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Sat 29 August 2026 16:00, UK
There’s a strong case to be made for ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ being The Rolling Stones’ most important record of all time.
While they were bona fide rock stars by 1965, they weren’t the sort writing their own music and contributing to the innovation of the genre. Relying on a trusty catalogue of blues rock covers, they shot to fame because of their performance, not writing.
With ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, they changed that trend and delivered their self-written hit that captured the original energy of this wildly captivating band. But for Keith Richards in particular, the song provided a gateway.
The now iconic guitar hook that sits in the middle of the song was the first of his that utilised the Gibson Fuzz-Tone pedal, a distortion box that had this aggressive and primal sound to it, one that helped elevate the blues structure and turn it into something more fitting for the emerging counterculture era.
It gave the song an attitude that the band would strive for thereafter. Of course, they would prove that they could match it time and time again, with tracks that made them perhaps the biggest band of the ‘70s. But there were a few misfires before the rock and roll engine started purring, namely in the track ‘Get Off My Cloud’, which was written and released almost instantly after ‘Satisfaction’.
“I never dug it as a record,” Keith Richards explained, “The chorus was a nice idea, but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in LA, where ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ was recorded, and it was time for another single. But how do you follow-up ‘Satisfaction’? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow, like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew Loog Oldham’s worst productions.”
It was an important lesson for a band that had had immediate success with everything they tried at that point. Their career as a covers band was received with instant success, and in ‘Satisfaction’, their original writing journey saw the very same results. But ‘Get Off My Cloud’ was a sobering lesson that a rinse and repeat formula wouldn’t work if they were looking to achieve the sort of critical acclaim their unofficial rivals, The Beatles, were enjoying.
Further reading: From The Vault
It was a lesson that led them towards some of their greatest ever songs. Because in the immediate years after the track, the band conjured ‘Paint It Black’, ‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and ‘Gimme Shelter’, songs that were built from the same blues model that inspired ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ but elevated it in the same way the track did too.
Keith Richards’ driving guitar licks were once again central to the sound, but with new melodies and a more expansive production that made them a studio band capable of writing songs for the stadiums they would soon be playing. Maybe after all, ‘Get Off My Cloud’ was more important than ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’?
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