… on Ready Steady Go with the lovely Cathy McGowan as Cher and Brian Jones as Sonny.

Then everyone as either one.

Good Fun!

antgimel

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Bob: I was Sonny & Cher’s first agent. I signed them to William Morris when I was just a baby agent. All my colleagues told me not to do it, except Harvey Kresky, who later became their manager. We had heard ‘I GotYou Babe.’ I was a TV agent and my accounts were scale television and game shows. This made Shindig my show.

One day The Rolling Stones were on the stage singing Satisfaction, and I was watching from the wings. Then an anomaly occurred, the three hundred kids in the audience were ignoring the Stones and calling to someone in the wings in front of me. It was Sonny Bono, I had never seen nor heard of him, but the kids loved him.

Making a long story very short, We signed them to the Morris Office. A month later they had 5 singles in the Billboard top 100. Now what happened in that month is an even better story.

Sonny was a really smart, really nice guy and Cher was even sweeter. Hartmann

John Hartmann

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Sonny, one of my dearest friends. He and his wife Susie and I were skiing at Heavenly the day my Mom passed away. He fell that day and tore the ligaments in his right hand. Every time we went skiing he tore or broke or sprained something. Salvatore Philip Bone was a horrible skier and that’s how he met his demise. But he was a lovely, caring, loving man. RIP Sonny Bono.

Val Garay

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That record saved Atlantic Records. The company was for sale. Their sale to ABC for a paltry $3 million fell apart because the label couldn’t warrant they had paid all their royalties. Wexler was playing footsie with Leiber and Stoller over a merger (to Ahmet’s horror) because their Red Bird Records was hotter than Atlantic by a mile. Ahmet bought the master for $5000 over the phone without ever having heard it and “I Got You Babe” became the biggest hit in Atlantic history, not just No. 1 in this country but a worldwide smash the company had never seen before.

Joel Selvin

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And in one of the more incredible stats of 1965, the Billboard number one song of the year, which, by the way, only got to number two but was the first American artist to sell a million copies of a single since the beginning of the British Invasion, was Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs “Wooly Bully”!

It stayed in the top 5 for 2 months.

Side note. I once asked Bill Graham what was the worst act to ever play the Fillmore West. His response:

By far, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs.

John French

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The absolute best cover of the song (of many) for me was watching post-Ziggy Bowie duet with Marianne Faithfull (who was wearing a nun’s habit and huge wimple…open at the back, as I clearly remember – she looked utterly fabulous) at the Marquee Club in London, 1973. Fan Club only audience, and not packed by any means. Utter magic – although I missed Woody Woodmansey. Recorded for American TV.  A very special thing, and everybody in the room knew it. I floated home afterwards.

Hugo Burnham

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I always liked Sonny & Cher, especially “I Got You Babe” and “Baby Don’t Go.”  And I liked Sonny’s solo “Laugh At Me,” even have the album.  And I have the “Ringo I Love You” novelty single, well sung by Cher under the name Bonnie Joe Mason, co-written by Phil Spector with Anders & Poncia, possibly produced by Phil or maybe actually Sonny.   Sonny was all over the place back then, doing anything and everything to be in the music biz: songwriting, playing on sessions, producing, plugging records.  Whatever it took to make it in the music business. And then he met Cher, and he recognized that diamond in the rough, and without him, who knows what might have never happened.  She put in the hours also, singing on any project and for anyone who let her.  Together, what they created was real, not artifice.

Toby Mamis

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I saw a lot of Cher during her marriage to Gregg Allman and I remember the swarms of National Inquirer reporters and photogs who followed them constantly. I had to hire a security guy which we had never done previously. She was always very kind and generous and she came to Gregg’s funeral. I don’t think Gregg ever stopped loving her. A funny aside… when “Ramblin’ Man” made it to to #2 on the Billboard singles chart, Cher was at #1! (I think I am remembering that correctly).

Willie Perkins

P.S. I looked it up. Cher’s “Halfbreed” was #1 when ABB’s “Ramblin Man” was #2.

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At 13 years old, I  saw Sonny and Cher sing  (no doubt lip sync) “I Got You Babe” on tv via The Lloyd Thaxton Show.  Yep, Sonny was wearing that fur vest and I remember thinking Cher was really nice looking! And yes, I know every word and sing along every time I hear the song.

