“Satisfaction” is still my favorite Stones song. Dino, Desi & Billy covered it on our first album in ‘65. I chose it and sang the lead vocal – our Producer, Lee Hazlewood, was reluctant to explain what the lyric “Baby, baby come back / Maybe next week / ‘Cause you see / I’m on a losing streak” meant – I was only 14 at the time and didn’t get it …

Stones fan for life,

Billy (DD&B)

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Nice one on the Stones, Bob —

Since rock concerts had been banned in my hometown of Boston, my first concert was the Beatles at Carnegie Hall (row M on the aisle for $7.50)  in 1964. At the later of 2 performances we heard the band quite clearly – they were tight as a drum.

The Stones at the Academy of Music (2nd row balcony for $5) came about a year later. They were sloppy but fabulous, but played for only a half hour. I was so disappointed I insisted on complaining to the promoter. Turned out to be my first meeting with Sid Bernstein. Sid was very gracious and said “I’d like to help you, lad, but if Mick Jagger wants to play for only 30 minutes there’s not much I can do.”

 

4 years later I scalped 2 second row seats at Madison Square Garden for $18.50 each. My friends thought I overpaid.

Mick Taylor was brilliant – I think most of Side 2 on ”Get Yer Yayas Out” was recorded that night, and he played a wonderful guitar break on “Midnight Rambler”, so different from any Keith Richards solo. The crowd rushed the stage and overwhelmed the meager security staff, and when my wife and I stood up, fans from behind displaced us by standing on our seats. Compared to the well-behaved Carnegie Hall crowd, in1969 it seemed like a full blown riot. At times you couldn’t disagree with their claim that they are (were) the greatest rock and roll band in the world.

 

Tom Werman

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I was there for there first gig at the Marquee club on July 12th 1962. This was a jazz club at the time, in London and it had started to introduce R and B. A successful group run by Cyril Davis, a fine blues harmonica player,  gigged there frequently. On that night Cyril Davis and his band was offered a gig at the BBC, so Mick and the boys filled in. My school friend and I set in the front row, and I can still can remember, 58 years later, Mick and Brian. They were teenagers,  but they had this attitude and it was ‘we are playing for ourselves and we don’t give a toss if you like us our not’. It was a great night of Chuck Berry numbers and American Blues.

Several months later, I had left school and got a job in advertising on the Kingsway in Central London. One afternoon my boss, a South African called David Diamond, came

back from lunch in a bad mood. He was a jazz purist and he had spent an hour or so with a jazz drummer friend of his trying to convince him not to join ‘ this ghastly rock and roll band’. I asked who his friend was and he told me it was Charlie Watts. I gives Charlie didn’t listen.

Three months later at the same agency, we all noticed that there wasn’t a female to be found in all 5 or 6 floors of the agency. After a while they all suddenly appeared flushed, and red faced. Turned out the Stones were recording in the agency basement at De Lane Lea studio.

One minor correction. They  did wear mod type suits on stage for a while, but the media hounded them about their scruffy appearance off stage, so they decided to be the anti-( fill in band name-Beatles, Searchers, Dave Clark Five, Moodys etc).

Great memories,

Andrew Butcher

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I still vividly recall playing “Satisfaction” in my early Top 40 radio days and the emotional, unfiltered feedback that came back through the ‘request lines’ was amazing !

Bob Sherwood

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what a sweet piece, bob.

obviously, girlie action is named after one of the most misheard lyrics of all time… “i can’t get no girl reaction.”  i always thought is was “girlie action.”

i remember when i was trying to finalize the name of my new biz in 1993…  i was walking down hudson st and leaning against someone’s trash can was a framed ROCK DREAMS poster of The Stones in drag circa 1973. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/377317275001024457/.

i snatched that baby up and girlie action media was born.  it has been hanging in my office ever since.

xo felice ecker

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Long time reader, 1st time emailer.  Your story of getting off the subway @ the World’s Fair and Satisfaction was blaring reminded me of this.  I was on a bus trip to Washington DC with the Builders Club.  One of the guys had a giant transistor radio sort of early Boom Box size and it was cranked the entire trip.  Satisfaction was the Hit and when we lost a station and found another, it wasn’t long before we heard Satisfaction again.  We were in DC, The Rolling Stones were blaring on the radio and we were lost in it.  Someone noticed we were entering Arlington National!  We killed the radio out of respect but the irony of that in the mid 60’s is still a strong memory today!

David Britton

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As a musical footnote to your post, the power of the intro is in the syncopated double riff. that not only comes from Keith’s fuzz guitar (started on the 5th note of the scale)…… but from the tension of Bill Wyman’s bass against it.

