Rolling Stones – "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965)

Baby, better come back, maybe next week

'Cause you see, I'm on a losing streak

The title of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” – which is the newest member of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME – contains an obvious double negative.

In some languages, the second negative of a double negative cancels out the first negative – leaving a positive statement.  (It’s like when you multiply two negative numbers – you end up with a positive number.)

In other languages, double negatives are used to intensify the negative statements.  

In English, a double negative can either be an affirmative statement or what grammarians call an “emphatic negation.”  It depends on the context.

When Mick Jagger sings “I can’t get no satisfaction,” the context makes it clear that he’s using the double negative as an intensifier.

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Keith Richards has said that he came up with the famous guitar riff that kicks off “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” while he was more or less asleep.  Fortunately, he was awake enough to turn on a portable cassette recorder and capture the riff.  (When he listened to the tape the next morning, he heard two minutes of himself playing what would become “Satisfaction” on an acoustic guitar followed by 40 minutes of snoring.)   

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“Satisfaction” gets an A+ when it comes to attitude.  Its Keith Richards riff and its Charlie Watts drumming are great, and its subtly irregular lyrical meter is much more sophisticated than the sing-songy structure of most Beatles lyrics of that era.  But the reason that the song is usually listed at or very near the top when rock songs are ranked is its attitude.  

Has there ever been a song that better captures the agita that teenagers feel?  The singer of the song offers several reasons for being aggravated (e.g., annoying TV commercials) but his aggravation doesn’t really have a cause – it just is.

I thought about inducting a different Stones single into my wildly popular little hall of fame this year – perhaps “Paint It Black.”  But le Rolling Stones, c’est “Satisfaction” – n’est-ce pas?  

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“Satisfaction” was the Rolling Stones’ first #1 single in the United States.  It eventually hit #1 in the UK as well, but the BBC – which had a legal monopoly on radio stations in the UK – refused to play the song because it was considered too sexually suggestive.  

Jagger was amused that the BBC’s censors “didn't understand the dirtiest line” –  the line from the last verse where the girl asks the singer to come see her next week because she’s currently “on a losing streak,” which is apparently a reference to menstruation.  (Who knew?)

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Click here to listen to the stereo mix of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” which I think I like better than the mono version that we’ve heard on the radio for years.  (The acoustic guitar part is more noticeable in the stereo version – you can barely hear it in the mono mix.  Also, the tambourine is less prominent – and less annoying – in the stereo mix.)

Click on the link below to buy the familiar mono version of the song from Amazon:

Beatles – "Eight Days a Week" (1965)

Love you every day, girl

Always on my mind

One thing I can say, girl

Love you all the time

[NOTE: The Beatles released close to two dozen singles that are worthy of serious consideration for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  But none of them really stand out, so it wasn’t easy to decide which one to pick as the first Beatles single to induct into my wildly popular little hall of fame.  I ended up picking “Eight Days a Week” for two reasons: (1) it’s as good as any other possible choice, and (2) director Ron Howard gave that title to his fascinating documentary movie about the Beatles’ touring days.  I wrote three posts about that documentary and the Beatles in general in October 2016.  What follows is a slightly edited version of the third of those posts, which I think absolutely nailed it.]

In his review of Ron Howard’s new documentary, The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, Tom Shone of Newsweek describes the Beatles as “the original and best boy band.”

It may seem blasphemous to lump the Beatles in with boy bands like One Direction, the Backstreet Boys, ’N Sync, the Bay City Rollers, and the Monkees because the Beatles eventually matured into something very different from those boy bands.  

But The Ed Sullivan Show-vintage Beatles – the Beatles of “She Loves You” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” — were not only a boy band, but the original boy band. 

The Beatles had a Svengali-like figure who took control of their career – Brian Epstein, who took the scruffy, leather-jacket-clad lads from Liverpool (by way of Hamburg) and put them in natty matching suits with matching haircuts.  And having a Svengali pulling the strings is de rigueur for a boy band.