Rob Evans

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When I was 12, I’d drop in at the Sunset Blvd office of managers Greene & Stone. “Are Sonny and Cher here?” They always seemed to be; it was a cool hang. One day, coming home from guitar lessons, a white car pulled over on Selma. It was Sonny- he asked about the guitar and encouraged me to keep with the lessons. It was so special to be recognized by this warm and sweet man. Unfortunately, my guitar playing began and ended with a sorry “Tom Dooley.”

Mike Minky

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Bill Murray will forever be linked because of “Groundhog Day”

Marc Platt, Los Angeles

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There’s the power of pop MELODY, which Sonny was skilled at, having witnessed the masters first hand work, he was a good student obviously

And Sonny could write and arrangement.  There is a symphonic feel that was both on-the-way-out yet still contemporary

Then they juxtapose Cher’s musical voice with Sonny’s off register answers and for some odd reason the combination is enchanting, not overpowering, not maudlin.

Dennis Pelowski

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Fall in love, then listen to I GOT YOU BABE.

It takes on a whole other dimension… especially in he midst of a pandemic.

Suzanne “Ponyta” Nuttall

Toronto, Canada

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If you are of a certain age there are a handful of songs you know from the opening licks that you will stop what you are doing and listen all the way through. House of the Rising Sun by the Animals. And yeah, I Got You Babe. The oboe gets your attention but it’s the performance that’s holds you to the end, that and the expression of a need you won’t truly understand until much later in life, the need for a companion to share the ups and downs and to be there all the way until the final act, holding your hand. In the time of Covid-19 when people are forced to die alone that simple image assumes even more poignancy.

George Laugelli

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Just a true great great song.. words, chorus, melody, performers.. im not sure there are many people that don’t know a line or two from it. There was something truly special about their partnership. But, this song was and is the best example of how great a simple 2-3 min song can be.

Chris Anderson

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Time is a lot kinder to their songs than some of their contemporaries. Baby Don’t Go (with that chromatic harp) and You Better Sit Down Kids (which may have been solo Cher) are my two faves.

Dave Murray

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songs of all time with I Got You Babe!!!  That song defined love (and like) in a relationship better that any.  Funny but I also think of Bon Jovi’s Living On A Prayer as another generation’s follow up.  Once again, the musicianship provided by the Wrecking Crew made I Got You Babe stand out so distinctively on the radio and while Cher carries and belts it, Sonny also did his best vocal job on that song as well.  Not gonna lie, I have been known to belt it out with various friends in a karaoke bar or three over the years __.

Keep hitting those buttons pal and stay healthy!!

Tommy Nast

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Name another duo where the one was elected to Congress and the other was an Oscar winning actress.

Tom Rooney

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Wow!  I think  only a gifted writer such as you could succeed at giving a counter culture authenticity to Sonny and Cher and their top  40 anthem “I got you babe”.  Sonny was a self indulgent promoter . A less offensive version  of Trump. He took Louie Prima and Keely Smith’s popular act from the 50s wrapped it in PG rated hippie attire and offered a safer version of the scary counter culture to  a mass audience, and struck it  rich.   Cher was the talent and the star, Sonny ended up  right where he belonged amidst his grifterpeers in the Republican Party.

alan segal  san diego

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I loved the way she would look at him, sometimes with pure love and sometimes

with a look of laughter, derision, or disbelief.

Van Easton

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“I got you Babe” is the song that Bill Murray wakes to each morning in the movie “Groundhog Day”.

Timeless song.

-Sonny (yes, that is my name) in Phoenix

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Played that song 100 times on the jukebox at Mancinis Pizza. I was 11. Trying “Baby Don’t Go”. It’s my fav. Thanks for the pleasant reminder of those carefree days! Richard King

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Also: that gorgeous oboe!

Steve Lindstrom

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My fave Sonny song, “Needles And Pins”.

Chris Mancini

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Hey Bob,

Maybe you’ll like this version.

Ari Posner

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It’s been the alarm on my phone for years via ground hog day.

Johnny Lloyd Rollins

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I Got You Babe is a great song.  It was the oboe that put it over the top.  The oboe was the hook.