 

You could always tell when a band didn’t really know the song, if they played the riff as bass and guitar in unison….from the E up.

 

Hiding in plain sight.

 

Steve Chrismar

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Then came the tsunami.  Get Off My Cloud, As Tears Go By, 19th Nervous Breakdown, and THEN, Paint It Black! Kapow, I was forever fully hooked.

Les Garland

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When I was in high school our music teacher told us that the beat of Satisfaction runs opposite of your heart beat. He told us that this discordance has a tiring effect on you when you listened to the song. I have absolutely no clue if this was/is true but we kind of believed it and always schemed that we would somehow pipe the song into the locker rooms of our opponents for track meets or football games.

Ed Dilworth

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Came home from Jewish summer camp in ’64 with enough bronchitis to keep me away from the Beatles’ first concert in Toronto.  To make it up to me my parents saw to it that I saw the Brian Jones’ Stones three times before I turned 13.  Thusly, I became a rabid Stones fan and eventually a critic.  Yeah, Satisfaction was the game changer in the summer of ’65 and it cemented a bad boy image that they traded pretty well on for fifty years!

However the desert island Stones set is Some Girls.  Guys making that kind of noise in their 30s is what I call immortality.  On another note, please check out Mick Jagger and Arcade Fire tearing up The Last Time on SNL a few years ago.  Speaking of immortality.

Last, I took my daughter to see The Stones at Metlife last year.  Well worth the schlep.

Thank you for bringing up the great memories.

Jonathan Gross

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Loved your piece on Satisfaction even the little reference to Trump. Anyone who hasn’t listened to your Andrew Loog Oldham podcast would be well advised to if they want to know a little more about this song. And if I may be so presumptuous as to suggest if you want to see an example of what this song can do to an audience in the hands of Aretha I highly recommend checking out her 1968 concert in Amsterdam.

Gary Cormier

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I am sure you will hear music experts dangling their reviews of Stones albums. The ultimate single was Satisfaction. i loved all of went before (because i am same age as you) but you encapsulated the essence of what it was to hear this song. it was everywhere and had a BIG impact, for me and others. I don’t think Rolling Stones do justice to it live either. But they try. Stones sold me with Last Time and that compilation album in 1970. I saw them in concert in 1972 MSG and thought I had seen GODS. With Stevey Wonder? Forget it. It was incredible!

I saw them when talent went to outdoor stadiums and they still delivered! They will always be ‘the greatest rock n roll band in the world’ no doubt in my opinion!!

David Bodnar

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Great stuff here. Always loved Otis Redding’s version. As a kid, I heard that version before I ever knew it was originally a Stones song.

Paul Cantor

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But what about Under Assistant West Coast Promo Man…… and I think one of the great songs is the young Mick singing Under the Boardwalk……. try it again if you haven’t heard it in a while… Sky

Sky Bishop

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How many fuzz boxes did Satisfaction sell?  I bought my first (from Lafayette Radio Electronics) so I could play Satisfaction.

Michael Alex

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At the 1969 shows at the Forum where the second set started after midnight it was Satisfaction at the end of the first set where everyone went crazy…only time I saw people jumping down to the floor from the second level

Jim McElwee

Menlo Park

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As ubiquitous as this song is, for me it’s the ’69 version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpWVkVtMUP8 – THAT band is on FIRE. Listen to what Mick Taylor and Keith are doing on the breaks? Where did that even COME FROM?

And then this, at the tail end of that run, in England: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPAiF_HyIkY – THIS is closer to what Keith probably had in mind…feels more like a Stax tune (the drums, anyway). Keith said the riff was just a place holder for a horn line. So cool.

Jesse Lundy

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Excellent piece Bob about my #1 favorite single—you really nailed their breakout moment here. And what a glorious moment it was!

Credit should also go to Jack Nitzsche, whose piano sits so crucially back in the track and makes the whole song roll along smoothly—

you can hear Jack’s piano clearly here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHcm4m225rk

And of course, big props to the great Andrew Loog Oldham, who drove the guys hard to write their own material and become a non-stop hit machine,

and without whom they might have foundered as primarily an r&b covers band.

all the best

Gary Lucas

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I remember my elementary school class in the 1970s was chosen to take part in a study being done by college students. They played “Satisfaction” on a turntable over and over while we did a writing assignment. The next day, they played no music and we did a similar writing assignment.

Of course no one followed up, so I don’t know what became of the research, other than Keith’s riff etched in my brain.

Years later, I find it remarkable the nuns allowed any Rolling Stones to be played in Our Lady of Angels elementary school. Maybe they didn’t know the song in advance?

Mike Huber, Albany NY

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Satisfaction has always been the epicenter.

