5/6/65 – Keith Richards begins writing “Satisfaction” in a
Clearwater, Florida hotel room.
He had just picked up a new Gibson fuzz-box earlier that day
… and started playing around with it .
That opening riff has to be one of the most recognizable
riffs in the history of rock and roll.
In his own words ...
KEITH RICHARDS: "I wrote 'Satisfaction' in my sleep. I had no idea I'd written it. It's only thank God for the little Philips cassette player. The miracle being that I looked at the cassette player that morning and I knew I'd put a brand new tape in the previous night, and I saw it was at the end. Then I pushed rewind and there was 'Satisfaction.'
"It was just a rough idea. There was just the bare bones of the song, and it didn't have that noise, of course, because I was on acoustic. And forty minutes of me snoring. But the bare bones is all you need. I had that cassette for a while and I wish I'd kept it.
"Mick wrote the lyrics by the pool in Clearwater, Florida, four days before we went into the studio and recorded it ... first at Chess in Chicago, an acoustic version, and later with the fuzz tone at RCA in Hollywood.
"It was down to one little foot pedal, the Gibson fuzz tone, a little box they put out at that time. I've only ever used foot pedals twice ... the other time was for 'Some Girls' in the late '70's when I used an XR box with a nice hillbilly Sun Records slap-echo on it.
"In 'Satisfaction,' I was imagining horns, trying to imitate their sound to put on the track later when we recorded it. I'd already heard the riff in my head the way Otis Redding did it later, thinking this is gonna be the horn line. But we didn't have any horns and I was only going to lay down a dub. The fuzz tone came in handy, so I could give a shape to what the horns were supposed to do. But the fuzz tone had never been heard before anywhere, and that's the sound that caught everybody's imagination. Next thing I know, we're listening to ourselves in Minnesota somewhere on the radio, 'Hit Of The Week,' and we didn't even know Andrew (Loog Oldham, their manager at the time) had put the fucking thing out! At first I was mortified. As far as I was concerned, that was just the dub. Ten days on the road and it's number one nationally! The record of the Summer of '65. So I'm not arguing.
'Satisfaction' was a typical collaboration between Mick and me at the time. I would say on a general scale, I would come up with the song and the basic idea and Mick would do all the hard work of filling it it and making it interesting. I would come up with 'I can't get no satisfaction ... I can't get no satisfaction ... I tried and I tried and I tried and I tried, but I cant get no satisfaction' ... and then we'd put ourselves together and Mick would come back and say, 'Hey, when I'm riding in my car ... same cigarettes as me,' and then we'd tinker about with that."
5/5/65 – Tonight, “Shindig!” devotes its entire broadcast to
the music of Elvis Presley. Glen Campbell performs “A Big Hunk O' Love,” "Trouble" and "Surrender" ... Linda
Gail Lewis does “Don't Be Cruel” and “Crying In The Chapel” and Sonny and Cher
sing “All Shook Up,” "I Got Stung," "Teddy Bear" and "Treat Me Nice." (Cher also performs "Wooden Heart.")
The Isley Brothers rock out on "Hard Headed Woman" while The Chambers Brothers perform "Jailhouse Rock" ... Ray Peterson "Can't Help Falling in Love," "It's Now or Never" and "Heartbreak Hotel" ... and Delaney Bramlett does a killer version of Elvis' first recording, "That's Alright Mama."
Here's a look back at Billboard's #1 Hits on May the 4th over the Top 40 Years ...
1955 - Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White - Perez Prado
1956 -Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Presley
1957 - All Shook Up - Elvis Presley
1958 - Witch Doctor - David Seville
1959 - Come Softly To Me - The Fleetwoods
1960 - Stuck On You - Elvis Presley (that's three May 4th #1's for The King!)
1961 - Runaway - Del Shannon
1962 - Soldier Boy - The Shirelles
1963 - I Will Follow Him - Little Peggy March
1964 - Hello Dolly - Louis Armostrong (Satchmo dethrones The Beatles after a fourteen week run at the #1 position, spread out over three songs: I Want To Hold Your Hand [7 weeks], She Loves You [2 weeks] and Can't Buy Me Love [5 weeks])
1965 - Mrs. Brown You've Got A Lovely Daughter - Herman's Hermits
1966 - Monday Monday - The Mamas and the Papas
1967 - Somethin' Stupid - Nancy and Frank Sinatra
1968 - Honey - Bobby Goldsboro
1969 - Aquarius / Let The Sunshine In - The Fifth Dimension
1970 - American Woman - The Guess Who
1971 - Joy To The World - Three Dog Night
1972 - The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Robert Flack
1973 - Tie A Yellow Ribbon 'Round The Ole Oak Tree - Tony Orlando and Dawn
1974 - The Loco-Motion - Grand Funk
1975 - He Don't Love You - Tony Orlando and Dawn
1976 - Welcome Back - John Sebastian
1977 - Hotel California - The Eagles
1978 - Night Fever - The Bee Gees
1979 - Reunited - Peaches and Herb
1980 - Call Me - Blondie
1981 - Morning Train - Sheena Easton
1982 - Chariots Of Fire - Vangelis
1983 - Beat It - Michael Jackson
1984 - Against All Odds - Phil Collins
1985 - We Are The World - USA For Africa
1986 - West End Girls - The Pet Shop Boys
1987 - I Just Died In Your Arms - Cutting Crew
1988 - Wishing Well - Terence Trent D'Arby
1989 - Like A Prayer - Madonna
1990 - Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor
The Evolution of Music Over 35 Years
(Wouldn't this make for a great playlist of May the 4th???