My sister is ten years older than me.  We used to sing the song together.  Of course, she sang Sonny’s lines and I sang Cher’s.

Steve Monk

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Every teenage ‘couple’ at the time had a song that was theirs.  For my first serious teenage girlfriend and I, it was I Got You Babe.

Maybe that’s why it went to number one — all of us teen couples?

R. Lowenstein

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i know where you’re coming from. even the carpenters (THE CARPENTERS!) sound good in retrospect, though we wouldn’t be caught dead admitting it at the time.

rsands9

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In the early 70s when Imus was still an AM DJ in NY, I remember him playing it. After the end, with the fade of I got you babe being repeated several times, he said “Sounds like a disease”. I think of that every time I hear it. hahaha
Kevin Kiley

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The Sonny & Cher original is a nice enough time capsule piece. How often do you hear an oboe in a pop song? It does, though, tend to  smack of hippie commercialization. It might even be the first instance of it.

When I listen to it now, I think of how they always ended their variety show with it.

Give me the frenetic Etta James version any day.

Kind Regards,

John Jordan

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I Got You Babe/Best Version

Al Kooper

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I Got You Babe is a classic example of the cover being better than the original.  Even though the drums are programmed, the UB40 version with Chrissie Hynde has soul – Sonny and Cher’s version is all bubblegum and tinsel.  The Beatles’ Twist and Shout, Judy Collins’ Both Sides Now, Hendrix’s All Along The Watchtower, and James Taylor’s You’ve Got A Friend are other great examples.

I’d love to read your take on covers being the definitive version.  Aretha’s version of Bridge Over Troubled Water, maybe?  Hard to say – the original is so great as well.

Cheers,

Andy Dayes

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As a preadolescent boy watching on TV, I’m seeing this dorky guy and he has CHER. To this day, I think flat abs are very sexy and I suspect that it’s somehow tied to those early images of Cher on TV. So hell yes, I loved that song. “I Got You Babe” was a first fantasy that I didn’t even understand in the moment but it would prove to be unforgettable. As I recall, Gregg Allman was equally stricken.

I could never break down a song the way that you can but for me, this song was number one for a reason and Cher’s belly button was probably the reason. LOL

Mark McLaughlin

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I like the UB40/Chrissie Hynde version.

I was just a kid when that came out and hated it!

Rodney Rowland

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Growing up with the Sonny & Cher show, well it was a big deal in our house. We’d all watch it together, my stepdad would comment on Cher’s outfits. Mom would roll her eyes. We thought Sonny was a loser, but we liked him anyway. We had this TV antennae on a pole by the side of the house that would move when the wind blew and one of the kids had to go out and turn it to get a decent signal. Dad in his recliner directing the turning operation and one of us stuck outside while the show was on trying to get it just right. Hold it! No, back a little. Too far. Back. OK. Then back inside and by then a commercial was on. Reading your piece brought all that back to me, and I can’t help but smile about it.

Jim Warren

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By 1965, my Aunt had given me a couple Chubby Checkers albums, and my Grandmother had gifted me a Beatles single, but the first record I ever bought with my own money was “I Got You Babe.”  You’re right – it was everywhere — and I wanted to own it.  That high oboe, or whatever it was, going “dah dah, dah dah, dah dah…” was the ultimate earworm.  I was also happy to play the flip side,”It’s Gonna Rain,” over and over again.  What I remember when I saw them on TV was that Cher was pretty and they dressed “young.”  It didn’t register at all that Sonny was that much older than Cher — they looked like a couple in love.

Everyone had a soft-spot for “I Got You Babe” — Bowie performed it with Marianne Faithfull in 1973 for the 1980 Floor Show — him wearing red PVC and black ostrich plumes, and her sporting the Flying Nun’s wimple, and a habit with no arms and nothing on underneath.  (I bought the bootleg of that, and it’s NOT one I play much!)

Even Joey Ramone & Holly Beth Vincent (of Holly & The Italians) put out their single of it in 1982.

And even though you didn’t watch it, Sonny & Cher closed their TV show each week with a bit of their signature song.

I’m glad you finally came around and re-experienced it.