More importantly, the Beatles had a legion of insanely devoted fangirls, which is even de rigueur-er for a boy band.  

Beatles fans

When I saw Eight Days a Week last weekend, I was struck by just how many of the fans at Beatles concerts were teenaged girls too young to have a driver’s license.  (I’m guessing about 99% fit that description.)

Writing on Vulture.com, Jillian Mapes notes correctly that “Beatlemania established the barometer by which all other boy-band-demonium has been gauged.  Is that not the defining aspect of what separates a boy band from merely an all-male pop group?”

Makes goes on to explain what made the Beatles uniquely appealing to their fangirls:

Certainly Elvis and even a young Sinatra inspired similar reactions in teen girls, and doo-wop and R&B groups had proven that there's a certain magic in male voices playing off each other.  But the Beatles marked the first time listeners were able to customize their fandom by claiming one of four distinct personalities that corresponded to their romantic tastes.  This is the model more or less emulated by every wildly successful boy-band since: a boy for every type of girl (however laughably reductive that may be).

Why did girls scream at Beatles concerts?

Rachel Simmons, whose website describes her as “an author, educator and coach helping girls and young women grow into authentic, emotionally intelligent and assertive adults,” believes that concerts give young females who are socialized to be polite, modest “good girls” an opportunity to let it all hang out:

In their day-to-day, non-concert-going lives, girls don’t have a lot of permission to scream.  A concert offers an oasis from the daily rules about being good girls.  Screaming is about letting go and leaving the confines of being the self-conscious pleaser.

Simmons also believes that screaming at a concert allows teenaged girls to be part of a group but also express themselves as individuals:

Adolescent girls are really invested in the acceptance of their peers.  But there’s a competitive element to fandom and fangirling — and screaming is an expression of that fandom.  So girls are doing it not only to assert their passion for the band, but to compete with each other and to signal to each other that, “This is what I care about.”  It’s part competition, but partly a way to connect.  During adolescence for girls, that’s a very complex and important drive.

I don’t find Ms. Simmons’s theory very persuasive, so I did some research to see what science might have to say about why fangirls scream at boy-band concerts.

Professor Harold Gouzoules, the chairman of the psychology department at Emory University, has been studying how rhesus monkeys use screams to communicate for years.  He believes that screaming by humans is also a means of communicating, and that the message that screamers are communicating is generally the same one: LOOK AT ME!!!

According to Professor Gouzoules,

If you got back to Nazi rallies in the ’30s, when Hitler was rising to prominence, there are historical accounts that young women were screaming.  There’s something about that kind of social event — there’s excitement being generated by somebody who has power or authority. . . . And those screams are attention-getting.  That’s how they serve monkeys.  That’s how they serve us a lot of the time.

In other words, young girls at Beatle concerts screamed for the same reason that young girls at Nazi rallies screamed and the rhesus monkeys that Professor Gouzoules observed screamed: because they were desperate for attention.

The girls who attended Beatles concerts did a lot of screaming.  They also cried and fainted.  But that’s not all they did.

From the Huffington Post:

Multiple people have claimed Beatles shows were known for their urine.  Notably, John B. Lynn, son of the owner of a venue the Beatles played, told The Washington Post that the concert hall smelled like the pee of overexcited girls after the show.  

From Digitalspy.com:

Bob Geldof has admitted that he associates the Beatles with the smell of urine.

The singer revealed that he was stunned by the large number of young girls "pissing themselves" at a Beatles concert he attended in the 1960s and can no longer remember the band without thinking of the incident.

"The Beatles was a case of watching females in excelsis.  It's the old cliché, but you couldn't hear them for all the screaming," he told Q magazine.

"I remember looking down at the cinema floor and seeing these rivulets of piss in the aisles. The girls were literally pissing themselves with excitement.  So what I associate most with the Beatles is the smell of girls' urine."

(Hopefully, Geldof’s memory is better than his Latin.  In excelsis means “in the highest.”  I think Sir Bob meant to say in extremis.)

