1965 No. 1, Ranked Among Greatest Rock Songs Ever, Came to Guitarist in a Dream
Sometimes the most famous songs in rock history begin in the least glamorous way imaginable.
In the early morning hours of a day in early May 1965, Keith Richards woke up just long enough to grab a cassette recorder beside his bed and play a rough guitar riff that had suddenly come to him in his sleep. Then he promptly fell back asleep again.
That riff eventually became "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," the Rolling Stones classic that was recorded 61 years ago today-May 12, 1965-and would soon turn the band into international superstars.
Years later, Richards admitted he barely remembered creating it at all.
"I had no idea I'd written it," Richards recalled in his 2010 memoir Life, according to the History Channel. When he listened back to the tape the next morning, he discovered roughly 30 seconds of the now-iconic riff followed by nearly an hour of snoring.
"When I woke up in the morning, the tape had run out," Richards later said. "There's this maybe 30 seconds of ‘Satisfaction' in a very drowsy sort of rendition. And then suddenly the guitar goes ‘CLANG,' and then there's like 45 minutes of snoring."
At the time, the Rolling Stones were still climbing toward mainstream success in America. They had scored attention with songs like "Time Is On My Side" and "The Last Time," but "Satisfaction" would become something much bigger.
The very next morning after Richards listened to the riff, Mick Jagger added the lyrics, which were inspired by commercialism, frustration and the pressures of modern life. Richards originally imagined the famous riff being played by horns, not guitar, and even thought the song sounded too much like a joke to become a hit single.
"He really didn't think it was single material," Jagger later said. "And we all said, ‘You're off your head.'"
The band first worked on the track at Chicago's legendary Chess Studios before finishing the recording on May 12, 1965, during a marathon session at RCA Studios in Hollywood. It was there that Richards plugged his guitar into an early fuzz box, creating the distorted sound that transformed the riff into one of the most recognizable hooks in music history.
The effect changed rock music almost overnight.
Rolling Stone later ranked "Satisfaction" at No. 2 on its original 2004 list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time," writing that the song represented "the crossroads" where early rock and roll evolved into something more rebellious and modern. On the revised list, Rolling Stone bumped the song to No. 31.
The single became the Rolling Stones' first No. 1 hit in the United States and later topped the charts in the United Kingdom as well. Over the decades, it has remained one of the defining songs of the rock era, earning induction into the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.
Jagger later reflected on why the song connected so deeply with audiences.
"It was the song that really made the Rolling Stones," he said. "It captures a spirit of the times, which is very important in those kinds of songs. Which was alienation."
More than six decades later, it all traces back to a sleepy middle-of-the-night moment and a tape recorder left running beside Keith Richards' bed.
Related: 1966 Rock Force That Changed Guitar Music Forever Is Returning 60 Years Later
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This story was originally published May 12, 2026 at 3:17 PM.