The number one Rolling Stones song from 1965 Keith Richards will always regret: “Worst productions”
Whenever members of The Rolling Stones dislike an aspect of production, sound, lyric, or mixing, they rarely shy away from letting it be known.
Perhaps that is just because the band were offered so many opportunities to speak their mind, as happens when you traverse the pitfalls of music creation and become a global mega star as the boys from Dartford did.
Most of the time, these conversations will be self-congratulatory or, at worst, look forward to a new project. But, on occasion, they can get a little catty. There have been many occasions where the members, mostly Keith Richards or Mick Jagger, have opened up about their disdain for a specific song or album, whether it was about friction with collaborative efforts or the actual music itself.
By 1965, Richards and Jagger’s writing partnership was in full swing, with songs like ‘The Last Time’ and ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ soaring the charts and establishing the band as one not to be reckoned with. The Beatles might have been leading the charge with more traditional and safe pop-rock sensibilities, but the Stones were rougher around the edges, and they wanted to keep it that way.
That attitude became one of the defining characteristics of The Rolling Stones. Rather than polishing away their roughness in pursuit of mainstream approval, they embraced the imperfections and rebellious spirit that separated them from many of their contemporaries.
‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ left many beckoning for a worthy follow-up, which usually rubs musicians up the wrong way, causing them to turn in another direction entirely. However, the Stones fed off the pressure and came back with ‘Get Off of My Cloud’, which, as Richards put it, reminded them that being complacent wasn’t an option; not now, not ever.
“We thought, ‘At last. We can sit back and maybe think about events.’ Suddenly, there’s the knock at the door, and of course, what came out of that was ‘Get Off of My Cloud’,” he said. In the classic hit, Charlie Watts opened with his distinctive drumming intro while Richards delivered the rhythm parts, and Brian Jones took on the lead riff. It’s the perfect “get off my back” song, an ode to Jagger’s desire to reinstate society’s rebellious nature, which many resonated with at the time.
As Jagger explained: “That was Keith’s melody and my lyrics … It’s a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early 1960s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behaviour and dress.”
However, the urge to come up with something that rivalled ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ and do it with as much fervour resulted in Richards disliking everything about its execution. “I never dug it as a record,” he admitted to Rolling Stone. “The chorus was a nice idea, but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in LA, and it was time for another single.”
Realising their crucial errors and the approach they should have taken, he added: “How do you follow up ‘Satisfaction’? Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow, like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew Loog Oldham’s worst productions.”
Despite following something as monumentally career-defining as ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’, ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ continued to reflect the band’s growing frustration with the pressures of fame and the expectations placed on them. Irritation and defiance were emotions the Stones knew well, but playing them to their advantage, even if they weren’t completely happy with it, ultimately shows how adept they were at channelling their frustrations into their music.
Even if Richards never warmed to the finished recording, history has largely sided with the song rather than its creator. ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ remains one of the defining singles of The Rolling Stones’ early career, capturing the restless energy, attitude and defiance that would help establish them as one of rock music’s most enduring forces.