Here’s a clip of Sonny & Cher performing “I Got You Babe” on Top Of The Pops.  This time, Cher’s wearing the fur vest.  It takes me back to ’65.  And I still have the single.

Mark Helfrich

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I was sixteen and came down from Liverpool to stay with a friend in London for the weekend.

Walking around London we saw two very exotic looking people coming down the steps of a hotel. They were being escorted by large fit-looking gentleman in slick dark electric blue Italian suits, white shirts black ties. I thought the exotics must be a prince and princess from some South American country although I was fairly sure that most South American countries did not have princes and princesses. They were too clean for Rock and Roll. To exotic and cool for show biz. The suits got the couple into an awaiting black limo, checking out roof tops in this quiet London street as they did so in a similar way that Trump would be gotten into a car outside a hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The said couple were wafted off into the sun-streamed afternoon.

That night we went to the Marquee to see The Spencer Davis Group. We then realised that as part of the deal was that we had to stand through a one hour ‘Live from the Marquee’ Radio London radio show. It was hosted by DJ Pete Murray. Several act just did one number each. I can only remember two of them. One, a girl duo,  was called ‘The Two of US’. The other act closed the show. Our South American prince and princess came onto the stage. It was Sonny and Cher. It was the first I had heard of them. They sang I got You Babe (to track!). It was the first time I had heard the song too. I don’t know if it had been released yet. This was a promo visit. They  had some pizzaz – Cher more than Sonny but it seemed like it was probably going to be a catchy, slightly cheesy one-hit wonder if it was ever going to be a hit. It had the best chance of the Radio London’s  offerings that night.

With our hour of penance watching floor managers hold up huge boards with ‘Applause’ written on them out of the way, the gig we had come to see was allowed to proceed. The support was The Mark Leeman Five, a very good band with Brian ‘Blinky’ Davison on drums before joining the Nice. Sadly Mark Leeman subsequently died in a car crash. A  great warm-up for a great Spencer Davis Group set. When we thought all was done, various members of the Mark Leeman five came back on stage to jam with the Spencer Davis Group.  This allowed Steve Winwood to move from guitar to keyboards, harmonica and vocals with always someone available to cover the instrument he had just vacated. The jam session really began to pick up pace with renditions of R&B classics (R&B in the old sense). A number of musos had turned up to see Spencer Davis that night and started to join in the jam for a number or two. They included Eric Clapton, Erick Burdon and Chris Barber (trombone). They greatest jam session that I have ever, ever witnessed. Who M.D.’ed this and held it all wonderfully together? Seventeen year-old Steve Winwood.

What a night. All stated off with the curious and quirky appearance of a totally unknown Sonny & Cher.

Mike Lowe

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My big brother, seven years older, had this record. He moved out shortly after my mom remarried and he and my stepfather didn’t get along. Bill was just eighteen. He didn’t take his records right away.
I was just turning eleven and my friend Renee and I played these records everyday after school in my empty apartment. Beatles, Stones, Animals, Yardbirds, Them.

We’d finagled our moms to buy us those white leather go-go boots, and we’d dance until we fell down on the carpet, panting and sweaty. Roll Over Beethoven!
We were entranced by the Sonny & Cher record though, playing it over and over. Yep, the idea of having a forever best friend who understood you and was there for you, no matter what, even if you owned next to nothing?

Their hair and clothes signaled they were different from the rest of the pop acts. The liner notes and photos on the back of the record proved it. They had headshots of their crew. They all looked like latter day beatniks, as did Sonny & Cher except S & C were so polished, camera ready. These grainy B&B images showed real beatniks who were scruffy, unsmiling, dead serious about – whatever they were about! Being the essential peeps behind the scenes of S&C, their real friends. S&C supposedly wrote the notes under each one. A woman with probably one name was basically described as “not having worn shoes for the past year, and probably won’t this year” and I never forgot that. Actually embraced barefooted style as much as I could get away from it because it seemed this woman had higher principles, that what mattered most to her was beyond surface appearances. They planted the seed for my future hippie self.

Yep, that wall of sound made that song pop, that carnival my, pied piper organ sound, and I recall Val telling me about hanging around the Phil’s studio then, watching Sonny create his future. Who knew he’d become a congressman and die running into a tree on skis, and Cher would live on to rescue the loneliest elephant in the world during a pandemic? Life is scary and also pretty outrageous.

