape recorder, recorded the riff, wrote the words "I can't get no satisfaction" on a piece of paper, and promptly went back to sleep. He later described the tape as "two minutes of Satisfaction and 40 minutes of me snoring". He played the tape to Jagger the following day, who loved it and immediately started writing lyrics to fit it, lyrics that concerned the rampant commercialism that he and the other Stones had witnessed in the US. Some of the lyrics were also sexually charged, and the song was considered too suggestive by some major radio networks, and initially only received airplay on pirate radio stations. 

Richards was not too sure about the riff at the time, thinking it sounded too much like Martha and The Vandellas' Dancing In The Street. The rest of the band outvoted Keith, however, and a good thing too, because (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction became The Rolling Stones' 4th UK Number One single, not to mention an iconic song that has inspired generations of rockers, and placed at #2 on Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time.