hey - hey - hey! that's what I say!

 

Pier 60, Clearwater Beach

------------------- [excerpt from Keith Richards book] -------------- Then came "Satisfaction," the track that launched us into global fame. ...I wrote "Satisfaction" in my sleep.... The miracle being that I looked at the cassette player that morning and I knew I'd put a brand-new tape in the previous night, and I saw it was at the end.  

Then I pushed rewind and there was "Satisfaction."  It was just a rough idea.  There was just the bare bones of the song, and it didn't have that noise, of course, because I was on acoustic.

        Mick wrote the lyrics by the pool in Clearwater, Florida, four days before we went into the studio and recorded it -- first at Chess in Chicago, an acoustic version, and later with the fuzz tone at RCA in Hollywood.

It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone, a little box they put out at that time.  I've only ever used foot pedals twice -- the other time was for Some Girls in the late '70s, when I used an XR box with a nice hillbilly Sun Records slap-echo on it.  But effects are not my thing.  I just go for quality of sound....

        One hit requires another, very quickly, or you fast start to lose altitude.  At that time you were expected to churn them out.  "Satisfaction" is suddenly number one all over the world, and Mick and I are looking at each other, saying, "This is nice."  Then bang bang bang at the door, "Where's the follow-up?  We need it in four weeks."  

And we were on the road doing two shows a day.  

You needed a new single every two months; you had to have another one all ready to shoot.  And you needed a new sound.  If we'd come along with another fuzz riff after "Satisfaction," we'd have been dead in the water, repeating with the law of diminishing returns.  

        Many a band has faltered and foundered on that rock.  "Get Off of My Cloud" was a reaction to the record companies' demands for more -- leave me alone -- and it was an attack from another direction.  And it flew as well.

        So we're the song factory.  We start to think like songwriters, and once you get that habit, it stays with you all your life.  It motors along in your subconscious, in the way you listen.

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{excerpts from Life, by Keith Richards with James Fox.  Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company.  New York - Boston - London.  2010.}

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On You Tube go to the video named

The Rolling Stones - (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Official Lyric Video)

uploader / channel:  ABKCOVEVO

and -- PLAY!   ♫ ♪ ♪

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