Click below to buy a new remastered version of the Beatles’ Live at the Hollywood Bowl album, which is a companion to Ron Howard’s Eight Days a Week movie:

Four Seasons – "Rag Doll" (1964)

Such a pretty face

Should be dressed in lace

[NOTE: Time flies when you’re having fun.  And also when you’re not.

Whether you’ve been having fun or not, a year has flown since I announced the songs that had been chosen for inclusion in the inaugural class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  Which means that it’s time to pick another ten songs to honor.  

Actually, eleven songs – not ten.  Last year, I picked ten songs then realized I had left out an obvious choice – so I threw it in at the last minute.  I figured why mess with success, so I’m picking eleven inductees this year as well.

There’s little risk of running out of Hall of Fame-worthy songs anytime soon, so you can expect me to choose another eleven songs every year for as long as I live.

Unless I lose interest, of course.  (That’s a very real possibility – I’ve always had a short attention span, and it’s not getting any longer with age.)

“Rag Doll” is the oldest of this year’s group of inductees.  It was released in June 1964, just after my 12th birthday – or just about the time I entered puberty.]

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When it came to cranking out top 40 singles, the Four Seasons were a machine.  But it took years for that machine to get started.

Lead singer Frankie Valli’s first record was released in 1953, and he and his bandmates – they used over a dozen different names – released a lot of unsuccessful singles.

Eventually, Valli teamed up with 16-year-old Bob Gaudio, the co-author of the 1958 hit “Short Shorts. ”  Gaudio and producer Bob Crewe clicked as a songwriting combination, and the first three Gaudio-Crewe songs that the Four Seasons recorded and released as singles – “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don't Cry,” and “Walk Like A Man” – were all #1 hits in 1962-63.

There were more top ten hits over the next year, including the group’s fourth #1 single – “Rag Doll.”

The Four Seasons performing on TV in 1964

“Rag Doll” is about a wrong-side-of-the-tracks love affair.  (Billy Joe Royal’s “Down in the Boondocks” is another classic from this genre.)  The singer – a typical, middle-class teenager – is in love with a poor girl, but as we know (borrowing Shakespeare’s words), “the course of true love never did run smooth.” 

All the other kids laughed at the girl's hand-me-down clothes and called her “rag doll, little rag doll” she moved into the town.  

The boy’s parents want him to break things off – they assume that just because she’s poor, that she’s “no good.”

The singer would “change her sad rags into glad rags” he could, but it doesn’t really matter to him how she's dressed – “I love you just the way you are,” he asserts.

The Four Seasons’ only rivals for chart dominance until the Beatles came along were the Beach Boys.  Both groups sang simple songs aimed at a teenage audience, and both groups could sing harmony with the best of them.  

But in a way, the bands were mirror images of one another.  The Four Seasons were New York/Philly/Jersey boys, while the Beach Boys were pure southern California.  The Four Seasons were Italian-American, while the Beach Boys were WASPs.  

“Rag Doll” have worked for the Beach Boys because there weren’t any wrong-side-of-the-tracks girls in California in 1964 – everyone there (except for movie stars, of course) was middle-class.  It was a different story on the mean streets of New York City, Philadelphia, and the New Jersey cities that were in-between.

“Rag Doll” was released in June 1964, just days after my 12th birthday.  I came down with the mumps that summer, and spent close to a week in bed.  I owned a copy of “Rag Doll” – I only bought about half-a-dozen singles each year, so I must have really liked the song – and played it about a thousand times while I had the mumps.  

Here's a picture of my “Rag Doll” 45:

I played the “B" side of the single, “Silence is Golden" (which was a big hit in 1967 for the Tremeloes, an English group), almost as many times as “Rag Doll.”

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Shortly after I contracted mumps, a vaccine was developed for the disease.  You don’t hear it much today.

But back in 1964, it was pretty common.  If you caught it when you were young, nothing much happened.  But it was a pretty scary disease if you were a postpubescent male.  

(Trust me, boys and girls, I was 100% postpubescent in the summer of 1964.  We don’t need to get into the messy details of that, do we?)

