May 12, 1965: The Rolling Stones Record "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"

Left to right: Bill Wyman, Brian Jones,

Charlie Watts, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards

May 12, 1965, 60 years ago: The Rolling Stones, already the next-biggest British rock and roll band behind The Beatles, record "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction." It becomes their signature song, and one of the most popular songs in rock and roll history.

The Stones consisted of lead singer Mick Jagger, lead guitarist Keith Richards, rhythm guitarist Brian Jones, bass guitarist Bill Wyman, and drummer Charlie Watts. Also on the recording were pianists Ian Stewart and Jack Nitzsche, although Jones could also play the piano -- and, as it later turned out, the sitar (on "Paint It, Black") and the recorder (on "Ruby Tuesday"). Andrew Loog Oldham produced the record.

Richards claimed he wrote the opening riff for the song at his apartment in St. John's Wood, North-West London. Then he recorded it on a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Then he fell asleep. When he played the tape in the morning, he found it contained 2 minutes of acoustic guitar, "and then me snoring for the next 40 minutes." It became one of the most famous opening riffs in rock and roll history. He said Jagger wrote the lyrics by the pool in Clearwater, Florida, in the Tampa Bay area.

They recorded the song on May 12, 1965, at the studio of Chess Records on the South Side of Chicago, home to Richards' hero Chuck Berry, and to blues musicians such as Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Willie Dixon. The studio's address became the title of an instrumental the Stones later recorded, "2120 South Michigan Avenue."

The song was released on June 5, and was so damn catchy that, despite the bad grammar of the title, Billboard magazine listed it as the Number 1 song in America in their July 10 issue. It remains the Stones' most familiar song. As Jagger put it: 

It was the song that really made The Rolling Stones, changed us from just another band into a huge, monster band... It has a very catchy title. It has a very catchy guitar riff. It has a great guitar sound, which was original at that time. And it captures a spirit of the times, which is very important in those kinds of songs... Which was alienation.

There are 3 surviving musicians from the recording session on "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction": Jagger, Richards and Wyman. Oldham is also still alive. Jones died in 1969, Stewart in 1985, Nitzsche in 2000, and Watts in 2021.