Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction" turns 50
50 years ago, "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones debuted in Britain after premiering in the United States more than two months earlier. Despite its age, CBS News correspondent Charlie D'Agata reports that the song and the band are still going strong.
It was in a dream that the now legendary tune came to Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, D'Agata reports, so it's a good thing he slept with a tape recorder next to his bed.
"I went to bed, I wake up and notice that the tape has run to the end," Richards said. "So I run it back, push play, and it's this weird, strangled voice... and then there was this silence for a while, and then this heavy snoring went through the rest of the tape."
That strangled voice was a sleeping Richards mumbling: "I can't get no satisfaction."
He ran to play the tape for the band's lead singer, Mick Jagger, who quickly wrote the rest of the lyrics.
"They were a real songwriting team," said Brian Hiatt, a senior writer at Rolling Stone magazine. "They could come to the point where Keith would have a great riff and a great chorus, and Mick would come in and write the verse lyrics, and neither one was complete without the other. They had a team that worked and a band that could bring it to life," he said.
Mick, Keith, drummer Charlie Watts, guitarist Brian Jones and bassist Bill Wyman first recorded "Satisfaction" in May of 1965 in Chicago, D'Agata reports, and they finished it at RCA Studios in Hollywood. That year, "Satisfaction" spent 14 weeks as number 1 on the charts, and the Rolling Stones cemented their place in American rock and roll.
"They were known, but there's a hit and then there's a hit. And from then on everyone knew who they were," said Hiatt.
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But the song didn't just launch a band, D'Agata reports. It defined a generation. Fans embraced the punk attitude, and officials balked at its anti-establishment message.
"In a way, it's a protest song against commercialism and feeling trapped," Hiatt said. "You can hear the whole second half of the 60s coming in that song; the fact that there was going to be unrest, there was going to be protest, there was going to be dissatisfaction."
Other artists embraced the song, D'Agata reports. That same year, Otis Redding became the first to adapt "Satisfation," adding horns and a lot of soul to make it his own, and in 1967 Aretha Franklin gave it a diva's touch. A decade later, even Devo took the song for a spin.
But in several interviews, D'Agata reports, Mick Jagger said he'd rather be dead than performing "Satisfaction" at 45. 50 years after the song's release, however, the Rolling Stones just wrapped a tour in July and show no signs of slowing down.