Adolescent or adult males with mumps have about a 30% chance of suffering orchitis, and I do mean “suffering.”  Orchitis is inflammation of the testicles, which often is quite painful and can result in some pretty gruesome things.  

In some cases, orchitis results in sterility or reduced fertility.  This obviously didn't happen in my case, because I have four children.  (Here's a funny thing –  my kids look a lot like the mailman in our old neighborhood.  Weird coincidence, huh?)

I do remember having a bit of orchitis.  What I remember most is the excruciating pain I felt when I tried to eat a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich when I had the mumps.  Mumps cause your salivary glands to swell up, and chewing when you are in that condition is something that I don’t recommend.

I bring up “Rag Doll” all these years because my mother-in-law recently treated my family to a performance of Jersey Boys, the hit Broadway musical about the Four Seasons.  

It’s become a tradition for her to give all of us theatre tickets for Christmas.  Over the past few years, for example, we’ve seen South Pacific, My Fair Lady, and West Side Story. 

I voted that we go to a revival of Hair a couple of years ago, but a certain uptight and narrow-minded person who shares my last name has a problem with full-frontal nudity in the theatre, even when it is artistically necessary.  (I told her about driving to San Antonio to see a production of Hair when I was in college, and I guess I let it slip that the finale of the first act of the play was performed au naturel.  Live and learn . . .)

Click here to listen to “Rag Doll.”

Here's a link you can use to order the song from Amazon:

Animals – "House of the Rising Sun" (1964)

There is a house in New Orleans 

They call “The Rising Sun” 

It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy 

I know, I know . . . it’s been less than a year since 2 or 3 lines previously featured “House of the Rising Sun.”

I rarely feature the same song twice on 2 or 3 lines.  (I’ll never get to all the good songs that are out there, but I want to get to as many as I can.)

But I have two good reasons for doubling down on “House of the Rising Sun.”

Hilton Valentine

First, today is the 76th birthday of Hilton Stewart Paterson Valentine, the original Animals guitarist.  His inimitable arpeggios – played on the Gretsch Tennessean guitar he had bought in Newcastle in 1962 – are as responsible as Eric Burdon’s vocals and Alan Price’s Vox Continental organ for making “House of the Rising Sun” the absolutely brilliant record that it is.

Two, it’s time to name the second group of inductees into the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME.  “House of the Rising Sun” was a ne plus ultra member of the inaugural group of inductees, and it’s fitting that we once again pay tribute to it before announcing the eleven all-time great records that will be immortalized by 2 or 3 lines this year.

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Without further ado, how about a standing ovation for this year’s choices for the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME:

1.  Four Seasons – “Rag Doll” (1964)

2.  Beatles – “Eight Days a Week” (1965)

3.  Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (1965)

4.  Animals – “It’s My Life” (1965)

5.  ? and the Mysterians – “96 Tears” (1966)

6.  Supremes – “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1966)

7.  Turtles – “Happy Together” (1967)

8.  Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (1967)

9.  Door – “Light My Fire” (1967)

10.  Deep Purple – “Hush” (1968)

11.  The Crazy World of Arthur Brown – “Fire” (1968)

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Click here to listen to a real musical stick of dynamite – the one, the only “House of the Rising Sun.”  (I will NEVER get tired of this record.)

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Raconteurs – "Steady As She Goes" (2006)

Find yourself a girl and settle down

Live a simple life in a quiet town

Here’s a transcript of my conversation with my mother today (which is typical of my conversations with her on other days, too):

Me: Good morning!  How are you?  It’s a beautiful day today – you should sit outside after lunch.

Her (after a long pause): I can’t hear a word you say.

I checked to make sure her hearing aids were in her ears – they were.  Then I checked to see if I needed to buy toilet paper, adult diapers, or other supplies for her.  Then I spent a few minutes looking on my phone for any new photos of my grandkids to share with her.  By then, it was almost 1100a – time for me to drag her to the group exercise class at her assisted living facility.

Me: It’s about time to go to exercise.  I’ve got your keys.