Melissa Ward

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You got it right except for a few things ~ I can remember all the girls at school trying their best to look like Cher ~ Cutting bangs and ironing the curls out of their hair ~ The school jocks got those girls first ~ The rest of us were stuck with the left overs ~

You don’t as far as I’m concern give enough credit to Sonny for the lessons learned from working with Phil Spector because he took those lesson and formulated it into the Sonny & Cher sound and took it all to the bank ~

Also I don’t know how Sonny did it but some how back in 1967 he got ABC Motion Pictures ( they made all those horrible Surf movies ) to produce a movie for them called “Good Times” just as all their star power was fading ~

They were never my cup of tea back in the day but they did manage to fall from grace as I remember it seems that  back when everyone was smoking pot and taking LSD they came out against drugs ~ I remember thats when they looked like our elders and not one of us ~

In all actuality they did manage to have the last laugh in the 70s with there TV show ~ They made a lot of money and were once again America’s little darling ~

RS ~

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Now go back and give Cher’s (solo) version of All I Really Want To Do another shot.   You won’t be sorry.

I’m a Gen X’r. Grew up with the 70’s Cher,.. the one that invented that Eddie Vedder affectation that was so big with all the late era grungers.

Not a peak in her creative journey,… but when I discovered teenage 60’s Cher when I was a teenager myself in the mid 80’s,… boy was that a revelation.

I guess she was imitating Sonny, which as you will see listening to All I Really Want To Do, she was able to sing both the male and female parts by herself.  But man did she take her mentors idea and go somewhere entirely of her own. Somewhere tough and ballsy and totally female, empowered teenage female.  That’s probably what I fell in love with when I was a teenage boy in the era of Debby G and Tiffany. Both fine in their own right but not in the same league.

Steve McDonald

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For those too young to remember this pre-FM era could have a Stones song, followed by Frank Sinatra’s STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT, to the Dave Clark Five, to We Five,  to the Temptations,  to Sonny and Cher……

Look at those Top 40 lists from that time.  You would think you’d be sharing the radio with your parents.

It’s a mix tape before mix tape.

Tom Rooney

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haha. Bob, I saw them sing it at my first concert. my dad dropped me and two friends off for the WOR FM Birthday party at the Village Theatre which became Fillmore East. they may have been first, we didn’t go to see them. The Doors headlined and closed, blew the roof off and my mind. here’s some of the line up I remember:
Sonny and Cher
Janis Ian
The Blues Project
The Chambers Brothers
Richie Havens
The Doors

i googled the dj’s,
Jim Lounsbury
Johnny Michaels
Scott Muni
Murray The K
Rosko

Owen

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glad you finally got this one bob!

Peter Noone

I don’t believe in selling your songs.

We are in a once in a lifetime era, where songs are valued higher than they ever have been before as a result of the recognition of the value of said songs, especially as companies have realized digital/internet provides more avenues of exploitation and more money than previously believed, and there are ever fewer independent catalogs available.

Credit Merck. He rounded up a ton of money and wants it all, he wants to buy your catalog outright, lock stock and barrel. Merck wasn’t the first to pay big bucks, but the first to insist he was taking it all. Sure, there’s a theoretical back end, but the odds of it paying are extremely low, that’s why Merck is paying such extremely high prices.

And then you’ve got Larry Mestel and Primary Wave. But he’s selling a different paradigm, he’s not only going to buy your catalog, he’s gonna work it. That’s part of the Stevie Nicks deal. In an era where traditional labels give up on marketing you if you don’t have hits, even though they own the tracks and are collecting streaming revenue, showing the power of ownership, you want to boost said revenue and participate. Mestel has product managers, Primary Wave is a marketing juggernaut, illustrating once again the changes the internet has wrought on the business. There are more opportunities, and innovative companies, but the media, and to a great degree the major labels, only focus on the Spotify Top 50 and big numbers and the public has a skewed vision of what the music business is all about.

Maybe if you have no heirs. Stevie Nicks has neither a spouse nor progeny. So she gets the value of her catalog instantly, now, while she is still alive. She’s not going to live another thirty years, she could live much less than that, so now she has the ability to utilize all that cash while she’s still breathing.

