1965 The Rolling Stones: (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

'Der der, der der derrrrrrrr' der der der' - yes it's all about "the riff" isn't it, the one that honks across the width of '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' like the backing horn blare of a Stax soul review. Weld that to Jagger's 'I can't get no's and you have a double helix directly from the heart of rock's DNA, a statement as talismanic to the genre as the Statue of Liberty is to New York and almost as clichéd. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a pre-1965 world where it didn't exist; in my own private version of 'Rock Dreams' I picture Keith spending hours in his bedsit, noodling on his guitar to come up with a song that pays homage to - but doesn't rip off - his heroes Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters before throwing it downstairs in a 'fuck it' of frustration only to hear those chords picked out by the stair treads as the fretboard hits them on its way down. Never happened of course,* but "the riff " is that simple; a basic claw at an A chord that begs the question why nobody bothered to come up with it before?

There's more to it than that of course; as John Lennon had already attested on 'Help!', fame has its dark sky downside, but whereas all he wanted was a quiet corner and somebody to listen, Jagger is rampant in his disillusioned strut around his own brave new world after it's hit home that money can't buy happiness. 'Satisfaction' is a blues, but a very different variety born from the Thames rather than the Mississippi; a post consumerist, pre situationist white boy rant at the banality of manufactured modern life ("When I'm watching my TV and a man comes on to tell me how white my shirts can be") and his total lack of engagement with the world that fame has opened up.

Or, as Guy Debord would shortly point in 'La Société du spectacle" - "The spectacle is not a collection of images; rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images". Mick Jagger as social philosopher? Nah, I ain't buyin' it - not least because there's irony in the fact that Debord's book would shortly form a central plank of the ideological backbone behind the 1968 Paris riots, an event that the Stones would commemorate in 'Street Fighting Man' little knowing that they'd already done as much three years previously (in fact, Jagger on this always reminds me of Spinal Tap's Nigel Tufnel and his fussing over his too small sandwiches than any voice for the Situationist International).

Rock stars feeling hard done by rarely make for engaging listening material - even the girl he's trying to 'make' won't jump in the sack with him because it's her time of the month ("baby better come back later next week 'cause you see I'm on losing streak"). Poor Mick, he just can't win and his voice drips with a spitting pissed petulance (look at that titular double negative) that for the first time is all his own and not a borrowed impersonation from the country he's now disillusioned with. But even so, 'Satisfaction' carries a driving urgency that doesn't allow dust to dwell on what a whingeing git Mick is being. Wyman's snapping bass provides solid filler whenever the klaxxon of '"the riff'" dies down while Charlie's swinging truncheon drumbeat keeps the violence within the grooves so that no matter how often it's played, 'Satisfaction' has never becomes a parody of itself. For better or for worse '(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction' is white man blues, a call to arms of discontent with edge sharp enough to cut a valley of space between themselves and The Beatles. It's the sound of a band finding their own feet on their own terms and able to start shaping the present and the future instead of borrowing from the past.


* Apparently, Keith came up with the riff in his sleep and wrote it down quickly before drifting back to nod. Something else he shares with Coleridge then, apart from the drugs.