Her:  . . . .

Me (standing in her doorway, holding her keys):  Ready to go to exercise?  We should go now so we’ll get a seat.

Her (under her breath): Sh*t.

Me:  Ready to go?  I’ve got your keys.

Her (under her breath): Sh*t.

Eventually she got up and we walked down a long hallway to where the exercise class is held.

Her (as we walked): Sh*t . . . sh*t . . . sh*t.

I had never heard my mother – who is 93 years old – utter that word until about a year ago.  Now she says it – mutters it may be more accurate – every time I see her.

Her (when we get close enough to see which of the facility’s physical therapists is leading the exercise class that day):  It’s that fat girl. . . . Sh*t.

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“Steady As She Goes” was the first single from the Raconteurs’ 2006 debut album, Broken Boy Soldiers.  It made it all the way to #1 on the Billboard “Alternative Songs” chart.

The Raconteurs’ third studio album, Help Us Stranger, is scheduled to be released next month.

Click here to listen to “Steady As She Goes.”

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon:

Spiral Staircase – "More Today Than Yesterday" (1969)

I love you more today than yesterday

But not as much as tomorrow

When I pick my grandson Jack up at day care, I usually sing along to the SiriusXM ’60s on 6 channel during the short drive to his home. 

A few weeks ago, today’s featured song popped up on that station.  Jack isn’t even three years old yet, and I wasn’t sure if the lines from the song that are quoted above would make any sense to him.  

But I started half-saying, half-singing those lines to Jack when I said goodbye after dropping him off at home.  I’m not sure if those lines are really true – do I really love Jack more today that I loved him yesterday? – but I thought it was a nice way to tell him how much I loved him, and might give him something to think about, too.

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Earlier today, my daughter Sarah – Jack’s mother – sent me two short videos of Jack singing to his baby brother Hunter, who just turned six months old.  To say that I was surprised by what Jack did in those videos is the understatement of the century.

Here’s the first video:

Here’s the second one:

(Note how Jack has captured the essential rhythm of these lyrics – the way he pronounces “yesterday” and “tomorrow,” and the pause between the two lines.)

Jack never really reacted to my singing those song lyrics to him – he certainly never sang along with me, or repeated the lines back to me.  

I hadn’t told anyone else about my reciting those lyrics as a goodbye catchphrase.  My daughter had no idea that I was doing that, so she couldn’t have prompted him to sing the lines to Hunter while she recorded him.

Jack has always seemed very taken with little Hunter – he stays pretty close to him when both boys are at home, and I’ve never seen him exhibit any jealousy or resentment when we are paying more attention to Hunter than to him.  But I can’t quite comprehend how his not-quite-three-year-old brain figured out that the song lyrics about love that I recited to him were appropriate for him to sing to his brother.  

I’ve been blessed with four grandsons, and a fifth is on the way – perhaps I’ll be fortunate enough to have even more grandchildren in the future.  I have a feeling there are other little miracles like this one in store for me, and I am very much looking forward to them.

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The Spiral Starecase’s “More Today than Yesterday” made it to #12 on the Billboard “Hot 100” in 1969.  

Pat Upton in 2013

In 2013, the group’s frontman, Pat Upton, talked to a newspaper reporter about writing the song:

I wrote “I Love You More Today Than Yesterday” in a motel room in Las Vegas.  I was thinking about Bobby Goldsboro singing it when I first wrote it.  Musically, I had a chord progression in my head, and I knew the only way I’d ever get to use it was if I wrote a song around it.  [The group recorded the song and] three months later, it took off.

After the Spiral Starecase broke up, Upton became a session musician and a member of Ricky Nelson’s band for a few years.  

On December 30, 1985, Nelson performed at Upton’s club in Guntersville, Alabama.  He was scheduled to play at a big New Year’s Eve show in Dallas, and invited Upton to join them, but Upton declined.  Nelson’s plane – a 40-year-old DC-3 with a history of mechanical problems – crashed about two miles from the airport where it was supposed to land, killing Nelson, his girlfriend, his manager, and all four members of his band.

