(Credits: Far Out / Analog Originals / Alamy)
Sun 14 September 2025 4:00, UK
There are a rarefied few songs, maybe 50 or so, that you simply couldn’t imagine the world without. The Rolling Stones delivered one of the most fierce with ‘Satisfaction’.
Keith Richards came up with the riff in a dream. He may well have been dreaming of the Motown hit ‘Dancing in the Street’ because it’s awfully similar, even by his own admission. But the brutal attitude of the band made it distinct and different, sliding seamlessly into the angst of the zeitgeist and becoming a mega-hit.
But the times were moving so fast that if you weren’t sprinting forward, you were falling behind. If The Beatles could be seen as the rivals of, well, all of their peers, then everyone had to keep pace with a group that released 213 songs in eight years. So, while the Stones might have entered the studio satisfied with ‘Satisfaction’, they knew they had to follow it up.
In a flash, Richards had gone from dreaming about an enigmatic song to the track being number one within a month. And as they bundled into the studio to record, they figured a follow up single would be required, too. They may well have mused, ‘What’s hip?’, because the sentiment of their next song was the perfect hippy soundbite: ‘Get off My Cloud’.
However, while its outlook might have been dreamy, its production was rudimentary, thrown together in a sudden flurry of activity. That might give the final cut a real warts-and-all feel, but Neil Young figured it was all the better for it. He was a folk star looking for something real, and it didn’t get much realer than the Stones noticeably fluffing their lines, and throwing those blemishes into he final mix anyway.
“They were all young, goin’ through a lotta changes real fast,” he reflected on their vital energy, “Brian [Jones] didn’t make it. ‘Satisfaction’ was a great record. ‘Get Off My Cloud,’ even better record. Looser, less of a hit. More of a reckless abandon,” Young told the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The song would go on to reach number one as well, but its pop and fizz faded faster from public consciousness. Young, however, even admired that element. “‘Get Off My Cloud’, I know it’s not as good of a song, and I know that the performance is probably not as good as the ‘Satisfaction’ performance, maybe it is,” he said.
It carries the spirit of the blues in its slapdash wake, and Young saw that as a definitive flourish of the band. “The thing about it is it’s obviously just such a fuckin’ throw-together song that they came up with on the way to the studio or the night before, y’know,” he concluded. “That’s what I liked about it. It really sounded like the Rolling Stones.”
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