(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is a single by The Rolling Stones from the album Out of Our Heads. It was released in the year 1965, during one of the most deciding decades The United States has lived through. The Vietnam War escalated, The United States occupied the Dominican Republic, Malcolm X was killed, Civil Rights Protests were taking place, US President John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King were assassinated, and the Cuban Missile Crisis was undergoing. During the year 1965, The Rolling Stones were also on tour as the “Make Love, Not War” became the prominent anti-war phrase. The young adolescents were tired of being offered a “fake reality,” they wanted lives with real meaning and true emotions. This generation was weary of the two-car garages and new dishwashers from the local convenience shops. The integrity of the federal government started to be questioned and the War was referred to as an unnecessary rich man’s war. From these feelings and ideas grew a complete new hippie counterculture and a more distinct kind of music. Rock music of the 1960s blossomed into society through the music industry and the massive marketing of infectious songs like the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Rock & roll had proved that it was able to inspire huge populations and its rise could even have political consequences. For this very reason, it was particularly appealing to those against the war and the government in general. The song (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, by The Rolling Stones, was a song addressed specifically to this audience, not only by having powerful and brilliant lyrics but by having a very catchy rhythm to it.

Arthur Owen Barfield, a British philosopher, author, poet, and critic, wrote:

"It is a mistake to read early writings in history with our current understanding of language. Our consciousness and language have grown so much, the argument goes, that only with a primitive mind can we read and understand primitive writings.”

For Barfield in order to have a true understanding of what it’s being said or read, ​your mind needs to go through the veil of the text into the author’s mind who is coming through the veil of the text to you, so that together you participate in the idea that it is being spoken about and achieve knowledge. Therefore, language becomes a big metaphor for how we read the whole world. When we read through the veil of the author we can indeed experience a change in consciousness as we are finding the true meaning of what is being said by the author. Consequently, genuinely understating the time and circumstances of the concept.

Making a more in-depth observation on the authors of the song (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones are an English rock band formed in London in 1962. When the band had its first steady formation, it consisted of the band leader Brian Jones playing the guitar, harmonica, and keyboards; Mick Jagger, lead vocals and harmonica; Keith Richards on the guitar and vocals; Bill Wyman playing bass guitar; Charlie Watts on the drums; Ian Stewart playing the piano. The Rolling Stones was one of the most influential bands on the British Invasion of music groups that became popular in the United States during the 1960s. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham was one of the bands’ original songs and became an international hit collectively with “Paint it Black” and “Aftermath.” The song spoke to the counterculture of the 1960s and the hippie subculture which began developing as a youth movement in the United States during this decade and would, later on, diffuse around the world.

There is a certain beauty regarding human nature, and that is our ability to connect the philosophies of the world with the sciences, how everything at the end emerges with one intention in mind, comprehending the very complex world in which we live in. Arthur Owen Barfield stated that in order to understand the text, one must first experience what the author was trying to reveal through their work. Meaning, not only analyzing a text for what the words reveal at the moment at which it was written but also observing that which is more abstruse. In the case of a song, it would apply to the instruments and rhythm, the pitch, the duration, the dynamic, the timbre, the why and the purpose of it all. Psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists have identified compositions in the brain related to music perception, emotions and music, and sensory processing and music (Hunt, 2015). Confirming that music has real effects on people’s emotions, it goes beyond our simple understanding of the lyrics, it is a deeper concept dealing directly with the subconscious and the mind itself. When artists are deciding the music to match the lyrics, they usually consult what is referred to as music theory. It is generally acknowledged that if you want a song to have a positive vibe, you would choose a major key, and likewise, if you would like a negative mood, a minor key would be used. Musicians do not desire to tell the reader what to feel, rather, they conjure to setting up an atmosphere for the listener. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was originally played by The Rolling Stones in the key of E major. The key of E major appeals to feelings of incomplete pleasure, readiness to fight while at the same time shouting of joy. The song is 3:43 long, which was not the usual 2-minute long song that the AM-radio of the era was used to. Even the title has a contradiction in itself, going against the rules of what people are used to, a double negative, “I Can’t Get No”, as the tension between what we get and what we say we don’t want, between what they offer us and what we say we actually desire. It starts with a very metallic guitar sound which makes the listener think of the uneasiness of modern life, the anxious situation in which they were living in. In three minutes and forty-three seconds The Rolling Stones were able to make everyone feel exuberant pleasure, which was at the same time, incomplete. Like the feeling that everything could come tumbling down at any given moment, like if we were about to go to war, like a clear representation of the combined unconscious. Yet, the song is not in a minor key of tears, the song has a relentless rhythm going as fast as the very revelation of human experiences. Through the lyrics, the rhythm, the built-up tension, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction represents hope, revolution, despair, and most importantly, the circumstances of the time.