Here’s a photo of Upton and Nelson taken just before Nelson’s ill-fated flight took off:

Upton died in 2016 at the age of 75.  I wish I had been able to share these videos of Jack with him – he had six grandchildren of his own, so I’m sure he would have enjoyed them.

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In 1889, the 18-year-old Rosemonde Gérard wrote the following lines to Edmond Rostand, a young playwright (he wrote Cyrano de Bergerac) whom she would soon marry:

Car, vois-tu, chaque jour je t’aime davantage,

Aujourd’hui plus qu’hier et bien moins que demain.

French poet Rosemonde Gérard

One English-language dictionary of quotations translates those lines as follows:

For, you see, each day I love you more,

Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.

Years later, a French jeweler came up with the idea of making a medallion engraved with an abbreviated version of the verse.  

The medallion depicted below reads has a plus sign followed by qu’hier, a minus sign, and que demain – in other words, “more than yesterday, less than tomorrow.”

The plus and minus signs on these medallions are often enhanced with gemstones – a romantic poem is all well and good, but diamonds are a girl’s best friend!

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Click here to listen to “More Today Than Yesterday.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.

Iggy Pop – "Repo Man" (1984)

I'm a repo man

And I'm looking for the joke . . .

Looking for the joke with a microscope

In 2003, Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright was embedded with Bravo Company of the 1st Marine Reconnaissance Battalion – the unit that was the “tip of the spear” in Operation Iraqi Freedom.  

Wright’s book about his experiences, Generation Kill, was made into an HBO series with the same title.      One of the Marines who is prominently featured in the book is Sgt. Antonio Espera, who portrayed himself in the TV series.  (I would have never guessed he wasn’t a professional actor.)   

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Espera, who grew up in a broken home in Southern California, told Wright that he was a “bad motherf*cker”:

You see, dog, my wife is smart, but she f*cked up big time when she married me.  I was a piece of sh*t. . . . See, I didn’t grow up with no understanding.  My mom tried, but my dad is a psycho ex-Marine Vietnam vet.

Espera’s father abandoned him when he was young.  Several years later, he tried to patch things up by taking his son on a fishing trip.

On the way to the lake, the elder Espera decided to stop off at an X-rated bookstore.  While his son waited for his dad to take care of business in the store’s viewing booths, he got into an argument in the parking lot with a man he thought was trying to cruise him.  Espera ended up throwing a brick through the man’s windshield.

“That was our father-son trip,” he told Wright.

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After meeting his wife – who was a college student at the time – Espera became a voracious reader.  During his time in Iraq, he spent his free time writing long letters to his wife.  

Sgt. Antonio Espera

Here’s an excerpt from one of those letters:

I’ve lost 20 pounds, shaved my head, started smoking, my feet have half rotted off, and I move from filthy hole to filthy hole every night.  I see dead children and people everywhere and function in a void of indifference.  I keep you and our daughter locked away deep down inside, and I try not to look there.

After reading that letter to Wright, Espera asked him, “Do you think that’s too harsh, dog?”

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Before he joined the Marines, Espera worked as a repo man in Los Angeles.  He learned that the ideal time and place to repossess a car was in broad daylight in the middle of a crowded parking lot:

Jump in, drive that bitch off with the car alarm going – nobody’s going to stop you, nobody’s going to even look at you.  You know why?  Nobody gives a f*ck.  In my line of work, that was the key to everything.

Espera told Wright that he ever wrote a memoir of his days as a repo man, he would title it Nobody Gives a F*ck.

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Today’s featured song is from the soundtrack of the 1984 cult movie, Repo Man, which also includes songs by Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, Suicidal Tendencies, and other hardcore L.A. punk bands.    

Here’s the Repo Man poster:

Repo Man – whose executive producer was ex-Monkee Michael Nesmith – was directed by Alex Cox.  Cox also directed the Sid Vicious biopic, Sid and Nancy.

Click here to listen to Iggy Pop’s “Repo Man.”