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We still can’t get enough of ‘Satisfaction,’ 50 years later Rolling Stones’ 1965 hit combined sexually explicit lyrics unheard of at that time and an iconic guitar riff to change the way a generation listened to rock music.

When the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" topped the music charts in 1965, it must have sounded like a declaration of war, says pop culture writer Joel Rubinoff.

It’s hard to imagine the impact of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” when it blared from tinny transistor radios 50 years ago this summer.

The year 1965 was pre-Woodstock, pre-sexual liberation, pre-hippie, pre-Vietnam protests, pre-summer of love, pre-women’s lib, with just the faintest trace of rebellion beginning to creep into pop culture.

Rural sitcoms such as Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies ruled the prime-time roost.

Wholesome movie fare such as The Sound of Music and Dr. Zhivago were box-office behemoths.

And the songs topping the pop charts were, to be clear, anything but edgy.
“Help Me Rhonda” (Beach Boys); “This Diamond Ring” (Gary Lewis); “Downtown” (Petula Clark); “I Got You Babe” (Sonny & Cher); “Crying in the Chapel” (Elvis Presley); “I’m Henry the VIII, I Am” (Herman’s Hermits).

Even the Beatles ? whose success paved the way for the so-called British Invasion ? were churning out perky, inoffensive songs such as “Eight Days a Week” and “Ticket to Ride.”

So when “Satisfaction” hit No. 1 for four weeks in July with its iconic, razor-to-the-throat guitar riff, it must have sounded like a declaration of war.
“I can’t get no . . . satisfaction,” snarled a young Mick Jagger. “I can’t get no girl reaction.”

It wasn’t just sexual frustration he was lashing out at, though the idea of Jagger “trying to make some girl” was scandalous enough.

It was the entire establishment he was going after: the man who “comes on the radio . . . tellin’ me more and more, about some useless information, supposed to fire my imagination.”

The fact it was surrounded by pre-fab pap such as “Wooly Bully,” “What’s New Pussycat?” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love” gives context for its breakthrough as a culturally attuned, unabashed rock song.

It was like some loud, swaggering ruffian crashing through the door at a demure Victorian tea party.

But unless you were there, in the flesh, cognizant of the world around you, it’s impossible to imagine how revolutionary it was.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘Do you remember the first time you heard the Rolling Stones?’ ” country singer Brad Paisley, 42, told Entertainment Weekly.
“And I was like, ‘No. Neither do you.’ I mean, unless you were alive in the ’60s, you don’t remember the first time. Do you remember your first breath? Not only are they part of the consciousness in terms of music now, they’re just a collective thing. They’re like the Borg, musically.”

I, of course, have no idea myself, because in 1965, I was running around with training pants on my head smashing into coffee tables.

But if you watch Season 4 of the TV drama Mad Men ? which excelled at distilling the ’60s into symbolic vignettes ? there’s a scene where ad man Don Draper, disgruntled and bored, is puffing a cigarette outside the New York Athletic Club.
As this old school anti-hero watches young women walk by in his crisp white shirt, Jagger’s voice laments how “that man comes on to tell me, how white my shirts can be, but he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke, the same cigarettes as me.”

It’s basically a 3:44-second rant against consumer culture set to one of the most killer guitar hooks in history.

It’s also the kind of song only a ticked-off 21-year-old, unblemished by superstardom, could pull off.

“When you first listen to a song like that as a kid, you react to the energy of the performance,” Franz Ferdinand’s Alex Kapranos told Entertainment Weekly.
“But you delve deeper and it’s something darker, and pretty angry ? which is appealing when you’re in adolescence. There is that kind of ‘f--- you’ contrariness about it. It’s a song you don’t grow bored of.”

“It’s revolutionary,” agrees Sugarland’s Kristian Bush. “It’s a teenage heart beating in this thing. He’s just mad and mad doesn’t ever go out of style. Frustrated doesn’t go out of style. It’s simple, but it works.”

Even now, after decades of burnout exposure on oldies radio and blustery, half-hearted concert performances by the Stones themselves, the original has lost none of the visceral edge that made it a hit.

“Here’s a song that came out before I started going to kindergarten,” marvels Glenn Pelletier, the 570 News anchor who impersonates Jagger in a Rolling Stones cover band. “And it still sounds fresh and new and powerful 50 years later.
“I don’t think most kids thought about being dissatisfied with modern life. They just loved the riff.”

It’s hard to find anything comparable on the pop charts today. Rock as a music genre has been all but banished from Top 40, obsessed as it is with boy bands, dance music and an endless supply of empowerment anthems for young women.

The only rock-ish song to make the Top 10 is Walk the Moon’s “Shut Up and Dance,” which has more in common with Rick Springfield than anything rattling the bones of pop culture.

And because the Internet has splintered music into a thousand tiny niches ? EDM, Americana, indie alternative ? it’s unlikely we’ll see anything as groundbreaking as “Satisfaction” again on a mass scale.

Not to say there haven’t been other great guitar riffs: “Takin’ Care of Business,” “Smoke on the Water,” “Walk This Way,” “Whole Lotta Love,” “Day Tripper,” “Back in Black,” “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” “American Woman.”
But these are all decades in the past. And none had the same impact.

“When ‘Satisfaction’ hit the airwaves, it was like an explosion,” recalls Stones keyboardist Chuck Leavell, who was 13 when the song came out. “Such a remarkable riff: tough, mean, angry and powerful. The lyrics hit home for a young teenager: ‘I tried . . . and I tried . . . and I tried and I tried . . . I CAN’T GET NO.’
“It is and shall remain one of, if not, the best songs and recordings of rock ’n’ roll. The undisputed rock anthem. Period.”

So when you hear the band today and its 71-year-old singer’s growling discontent seems campy and ironic, cast your mind back 50 years and imagine this craggy fissured legend as a young Brit, cowed by the success of the Beatles, determined to prove himself in America.

And then listen to Keith Richards’ fuzz-drenched guitar riff.

History, you will realize, has unfolded exactly as it should.

Joel Rubinoff writes about pop culture for the Waterloo Region Record. Email him at jrubinoff@therecord.com .





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2015-07-18 17:44 by SomeTorontoGirl.

nice read TG, thanx.

When I listen to the Stones, or go to the concerts, I am amazed that their music has had such incredible longevity and is still engaging, energizing, relevant. I see all generations at the shows, have met a couple of very amazing young fans this year as well, and try to imagine being in high school in 1973 and listening to music from 1923... Bless these guys, long may they run!