But what are you going to do with the cash?

Business is littered with people who got huge payouts and then blew the cash. All of it. It’s very easy to do. Hell, you can spend ten million in a day, if not more. Did you see that guy who started Pizza Hut blew through all the cash from its sale? That’s a common story. Whereas if they drip the money out on a regular basis, which is the essence of music publishing, you’ve got the equivalent of an insurance policy.

And odds are the younger generations are nowhere near as good with money as you were. Can you say “Edgar Bronfman, Jr?,” never mind his two sisters who supported Keith Raniere and NXIVM? Music publishing is essentially a trust for your heirs, to ensure that they don’t blow through everything you created overnight.

Meanwhile, selling is antithetical to all the territory taken by artists in the late sixties and seventies. Ownership of your publishing was a BREAKTHROUGH! Not having it cross-collateralized against recording revenue was a breakthrough. As for the value of copyrights… Peter Grant sold out Led Zeppelin’s record royalties and then the rights became a gold mine. Same deal with Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley. Doesn’t anybody look at history?

As for exploitation, you can always make a deal with a publisher to do this, usually at de minimis rates. And publishing royalties are historically more transparent than recording royalties, you should get paid, what you’ve earned or close to it.

In a perfect world artists would own all their rights, and just license them. But too many acts are uninformed, never mind having brief careers, and the percentage partners see a gold mine today, which otherwise they may never get, i.e. Peter Grant and Colonel Tom Parker. But these publishing sales are moving the ball in the wrong direction.

Paul McCartney tries to recapture the rights to the Beatles songs and is undercut by Michael Jackson. The value of those songs keeps going up. And McCartney has put a huge chunk of his earnings into music publishing. Wouldn’t others wake up and follow his lead?

But we are not living in the sixties and seventies anymore. Music doesn’t represent the same thing, sure, music is everywhere, but it’s not the soul of the culture like it once was. As for the sale of today’s acts’ publishing in the future? So far, almost no one has created a catalog that compares to that of the titans of yore.

This is the marshmallow test. This is Wimpy and the burger. Can you resist today’s chunk for more riches tomorrow?

As for value… So far, historically, music publishing catalogs keep going up. Fewer are available and revenues for publishing keep ascending.

How many people can resist the cash dangled?

Dylan selling is disappointing.

P.S. Copyrights will expire when Disney is willing to let Mickey Mouse go into the public domain. A songwriter may have little political capital, but the Mouse House has plenty. It’s looking like copyright is forever.

I didn’t like it.

Now you’ve got to remember, we were in the heyday of the British Invasion, rock ruled, and if you look at the songs on the hit parade in the summer of ’65 your jaw will drop. Yes, there was “Satisfaction.” But also “Help” and my personal favorite, “California Girls.” Motown was represented too, with “It’s the Same Old Song,” “Nothing But Heartaches” and “Tracks of My Tears,” and this was when Dylan finally hit the Top Forty airwaves, with “Like a Rolling Stone,” and the number one record was…I GOT YOU BABE?

And it was never really a Top Forty, barely twenty records got played, and the top five were played over and over again, which you kinda liked, because if you missed a favorite you just kept your transistor tuned to the station and soon enough it would come back on, meanwhile, you’re twisting the dial trying to find the track on another outlet, fearful you’ll miss it on the station you left, and while twirling the dial or pushing buttons you’d be subjected to number one over and over and over again. Which meant that I heard “I Got You Babe” many more times than I ever wanted to, and to tell you the truth, I don’t ever remember listening to it all the way through.

I didn’t think Sonny & Cher were their real names. Come on, Cher with a “C”? At this point naming your act was important, and who would live their lives with these monikers? And then I saw them on TV, I can still vividly remember it, they were singing “All I Really Want to Do,” actually Cher was singing, Sonny was just hanging out on stage in this fur vest that was so bogus, so ersatz, I never ever cottoned to the act…NEVER!

Not that you could evade their songs, but really the only two giant ones thereafter were “The Beat Goes On,” which Vanilla Fudge covered well on their very disappointing second LP, and Sonny’s “Laugh at Me,” which we did.

