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: