This Week in Rock History: Still Satisfied

This week in 1965, the Rolling Stones were in the middle of a brief American tour. On May 5 or 6 (sources disagree), in a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, Keith Richards began fooling around with a fuzztone guitar. After a while, he came up with a riff he couldn’t get out of his head. Keith later claimed the riff was inspired by Martha and the Vandellas’ Dancing in the Street and that he imagined it being played by a horn section. He played the riff for Mick Jagger, and in a little while the two of them worked out a song. On May 10, after a show in Chicago the night before, the Stones did their first takes of the new song at the legendary Chess studios, and finished it in Los Angeles the next day before heading up the coast for a show in San Francisco.

Keith didn’t think the resulting record was strong enough to be the A side of a single, but he was wrong. Two months later, the song would reach Number One in America, and it would end up the top song of 1965... (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction.

Here's an oddity about Satisfaction: Even today, you don’t usually hear it in stereo. The version most familiar to everybody is in mono. A stereo version exists, but it lacks the down-and-dirty punch of the mono version. And of course, Satisfaction without being down and dirty is not really Satisfaction at all.