“And a man comes on the radio, He's tellin' me more and more, About some useless information,” this part of the song alone embodies how the public perception of the United States at the time. Nonetheless, further in the song, they say, “When I'm watchin' my TV, And a man comes on to tell me, How white my shirts could be, But it can't be a man 'cause he does not smoke, Same cigarettes as me,” which explains the concept of a rich man’s war. The 60s was characterized by commercialization, products like dish-washers, soap, a utopian life that would make “everyone happy.” Although, people were tired of experiencing things like that and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction talks directly to them. An article in American Songwriter stated, “There was nothing holy about Jagger’s lyrics, though, which attacked the modern world – its commercialism, its obsession with consumer culture, its inability to excite a 22-year-old man who’d grown tired of the status quo...” (Behind The Song: The Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction”, American Songwriter, 2020). The Rolling Stones were just tapping in the collective unconscious of the world, speaking about change and the type of change that people wanted. (I Can't Get No)

Satisfaction is an example of how a population gave growth to a song that would change the world forever, its message lives with us today.

Although many might not notice at first glance, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction is a song that speaks to the situation of African Americans as well. The year 1965 was full of unexpected, dreadful events, Malcolm X was assassinated during a speech, The Watts Riot occurred in Los Angeles where 34 people are reportedly killed and 1000 injured in a riot that lasted 5 days, 530 civil rights demonstrators planning to walk from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama., were defeated and beaten by 200 Alabama state police. (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction addressed this Jim Crow era of African American oppression more openly on the radio than any other artist had ever done (before black Americans started to take action defending their civil problems). In the first verse when it says “I can't get no satisfaction, I can't get me no satisfaction, And I try and I try and I try, t-t-t-t-try, try, I can't get no, I can't get me no,” the songs addresses the genuine dissatisfaction of the black population as they tried and tried, yet couldn’t get any positive results that would come to an end of their segregation. The previously mentioned quote, “When I’m watchin' my TV, And a man comes on to tell me, How white my shirts could be, But it can't be a man ‘cause he does not smoke, Same cigarettes as me,” also refers to the difference in skin color. You are no equal to me as we do not smoke the same cigarettes, you live in a white man’s world. Laws until 1965 required that public schools, public places, and public transportation, like trains and buses, have separate facilities for whites and blacks. 1965 was a year of radical change for black Americans and this song speaks to their hearts as they were dissatisfied with America, but it is a song that calls for change.

(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction was The Rolling Stone’s first American hit and it changed the world for the better. It did so for society as much as it did for the music world. The song would later be covered by artists such as Otis Redding, The Invictas, The Ventures, Aretha Franklin, Phoenix City Allstars, and hundreds more. According to The Rolling Stones, this song turned “rock and roll into rock” (Stone and Stone, 2020). But it was not only the famous guitar riff and rhythm of the song that produced a felt change of consciousness in society, but the lyrics had an even greater impact. Radio stations hesitated to play the song at first, but when there is a topic that stirs a sense of transformation, for some, it is very difficult to adjust. Regardless, (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction became The Rolling Stone’s theme song as it was “the sound of a generation impatient to inherit the earth” (Rolling Stone, 9 December 2004, 68), it was edgy, and most importantly, revolutionary to the Rock & Roll world. The band unconsciously shows Owen Barfield’s theoretical approaches to poetry, language, and consciousness to demonstrate how the imagination works with words and metaphors to create meaning, with (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction becoming one of the most revolutionary songs of all time.

References:

1. American Songwriter. 2020. Behind The Song: The Rolling Stones, “Satisfaction” « American Songwriter. [online] Available at: https://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-i-cant-get-no-satisfaction [Accessed 14 April 2020].
2. Hunt, A. (2015). Boundaries and potentials of traditional and alternative neuroscience research methods in music therapy research.Front.Hum.Neurosci 39:342. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00342
3. Stone, R. and Stone, R., 2020. 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time. [online] Rolling Stone. Available at: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/500-greatest-songs-of-all-time-151127/ the-rolling-stones-i-cant-get-no-satisfaction-38617 [Accessed 14 April 2020].