Credit: Ed Sullivan Show Archive / Universal Music
Tue 1 September 2026 0:00, UK
In the 1950s and 1960s, you hadn’t truly made it in music until you’d appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and, more than that, you weren’t on course to become a legend until you’d stirred up some controversy on the programme.
One group who were used to finding themselves in hot water in the 1960s (and beyond) were The Rolling Stones, and 1967 was a year that forevermore cemented their status as the bad boys of British blues, owing to the highly publicised drugs bust and sentencing of the Glimmer Twins, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, but the trouble had been brewing for a while.
In 1966, they had their very own run-in with the producers of The Ed Sullivan Show, who really should have expected nothing less from the band. But, no matter their rough and rowdy ways and reputation, the biggest show on television could hardly ignore a group who were quickly racking up the stateside number ones and cementing an adoring audience.
Booked to play the show for the third time on February 13th, 1966, The Stones were still a few weeks away from unleashing ‘Paint It Black’ on the world, and so opted to play one of their recent number one singles, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ that night, a song they’d already brought to a TV audience before, debuting it during a May 1965 appearance on the UK programme Shindig!.
On that occasion, the producers had faded out any audio from the feed when Jagger got to the final verse, which includes: “When I’m riding ’round the world, and I’m doing this, and I’m signing that / And I’m trying to make some girl”. Not wanting to have to make any similar kinds of adjustments of their own during the live broadcast, the Ed Sullivan producers tried to get out ahead of the issue by requesting that Jagger simply not sing the offending lines in the first place.
Obviously, anybody who knows anything about The Rolling Stones knows what comes next. Appearing on colour television for the first time ever, Jagger proceeded to sing the line, but listening back now, it’s really not clear whether he kept the original or swapped it out with the slightly more subtle “meet some girl”. Either way, his eyes jump right down the barrel of the camera and look out into the homes of everybody watching at home, precisely at the moment that he sings it.
Evidently satisfied enough with the switch, the producers brought the Stones back to Ed Sullivan the following year, and when they insisted that they be allowed to perform their new song ‘Let’s Spend The Night Together’, the executives tried to compromise by suggesting the lyric be changed to “let’s spend some time together”. Mick, Keith and co were having none of it, having bowed to pressure once already, and refused until Sullivan himself stepped in and told them in no uncertain terms, “Either the song goes, or you go”.
Further reading: From The Vault
Surprisingly, the Stones gave in again and went out to perform the watered-down lyric, but not without some over-the-top eye-rolling from Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman all through the chorus, which was so exaggerated that even Groucho Marx would have been embarrassed, to display their displeasure at the censored lyric.
Yeah, Elvis turned the world upside down with his hips, Dylan quit the show altogether rather than be told what to do, and Jim Morrison did whatever he wanted to do once the camera was rolling, but those real rock and roll rebels, The Rolling Stones, they went out there and camply rolled their eyes while caving in to ‘The Man’ they were supposed to be railing against.
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