31 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction

THE ROLLING STONES 1965

The riff came to Keith Richards in a dream one night in May 1965, in a motel room in Florida, on the Rolling Stones’ third U.S. tour. He woke up and grabbed a guitar and a cassette machine. Richards played the run of notes once, then fell back to sleep. “On the tape,” he said later, “you can hear me drop the pick, and the rest is snoring.” Mick Jagger later said that “Satisfaction” was “my view of the world, my frustration with everything.” Inspired by that riff and the title line, also Richards’ idea, Jagger wrote the words by the motel pool in 10 minutes.