(Credits: Far Out / Bent Rej)
Fri 10 October 2025 16:00, UK
It seems odd in the modern context, but some of our most treasured bands in history came up from doing covers.
Such was the landscape of music in the 1960s, faces that would now synonymise with innovation were rehashing old songs. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Marvin Gaye were but a few icons whose careers launched off the backs of someone else’s work.
It’s not a slight to say that either; it was simply the reality of music in that era. Covers were just the done thing. It was a quick and easy way to catapult the next cohort of talent into the eyes of the masses, through the lens of familiarity. The fact that the well of originality might just run out wasn’t a concern as of yet, people instead viewed these songs with an undying love and so relished the chance to see them performed in a multitude of ways.
The Beatles quickly ditched the approach, given the fact that John Lennon and Paul McCartney were writing original songs long before their own band formed, but The Rolling Stones continued on, showcasing their sense of performative sexuality through the works of great blues artists before them. Because to them, at the very beginning, performance and all the attention that came with it felt vitally important.
Subsequently, the experienced chart success at the hands of these covers. Their cover of The Valentinos’ ‘It’s All Over Now’ and Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Little Red Rooster’ in particular gained them number one status, as their gap in the American blues market began to come clear. But as their own skills grew with each reinterpretation, so did their own creative curiosity, and they began to pen their own tracks.
In 1963, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards penned what was their first original song, in ‘I Wanna Be Your Man’, but it was two years later that they wrote their first chart monster, and the song that to this day remains their longest standing number one.
So, which Rolling Stones song held the number one spot for the longest?
Unsurprisingly, that song was ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, staying at the top for four weeks in 1965.
It’s a testament to the very concept of an original idea, for the minute the song was released, no longer were the band associated with charming covers but instead their own identity. They now had their own soundtrack. To this day, that opening Richards riff sounds exactly like the band, and their brand of entertaining, mischievous rock.
“It had all the ingredients,” Jagger explained in 1995. In true Richards fashion, he flippantly described the song’s success, but in doing so, gave accuracy to a very intangible concept. He explained it had “a very catchy title”, “a very catchy guitar riff”, and “a great guitar sound”, which in his mind felt “original at the time.”
But it’s something only retrospect has provided him, as he once admitted, “I never thought it was anything commercial enough to be a single.”
While Jagger, on the other hand, always knew the song’s potential, “I think Keith thought it was a bit basic. I don’t think he really listened to it properly. He was too close to it and just felt it was a silly kind of riff.”
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