January 7, 2000

20th century's No. 1 hit: 'Satisfaction' hits the spot

By ROGER ANDERSON Scripps Howard News Service

The Rolling Stones great 1965 party song, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," has been named the top tune of the past century by a VH1 survey of industry wizards, and that, of course, is just as it should be.

From the time it first hit the airwaves back in that year, the song has been universally accepted by everyone - Stones fans, Beatles fans, Motown fans, Dylan fans, acid-rock fans - as the most rocking song ever.

In '65 and '66, what really punched up a high-school dance and got the pubescent juices flowing was when the little local band's guitarist switched his instrument to the "fuzz bass" setting and tore into Keith Richards' domineering riff.

It's the kind of riff that some listeners might term "mindless," because it consists of three notes played over and over and over.

Yet it's a highly intelligent mindless riff, because Keith doesn't merely play the notes over and over and over - he infuses them with some of the most artful phrasing in the history of the electric guitar.

It's that protean phrasing that makes you want to hit the dance floor.

"Satisfaction" is exactly the type of song that raises the hackles of old-fashioned Tin Pan Alley/Broadway show tune/Cole Porter/Frank Sinatra type music lovers, because its chorus, as it is written, is scarcely even musical - two chords and no melody, just chanting.
What raises it above musical featurelessness is the series of chord changes underlying Mick Jagger's plaintive claim, 'Though I try, and I try, and I try, and I try' - a country-tinged progression that is all the more piquant for ending in a desperate shout.

But, contrary to what is being written at some news organizations, the song's desperation is not necessarily sexual.

In fact, only the third chorus is frankly carnal in nature; the first two are, more interestingly, about what today we would call media overload, with the singer complaining about the absurd demands made on him by his radio and his TV set.

It's not just that he can't get a girl to go to bed with him (a rather unbelievable notion, considering who's doing the singing), it's that the modern world at large is driving him nuts with its nonsensical imperatives.

It was only later that the Stones actually did turn into the sex-obsessed boors that everyone's parents thought they were during the band's pimply-faced years, when they were in fact making music that was as thoughtful as it was raunchy. And you could dance to it.

Roger Anderson is arts and entertainment editor at Scripps Howard News Service.

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