But then the act turned to TV. That’s what you did when you were running out of gas. Thank god I didn’t have a television set at that time, so I wasn’t subjected to their visages. But the show was such a hit that it was all over the press, back when we knew who the people were in the gossip pages, and the divorce story was interesting…who wouldn’t leave Sonny? And then I ran into Sonny and Chastity on their way out of the sporting goods store I was working at in Hollywood, he was driving a Porsche 911, we talked a bit, and I never forgot it.

And by this time I knew Sonny had worked for Phil Spector.

My friend Andrew Loog Oldham says the worst thing that ever happened to Phil was that Tom Wolfe article, “The First Tycoon of Teen,” Phil believed his press, and didn’t have that much success after, although he did work with the Beatles, but the Beatles were older, they remembered his wall of sound.

And I ultimately knew that originally the act did have fake names, as in Caesar and Cleo, but this was the deep trivia that came out in rock magazines, and dedicated readers ate it up and memorized it, but we weren’t going back and listening to their records, hell, we’d have to buy them, there was no streaming, no YouTube, and that was never going to happen. Furthermore, I don’t remember the Caesar and Cleo records being in the bins. Yes, people forget how bad the physical era was. Distribution was king and there was a good chance the record you wanted was out of print, unavailable, although you did constantly try and search for the ones you wanted, like I did with “Lumpy Gravy,” which I finally had to buy on import.

And, of course, as the seventies progressed, Cher had AM hits and then she became a movie star, never mind marrying Gregg Allman, and the last hurrah happened on Letterman, which I actually saw the evening of, on my VCR, I taped the show every night, it was a club, and when Dave moved to 11:30 it just wasn’t the same. So I was aware of the performance and then it exploded, became legendary, you can see it here: https://bit.ly/3lFrzwu And while I’m proffering links, this was not the show I saw, but here you can see the fur vest: https://bit.ly/2JAdeEn And ultimately, with help from Diane Warren, John Kalodner and a tattoo on her ass, Cher had a gigantic hit in the MTV era, turning back time, and when the internet came along I paid neither the deceased Sonny nor the still extant Cher any mind. But the other night I was listening to the top hits of 1965 on Spotify and I heard…”I Got You Babe.”

Do you fast-forward or not. Come on, you’ve experienced this problem. You’re listening to a playlist, or you’re shuffling your tracks, and you hit a bummer, a bad song, or one that does not suit your mood, and if you click past it…then you start clicking through other songs and the mood is broken, you’ve got to listen to the bummers, and sometimes they reveal themselves to you. “I Got You Babe” revealed itself to me Tuesday night.

“They say we’re young and we don’t know

We won’t find out until we grow

Well I don’t know if all that’s true

‘Cause you got me and baby I got you”

It was a different era. There was a huge middle class. You could survive on minimum wage, you could make beaucoup bucks with your hands, especially on the assembly line, and everybody did not believe they could become famous and…”I Got You Babe” was evidencing optimism, it’s the opposite of the paranoia and pessimism of today. And, the youthquake had started to tremble, we were aware of an unjust war in Vietnam, boys might get their ass shot off for no good reason and we stopped respecting our elders, we were young and we believed we knew.

“I got you babe, I got you babe”

By this time I’d had camp girlfriends, two in fact, but I really knew nothing about relationships, the power of two, oftentimes against the world, you only have each other, you lean on and rely on each other to forage forward. And the truth is life is scary, and no one really listens to you after you leave school, you’re lucky if you have anyone at all.

“They say our love won’t pay the rent

Before it’s earned our money’s all been spent

I guess that’s so, we don’t have a pot

But at least I’m sure of all the things we got”

You didn’t need to buy career insurance. Doctors were rich people. You needed no safety net, you could enter the landscape with your eyes open and odds were you were gonna make it.

And the track had the feel of the Byrds, with the jangly guitar, and even though the vocals were right up front there was a wall of sound behind, and then just an organ or some instrument that sounded like a carnival and then came a bridge.

“I got flowers in the spring, I got you to wear my ring”

It’s hard to explain the era, with its sports and traditions hanging over from earlier days. Glenn Frey loved football, and the truth was you wanted to give your letter sweater to your girl, assuming you had one to begin with, and your fraternity pins and rings…

“And when I’m sad, you’re a clown

And if I get scared, you’re always around”

And this was when Cher became Cher. She reached deep down and bellowed, and it seemed like she was really in love, that she truly believed what she was singing, and we became convinced she and Sonny were actually together, this was not a studio concoction, and Sonny did write the lyrics.

