The song Neil Young picked over The Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’
If there’s anyone in the world who has earned the right to tell someone else how to write a song, then Neil Young certainly isn’t a bad person to provide a critique of your work.
With over 50 studio albums to his name and plenty more releases as a member of other projects, his relentless dedication to creating rock music that continues to transcend boundaries is admirable to those unfamiliar with his work and outstanding to anyone who has allowed themselves to become enraptured by it.
Every single one of his songs has a real poeticism about it, with plenty of his contemporaries always looking to him as a prime example of how to weave a long and winding narrative into a captivating song arc. Often politically and socially conscious, he’s not only cemented himself as the voice of a generation, but as an important voice that will continue to be of relevance for centuries after he’s gone.
Alongside all that, he’s an incredible musician, and his performances tell you everything you need to know about his brilliance. A formidable multi-instrumentalist, the sprawling structures and simple yet effective arrangements that he puts on display are always remarkable, and even if you’re unable to get on board with his lyrics or vocal delivery, then perhaps the instrumental aspects of his work will be enough to swing your favour.
While he would have been working at the same time as The Rolling Stones were becoming an equally formidable force in rock music and successfully breaking down the barrier usually held up against British bands trying to gain popularity in North America, Young’s output existed in a slightly different field from the Stones during the 1960s. His involvement in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young focused more on folk-rock oriented works.
That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t appreciate the output of The Rolling Stones, and he was more than enthused by what they were offering up, much like many other contemporaries. While ‘Satisfaction’ may have been one of the songs that allowed them to go stratospheric in the US, there was one song he much preferred over it that he believed should have been the bigger hit.
“‘Satisfaction’ was a great record,” Young claimed, before adding, “‘Get Off of My Cloud’, even better record. Looser, less of a hit. More of a reckless abandon. ‘Get Off of My Cloud’, I know it’s not as good of a song, and I know the performance is probably not as good as the ‘Satisfaction’ performance, maybe it is. But the thing about it is it’s obviously just such a throw-together song that they came up with on the way to the studio or the night before, y’know? That’s what I liked about it. It really sounded like the Rolling Stones.”
While ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ is undoubtedly one of the finest tracks from the early years of the Stones, it doesn’t quite have the same gut punch that ‘Satisfaction’ is able to deliver. However, Young’s comments about its simplicity are certainly similar to how he often approaches his own songwriting, and, for that reason, you can understand exactly why he was so entranced by it.