Bob Beru

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Black and Blue. Tattoo You. I would love to see both those albums live. But Satisfaction started me into the Stones. Never forgot it.

Todd Devonshire

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Complicated on Between the Buttons – one of the early greats!  Love the organ

artgei

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Couldn’t agree with you more about the impact of “Satisfaction” on the music and the culture, but especially on the fortunes of scruffy bar bands of the era. We were blessed with a plethora of danceable cover songs that everybody could sing along with and, as Dick Clark observed, dance to, and the Stones were only too happy to oblige.

I read an interview with Mick sometime after the dust had settled down on “Satisfaction” that he was personally pleased that he had managed to slip a questionable lyric by the censors:

“And I’m tryin’ to make some girl, who tells me,

‘Baby, better come back maybe next week.

Can’t you see I’m on a losing streak?'”

Mothers all over Ohio would have been aghast to have read between those lines.

Larry Butler

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Good one. When I heard Satisfaction within weeks I took the  train into the city went to Manny’s on 48th Street and bought a cool red Maestro Fuzz Tone (wish I still had it). To this day my favorite Stones albums  are the run from 12×5 thru Beggars Banquet.  They were dangerous then.
Peter Roaman

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Satisfaction just may be the greatest rock n’ roll song ever!

I’ve seen The Stones a dozen times… never were they able to relay

the  “fuzz” from the record…..

Jeff Laufer

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satisfaction was a mainstay-crowd-pleasing-centerpiece-featured-set-piece for my ’85 (i was 15) cover band.

moonlight mile is my all time favorite.  strange, i know.

Gary W. Mendel

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Between the Buttons was, and still is, my favorite Stones album.  Maybe it was because I was in a college band when it came out, and we played several of the tunes on the album – maybe because it was a significant break from what came before in the world of albums….maybe it’s because the Stones played a concert on my college campus that year and I got to see Brian Jones with the band…..no matter the reason, it’s a marker in time for me, and I think quite a few others.

R Lowenstein

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My first Stones record was indeed BIg Hits (High Tide and Green Grass), but I had heard Satisfaction on the radio when it first came out – had never heard anything like it.  To this day, all these years later, I still turn up the radio anytime I hear “Satisfaction”:.  That riff absolutely mesmerizes me every time.

Tim Mays

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55 years after its release, I STILL turn up the volume when I hear that opening riff.

Gene Oberto
Stockholm, Sweden

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All true. And then Devo brilliantly deconstructed it, with their performance on Saturday Night Live (1978?) bringing the New Wave into the mainstream.

Tony Saunders

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But who was the first cover band to do Satisfaction?  I believe it was my crappy high school band, The Missing Links, of Arlington, VA.  We were all complete Stones fanatics and did all of their songs off the first 2 albums, which gave us about half of all the songs we played at gigs.  At that time, most teens were just barely familiar with the Stones.  We all wore black derby hats so kids would think we were English.  One night the Stones played their current hit The Last Time on Ed Sullivan, and as the credits rolled by, they played their new song, Satisfaction, which I taped on my little reel to reel recorder.  The band learned the song at our next rehearsal, and the following weekend we played it at a church dance.  We said it was an original tune, since no one had heard it by then.  And we played it 3 times, because of the kid’s demand.  So, that shows you it was destined to be a hit, and within another 2 weeks it was number 1 on local station WEAM.

Sterling Howard

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“It’s hard to overstate the impact of “Satisfaction,” technically known as “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” but this was when labels were wary buyers would not be able to find the record they desired.”

I recall searching for a record called “Feelin Groovy” as a young boy at my local E.J. Korvette’s in suburban Philadelphia.  I bought a 45 with an A-side titled Groovin by the Rascals as it was the closest I could find and was convinced it had to be the song I was looking for.

Wrong! Literally, it was years later I learned “Feelin Groovy” was actually titled “The 59th Street Bridge Song” by Simon & Garfunkel.  What the heck!?!

Both great songs though.

Andrew Paciocco

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I can’t describe how it felt to hear it the first time, when I was 12 or 13, but you just did.
Larry Fisher

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Otis Redding opened  his Ready Steady Go  set with Satisfaction.  He’s fronting his road band: guitar, bass, drums, and six horns.   Paul Lanning

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Good ‘un, Bob.  What a start to remember hearing it for the first time as I pressed Mennen stick into my pits in prep to see them in San Jose, early, 1965.
Thanks.

Dennis Brent

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Thank you.

Thank you for writing.

Thank you for such great music historical writing.

And thank you for writing about “Satisfaction.”

I was 16 when “Satisfaction” hit, camping at the beach with my family for a month at Refugio State Park in Santa Barbara County. I have a vivid memory of tanning on a beach blanket, the sun so warm, watching friends surf, with “Satisfaction” blaring from our portable radio. It was the sound of the summer. It was the raw and passionate sound of the rebel in me – and in so many of my generation.

I am now 72, and still have that rebel fire in me (proud of it, too).

And I’m proud to say that I see that rebel fire in my grown daughters, in my two grandsons, and in the youth of today. Thank God!

I usually don’t write you, but I just HAD to respond to your spot-on writing about “Satisfaction”. I was there. I know. That song truly started an era.

B Ross

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There is no way for to adequately convey what the double negative (our high school English teacher hated it), puberty-making-self-aware, testosterone driven SATISFACTION meant to a 15 year old boy discovering he could self-satisfy himself with PLAYBOOK magazine stuffed under his pillow.

The song in a hot Pittsburgh summer roared through open car windows from AM KQV Radio and that year saw the scraggly Stones live at the old Civic Arena……but, you’re right, didn’t sound the same live…that DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN DUN, DUN DUN DUN….just didn’t sound the same live that first time in ’65….nor really anytime of the dozen or so times I heard it again in person.

No song ever defined a time, a place and a band.

Tom Rooney

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My dad was in charge of public relations and special events at BMI for many years and was on the list for promo copies of the latest releases from many labels from the ‘50s through the ‘80s. I remember when he brought the Satisfaction album home in the summer of 1965. I immediately became a Stones over the Beatles advocate for the very reasons you outlined.

Fast forward to 1987 when I was at BMI myself and assigned to dealing with Allen Klein regarding the ABKCO publishing catalog. We hit it off well and he invited me to go to a Knicks game with him. When I got in his limo, he was with his longtime associate Iris Keitel whom I already knew from our meetings, and introduced me to Andrew Loog Oldham. I tried to hide my excitement as we at BMI were trained to do, but couldn’t help effusing over the Satisfaction album.

After dinner Allen’s limo descended down the Garden’s bus and truck ramp to the backstage area. We got out, walked 20 feet, and pulled a curtain that opened to an entrance on the Garden floor directly behind the Knick’s bench. The team was finishing its shoot-around just before tip-off. We were led to four empty folding chairs immediately behind the Knicks bench where we could almost hear the conversation between coaches and players.

Sometime during the first quarter I asked Allen how he got the seats. He replied that he’d tell me at the right time. When the horn sounded, the public address system blared Keith’s opening riffs from Satisfaction sending the packed Garden into wild cheers. Allen smiled and replied to my question, “That’s how.” He explained that he had seats further up until he called and told a Garden official that they didn’t have a license. I wondered if Keith and Mick ever got to use the seats but didn’t ask.

For the next 20 years or so until Allen died, whenever I watched a Knicks game on TV, which was as often as possible, I looked to see if he was there. After he died in 2009, the seats disappeared. But they still played Satisfaction.

Rick Sanjek

Nashville

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Thanks, Bob.  I am a person who thinks that Satisfaction is the best rock ‘n’ roll song ever.  There is competition, but that’s the one.  One of the reasons I went to see the Stones in 2019 was I wanted to hear a 77 year old Mick Jagger sing Satisfaction and Keith, Ronnie, Charlie, and Darryl play it.  If I recall correctly, they did it as the last song and it rocked.  No, they weren’t the Stones of 1969, 1972, 1981, or any other year, but they were still the Rolling Stones.  I watched Keith as they played it and realized that this might be the last time I ever hear them, some of my rock and roll anti heroes, play this.  Many memories of them and this song and all the years I’ve heard them live, on video, on the radio, mix tapes, covers etc.  All the words I’ve read about them and ways I and everyone else have thought about them from Stanley Booth to Chet Flippo to Jann Wenner to Martin Scorsese.  It was much more emotional than I was expecting.  And when that solo came out, Keith, who was not having the best night (not a bad one, but he wasn’t as on as I’ve seen him) ripped a fucking great solo that I still remember now.  There were no pyrotechnics nor theatrics.  It had that perfect mix of feel, tone, rhythm, and mystique that he, the band, and all transcendent rock and roll has.  He finished it up and I could not help but yell at the top of my lungs.  I have chills thinking of it now.  If that is the last time I see them live, that is the best way for them to bow out to me.  Man…

And if you have not seen it, find the ode to Mick Jagger that Todd Snider wrote a couple years ago.

David Kunian

New Orleans

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Christ, that was an exciting read.

From a guy in a generation who’ll never quite know the feeling. Makes you wonder…

All the best,
Sid Glover

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Interesting… I hate the song and love the stones… but knowing the lyrics and reading the lyrics kind of changes my mind!

Brian Lukow

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Yessir. Yessirree.

Hugo Burnham