“So let them say your hair’s too long

‘Cause I don’t care, with you I can’t go wrong”

Hair. It was a constant battle. How long were you allowed to grow it, what did your parents say, what did the school say, I remember coming back from the barber shop and my mother insisting I go right back because they hadn’t taken enough off, and she was liberal! But there was a dividing line, between us and them, you can say it’s akin to tattoos and hip-hop, but tattoos are permanent and back in the sixties things fashion was moving so fast you didn’t want to get stuck in some backwater, unable to switch your look to avoid being made fun of, there was no nerd culture, i.e. nerds were not lionized and embraced, either you were cool or you didn’t even exist, so people constantly tried to be cool. And sure, hip-hop may piss off boomers like rock pissed off boomers’ parents, but the funny thing was the rock songs were so good that they ended up being remade as AC numbers, my father knew “For Once In My Life” having never heard the Stevie Wonder version, he knew it as “beautiful music,” no one’s cutting adult versions of hip-hop, actually a lot of hip-hop is built on samples from the rock canon.

“Then put your little hand in mine

There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb”

This was not nihilism, this was not destruction, this is one thing that has been lost in the rewrite of the sixties, boomers wanted to be nonviolent, there was a whole anti-football contingent, boomers only turned to violence and destruction when their elders insisted they go overseas to risk getting shot while having no choice in the matter, ergo the lowering of the voting age.

“I got you to hold my hand

I got you to understand”

UNDERSTAND! We want someone to talk to who listens and gets us, that’s more important than how the other person looks or how rich they are.

“I got you to walk with me

I got you to talk with me”

The word “rap” was pulled from the inner city, it meant talking, we were rapping constantly, conversation drove the sixties, after all we had no internet, no social media, there was no other way to connect.

So I’m hiking in the mountains and a whole picture develops in my brain as I’m listening to “I Got You Babe.” There were people just a bit older than I was who embraced this as their anthem, and those who’d made their choices and felt, or wanted to feel good about them. I didn’t expect to see the sixties encapsulated in “I Got You Babe.”

“I got you babe

I got you babe

I got you babe

I GOT YOU BABE!”

The song did not fade out, it doubled-down on its essence, having each other was enough, and even though they were singing to each other we were empowered too, that was the magic of the music, sure, people listen to music today, but music does not drive the culture the way it used to, it was just about all we had, these pied pipers were leading us to new lands, they were opening our minds, they were showing us there was another way to live our lives, we just didn’t have to repeat the steps of our parents.

And I’d like to tell you I’m getting the same sensation listening to “I Got You Babe” right now, two days later, inside, in my office, but serendipity oftentimes plays a part in the listening experience, right song, right time and not only are memories made, but insights generated, feelings kindled.

So many songs I know by heart I was too young to understand so this late date discovery process is enlightening and satisfying, but that’s the entrancing element of music, you can always peel back the layers, you can always go deeper.

“Babe

I got you babe”

1965 is set in amber. I’m no longer pissed that “I Got You Babe” is keeping the Beatles from being number one, eliminating space for something more palatable to me, it can be evaluated on its own terms. And at the time I thought “I Got You Babe” was a throwback, but it was squarely placed in the culture of the day. Sure, Sonny may have been old, but Cher was preternaturally young. she wasn’t even twenty! She was truly one of us, how did she grab the brass ring at such a young age? And Cher was the alternative to the blond beach bunnies, you could have dark hair and be attractive and sexy and Sonny and Cher might have started the bell-bottom craze.

And the funny thing is this fifty-five year old track survives, in an era where what happened last year is completely forgotten, where music goes by so fast you can’t even remember the songs you liked, and a lot less is known by heart.

There’s not a boomer alive who doesn’t know every lick of “I Got You Babe.” That’s right, the biggest Stones fans, the darkest personages, they know this song, because they were forced to listen to it on the radio, and at this late date even I can smile and feel good listening to “I Got You Babe,” that’s the power of a great song and great production.

“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