The rolling stones satisfaction
I never really got into the thing after that, either. And then Ian Stewart went around the corner to Wallach’s Music City or something and came around with a distortion box: ‘Try this.’ It was as offhand as that. ‘This riff’s really gotta hang hard and long.’ We burnt the amps up and turned the shit up, and it still wasn’t right. It’s exactly what was needed to emphasize the lick that opens “Satisfaction.” “It was a miracle,” Richards told Guitar Player magazine. One of the brothers cut a speaker with a razor blade, causing the same sort of snarled line Richards achieved with the fuzz pedal. The sound was akin to the lead on the Kinks’ “ You Really Got Me,” which, according to legend, resulted from a fight between Dave Davies and Ray Davies. The next morning, keyboardist Ian Stewart, who also functioned as a kind of road manager, came back from the music store with a Gibson Maestro fuzz box, a new gizmo that distorted guitar, junked it up. When Richards listened to the new version, he knew what was missing. In the early morning of May 12, at the end of a 14-hour session, Watts switched tempo on the drums and everything else began to fall into place. Oldham compared it to “ Walk Right in” by the Rooftop Singers-“ called for striped shirts, Brylcreem, basketball slacks and a time-out.” The grit was missing. Jagger nailed the vocal, but the rest of the song had to evolve. In other words, even though you can’t hear him on the record, he’s there. Though his track was later removed, it was, according to Oldham, essential in delineating and holding together the groove.
Nitzsche, who deserves a book of his own, urged the band through each iteration of “Satisfaction.” He played piano on the sessions. The band flew to Los Angeles the next day, where, at RCA Studios in Hollywood, they hooked up with sound engineer David Hassinger and producer and musician Jack Nitzsche, who’d prove essential. Because of that riff! It was buried, but there, tolling like a bell: B–B–B–C#–D. The next afternoon, they returned to Chess Records, where they cut “Try Me,” “That’s How Strong My Love Is,” “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man,” and “Mercy, Mercy.” At the end of the nine-hour session, they recorded “Satisfaction.” Band manager Andrew Loog Oldham later described this early version as “acoustic-driven, wayward,” and “harmonica-laden”: “ just would not do … the hook registered as marginal to nowt.” Jagger and Richards were ready to ditch the song, but Oldham urged them to keep after it. On May 9, 1965, the Stones played the Arie Crown Theater in Chicago. What’s more compelling than the half-heard table talk of a rock star, the story you have to complete yourself? By withholding, the writer invites repeat listening. It’s a trick Dylan borrowed from the Beats-a modernist trick that obscures a song toward enigma. Dylan was rewriting the rules, giving composers permission to write about their own lives in a personal language that, like a private joke, could never be fully understood by an outsider. There’s actually a picture of Jagger, poolside in Clearwater, studying the back of the record cover. “ Neither Mick nor Keith saw it as a potential single, and certainly not a hit,” Wyman writes, “Keith’s instinct must have told him it was worth some effort, because he kept working on it.” The biggest influence on the lyric was probably Bob Dylan, whose album Bringing It All Back Home had been released that year. At the beginning, it sounded less like an anthem than a dirge. Richards played acoustic guitar as Jagger mumbled the lyric. The other Stones first heard “Satisfaction” in one of the hotel rooms. In addition to the moral offense, it was just stupid to beat up a local girl in the Bible Belt. As Richards has said, “He was not a good man.” As drummer Charlie Watts has said, “He was a little prick.” Mike Dorsey, a British actor who drove and protected the Stones, told Brian off, then punched him out. The keener his paranoia, the more violent the outburst. Paranoid and increasingly jealous of the Mick/Keith writing partnership, Jones spent his rage on women. Jones’ girl showed up black-eyed by the pool in the morning. Shortly after the Stones checked in, multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones and bassist Bill Wyman hooked up with groupies, the sort that haunt astronaut bars and speedways.
It’s since become Scientology headquarters. To mark its opening, the daredevil Henry Roland had climbed the exterior in a blindfold. The hotel had been built in 1926 and managed by Ransom Olds, the namesake of the Oldsmobile.
One afternoon, they sat poolside at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, working. Jagger filled in the missing pieces: chords, chorus, bridge. Jagger and Richards did not take up the song until several weeks later, by which time they were back on the road.