News Keith Richards names the “most superb, lucky song ever”
There is no formula that is guaranteed to work when it comes to songwriting. Artists can work tirelessly on their craft without reaping any rewards for their efforts. On rare occasions, however, a hit can unexpectedly appear seemingly out of thing air, as Keith Richards discovered with the birth of one classic track by The Rolling Stones.
As a guitarist, Richards has worked tirelessly from a young age to improve his skills on the instrument, which essentially acts as an additional limb for him. In one instance, music became such an inescapable thought that still follows him even while he’s sleeping, which fortuitously laid the first building block in place to create ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’.
Midway through his deep sleep, the riff for the famous Stones song appeared to him in a dream, which seems too unbelievable to be true, yet this tale isn’t a work of fiction. Luckily, the guitarist had a Phillips cassette player near his bedside and captured the magical piece of music rather than let it float into oblivion while half asleep.
In his autobiography, Life, Richards recalled: “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… But the bare bones is all you need.”
Those “bare bones” quickly grew into an entire song, which helped define the career of The Rolling Stones. While they’d had hits before, ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ became successful on a whole new level that they’d never previously experienced, and if it wasn’t for Richards’ dream, the track would never have come to fruition.
However, in the BBC documentary My Life as a Rolling Stone, Jagger revealed Richards didn’t want the track to be released as a single. “There’s this motel in Clearwater, Florida, and I remember sitting with Keith and writing the song ‘Satisfaction’. [Our manager] Andrew Oldham said, ‘This is like a number one single, this is great!’ Keith was like, ‘I don’t really like it. It can’t come out as a single.’ And it went to number one like instantly,” he gleefully recalled.
Although, at first, Richards didn’t want ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ to be released, he quickly changed his stance. Now, his thoughts on the track couldn’t be more positive. When asked if he still gets songs appearing to him in dreams, Richards told GQ in 2020: “How I wish. That was the most superb, lucky song ever. No, I’ve never quite dreamt up another one in the middle of the night.”
“But that was very early days for me writing, and just the idea that that could actually happen was incredible. I’m still waiting for the next dream, you know,” Richards added.
While he’s still waiting for the next hit single to appear in a dream, Richards can be content with the stroke of luck that came his way in 1965 when one of the most iconic riffs of all time fell from the sky into his mind.
