13 September 1965
The Stones had played Dublin and Belfast earlier in September 1965, in the gigs filmed for the Charlie Is My Darling documentary. ‘Satisfaction’, on the setlist for those gigs and a raucous highlight of the film, had already gone to number one in the States that July and was now about to top the UK and Irish charts. Hindsight is great, but surely some at those September 1965 Irish shows must have twigged they were witnessing the evolutionary step beyond Herman’s Hermits.
‘Satisfaction’ wouldn’t be in many people’s top five Stones tracks. Overexposure, cliché and the towering magnificence of their ’68-’72 classics are extrinsic factors in that. Within its control, ‘Satisfaction’ sounds like any record produced by a band’s manager—unless Charlie actually is slapping an upturned plastic bucket—and is a verse too long for my attention span. That said, I’m not a total heathen: ‘Satisfaction’ has Keith’s electrifying angle-grinder riff, Mick’s preening and swaggering vocal performance, witty and barbed lyrics, and a first real glimpse of the Mick & Keef magic, all of which still sound irresistibly sexy and cool today.
We forget—or at least I do—that the Stones had already topped the UK charts and broken the States before this. However, ‘Satisfaction’ feels like a Year Zero for them and, if you’ll indulge my grandiloquence, for popular music. Those earlier hits, like ‘Not Fade Away’ and ‘It’s All Over Now’, are still the Stones as provincial British blues-rock panel-beaten by a team of equals. ‘Satisfaction’, though, is the sound of rock – our modern concept of rock, with a lead guitarist peacocking a signature riff, and a lead singer strutting across the stage instead of being stuck behind a mic stand with an instrument. That’s not to say it was the first—Freddie And The Dreamers already had a buck-lepping front man, and plenty of Beatles hits had a guitar hook—but it’s the most influential and by far the most awesome. Keith plays that riff, Mick sneers that chorus, and nothing is the same again.
