Keith Richards wrote "Satisfaction" in his sleep and recorded a rough version of the riff on a Philips cassette player. He had no idea he had written it. He said when he listened to the recording in the morning, there was about two minutes of acoustic guitar before you could hear him drop the pick and "then me snoring for the next forty minutes". Sources vary as to where this story happened. While they make reference to a hotel room at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida, a house in Chelsea and the London Hilton, Richards wrote in his most recent autobiography that he was in his flat in Carlton Hill, St. John's Wood. He specifies that Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics by the pool in Clearwater, four days before they went into the studio, hence the confusion.
The Rolling Stones first recorded the track on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago, Illinois,[8] which included Brian Jones on harmonica. The Stones lip-synched to a dub of this version the first time they debuted the song on the American music variety television programme Shindig! The group re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios in Hollywood, California, with a different beat and the Maestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff. Richards envisioned redoing the track later with a horn section playing the riff: "this was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing."[10] The other Rolling Stones (Jones, Watts, & Wyman), as well as producer and manager Andrew Loog Oldham and sound engineer David Hassinger eventually outvoted Richards and Jagger so the track was selected for release as a single. The song's success boosted sales of the Gibson fuzzbox so that the entire available stock sold out by the end of 1965.
"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no
When I'm drivin' in my car
And a man comes on the radio
He's tellin' me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can't get no
Oh no no no
Hey hey hey
That's what I say
I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no
When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me
I can't get no
Oh no no no
Hey hey hey
That's what I say
I can't get no satisfaction
I can't get no girl reaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no
When I'm ridin' round the world
And I'm doin' this and I'm signin' that
And I'm tryin' to make some girl
Who tells me baby better come back maybe next week
'Cause you see I'm on a losing streak
I can't get no
Oh no no no
Hey hey hey
That's what I say
I can't get no, I can't get no
I can't get no satisfaction
No satisfaction, no satisfaction
No satisfaction, I can't get no