{"id":394030,"date":"2026-01-28T00:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394030\/"},"modified":"2026-01-28T00:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-28T00:10:09","slug":"tom-waits-response-to-a-rolling-stones-classic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/394030\/","title":{"rendered":"Tom Waits’ response to a Rolling Stones classic"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Tom<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Asylum Records \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n

Tue 27 January 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n

\u201cJimmy Stewart said he stopped making movies because he didn\u2019t like the way he looked on screen anymore,\u201d Tom Waits<\/a> once said. \u201cI\u2019m more the guy who says I look like hell, but I\u2019m going to see where it gets me.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was the mindset Waits had going into Bad As Me. It was strange in the sense that, as a kid, Waits had spent so much time wishing he was older, and now that he finally was, everything seemed a whole lot more complicated than that. But eventually, that became his entire persona; the gritty, outlaw type whose music blends all aspects of American culture into one.<\/p>\n

Mostly, Waits had to grow up fast because, as he told The Guardian<\/a>, that\u2019s what you had to do when you were from \u201ca broken home\u201d. Much of that also infiltrated his music, especially on Bad As Me, during moments when he lingered on being the sort of outsider who barely had much guidance. Many of the songs, therefore, like \u2018Kiss Me\u2019, sought to bring together all those in Waits\u2019 life who had given him the guidance he craved.<\/p>\n

That song in particular came from admiring voices like Peggy Lee and Julie London, and from, in his own words<\/a>, trying to \u201cunderstand them and take them apart and see what they\u2019re made of, and wonder if you can make one, too\u201d. This is a major reason why Bad As Me became so immediately popular and entirely timeless, because there was a lot of navigating his own experiences through different singers or sources, some of which also featured on the record.<\/p>\n

\u2018Satisfied\u2019, for instance, featured The Rolling Stones\u2019 Keith Richards on guitar, and was written in response to The Stones\u2019 generational anthem \u2018(I Can\u2019t Get No) Satisfaction\u2019. Lyrically, it\u2019s not hard to figure out why. While The Stones\u2019 masterpiece tackles youthful malaise and frustrations with thriving in a society and generation that puts you down, Waits\u2019 response playfully rejects this idea, arguing that he, of all people, will find satisfaction.<\/p>\n

As he sings in the song, \u201cI said I will have satisfaction \/ I will be satisfied \/ Before I\u2019m gone.\u201d He also namechecks the pair in the line, \u201cNow Mr Jagger and Mr Richards \/ I will scratch where I\u2019ve been itching \/ Now Mr Jagger and Mr Richards \/ I will scratch where I\u2019ve been itching.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is an especially interesting position to take when you consider that Waits was always in a perpetual state of disillusionment, his boozy outcast image the typical manifestation of someone whose default state has always been survival and taking the road less travelled because nobody else showed the way. <\/p>\n

As such, \u2018Satisfied\u2019 comes as a satirical play on what satisfaction actually means, mirroring the earlier discomfort and discontentment<\/a> found in The Stones\u2019 original song rather than pulling away from it. And in that sense, it\u2019s typical Waits, layering his songs with humour to poke fun at how he kept on pushing even in the face of turmoil. Or, as he said, \u201cI look like hell, but I\u2019m going to see where it gets me.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the studio, Waits and Richards\u2019 dynamic also added to this tone, especially as they both enjoyed exercising a sense of unpredictability just to see where it goes, or as a method of pushing the other even further. \u201c[We] did that in one afternoon down in Chinatown,\u201d Richards told Spinner UK. \u201cI love working with Tom. You never know what he\u2019s going to hit you with. There is that element of \u2018Come on, surprise me\u2019 between the two of us.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Asylum Records \/ Alamy) Tue 27 January 2026 21:00, UK \u201cJimmy Stewart said he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,15747,86094,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-394030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-the-rolling-stones","tag-tom-waits","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}