I suppose, of course, you could always throw in the Star Wars Theme for good measure!)
Peter Noone and Company kick off their second week at #1 with their SECOND official US chart-topper, "Mrs. Brown, You've Got A Lovely Daughter." (Incredibly, despite its enormous popularity here in The States ... it is clearly one of the band's signature tunes and rose to the top in a mere three weeks! ... the song was never released as a single back home in Great Britain. The same would be true of their NEXT #1 Hit, "I'm Henry VII, I Am," another '60's classic.)
Hot on its tail at #2, however, is the latest single by The Beatles, "Ticket To Ride," which vaults to #2 in only its third week on the chart. (#54 to #10 to #2!) Yeah, these guys are still doing A-OK in the USA.
Right behind it at #3, with a bullet, is the latest from Gary Lewis and the Playboys. "Count Me In" climbs from #6 to #3.
Lots more British action in The Top Ten this week: Petula Clark, Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders, The Seekers, Freddie and the Dreamers, Sounds Orchestral and another hit by Herman's Hermits account for EIGHT of The Top Ten Tunes in America this week. (Technically, The Seekers hail from Australia ... but they have always been lumped in with the British Invasion acts of the '60's.) Ronnie Dove makes a six point leap to land at #10 this week with "One Kiss For Old Time's Sake."
Other big movers on this week's chart include "Wooly Bully" by Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs (#24 to #16), "It's Not Unusual" by Tom Jones, who appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" last night, which will no doubt boost sales even further ... he's up from #29 to #21 as it is!, "It's Gonna Be Alright" by Gerry and the Pacemakers (#34 to #23), "Help Me Rhonda" by The Beach Boys (#43 to #24), "Iko Iko" by The Dixie Cups (#38 to #26), "Reelin' And Rockin'," another hit for The Dave Clark Five, which climbs from #46 to #30, "True Love Ways" by Peter and Gordon (#45 to #32), a big mover for Elvis Presley, as "Crying In The Chapel" climbs from #56 to #33, a jump of 23 places, "Back In My Arms Again" by The Supremes (now sitting at #35 after premiering at #71 last week) and "Just A Little" by The Beau Brummels (#38, up from #50.)
There is a decidedly British feel to the countdown again, some sixteen months after The Beatles first kicked things off here in America. In fact, 15 of this week's Top 40 Hits are by British artists. (That's nearly 40%!) In fact, you'll find another 13 if you consider the entire Top 100!
MRS. BROWN: Over the years, people have theorized as to how The Hermits achieved that "banjo-like" sound on this record.
Peter Noone set the record straight for our readers many years ago ...
There is an unlikely story that the fake Hermits tell
about Derek Leckenby. He DID NOT put a duster under the bridge of his
guitar to get the Mrs. Brown sound! That was KEITH HOPWOOD and he used a
Gretsch Country Gentleman which had a damper as standard equipment and
that’s how he got the sound. For some unknown reason the unHerman's
Hermits tell a strange and untrue story during their live shows about a
duster, and this DID NOT happen. If any of you saw a fake Herman and he
told this story, you got CONNED!!! And I hope he was good.
5/3/65 – DJ Don Steele kicks off his 40+ year radio
career at KHJ in Los Angeles. (Although he worked at other radio stations prior to KHJ, it is here that he will prove himself to be "The Real Deal" over the next few years!)
Born in Hollywood, California, Steele's radio
career began in 1960 at KBUC in Corona, California. He later worked at various
other stations before joining KHJ in Los Angeles in March, 1965, where he first
became famous and nationally known. Although he was hired at KHJ in March of
1965, his on-air debut was on May 3, 1965, when he helped launch the
"ultrahip" top-40 Boss Radio format, which began on April 27, 1965 at 3 pm.
The Real Don Steele stayed at KHJ until June, 1973, then
moved on to L.A. radio stations KIQQ, KTNQ, KRLA, KODJ / KCBS before arriving at
KRTH in July, 1982. At one time, he hosted a successful,
nationally syndicated radio show called "Live From the 60's," which was created by
Steele along with friend and contemporary DJ “Machine Gun” Kelly. "Live
From the 60's" was a three-hour program that featured oldies exclusively
from the 1960s. Each hour of the show profiled a certain year from that decade.
It was written and performed in present tense, and peppered with audio clips of
news events, presidential speeches and TV shows that correlated with that
particular year. The show ran in syndication, and was marketed and picked up by
over 200 radio stations with an "Oldies" format from 1988 until 1993.
Repeats of earlier shows aired in some markets as late as 1996. In July, 2015,
"Live From the 60's with The Real Don Steele" was placed back into
three hour rerun syndication for AM/FM and Podcasting radio stations.
(Steel is also the DJ on Cheap Trick's "On
the Radio.") He died of lung cancer on August 5, 1997, at the age of
61.
*****
REMINDER: Phil Nee interviews John Cafferty on his "Those Were The Days" radio program this evening at: https://wrco.com/
Segments will air between 5:30 pm and Midnight, Central Time
And, as we mentioned earlier, tickets to see John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band here at The Arcada Theatre on November 2nd are now on sale:
