Well, sometime during the night of May 6th and May 7th in 1968, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards woke up in his motel room in Clearwater, Florida, with a distinctive three-note "riff" in his head. He quickly played the tune into a tape recorder he kept by his bed and then went back to sleep. The next day, he played the riff for Mick Jagger, telling him, "The line that goes with this (tune) is 'I can't get no satisfaction.'" Jagger completed the lyrics within the next two days, and the soon-to-be classic song was recorded at RCA Studios in Hollywood on May 11th.
Richards had originally intended his riff to be played by horns, but wound up playing it himself on the guitar, with the use of a "fuzz" effect created by a new gadget that happened to be around. This piece of equipment was among the first of its kind, and its inclusion on the recording introduced a whole new sound for the electric guitar. Today, such gadgets are standard tools for most rock guitarists. The resulting song - "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - was released as a single on June 4th, and hit number one on the U.S. pop charts on July 10th, remaining there for the next four weeks. The Stones had finally hit the big time in America.
Almost as interesting is the backstory surrounding that turbulent time in the Stones' career.
Curiously, sometime during the same week of May 7-11 (most likely around the 8th), guitarist Brian Jones fell completely from grace in the eyes of his band mates. Having already fathered a number of illegitimate children by the time he was in his early 20s, Jones was also known to be physically abusive with women.
One night after a concert, he brought a young girl back to his hotel room. When she emerged the next morning crying, bruised and sporting two black eyes, the band cut him off socially, even sanctioning his beating (which included two broken ribs) by one of their roadies for beating the woman. Although he would remain in the group until a month before his death in 1969, Jones' influence in the group completely diminished and he spent the rest of his life slowly wasting away.
The song also marked a period of transition for the Stones, as they rediscovered their minimalist blues roots.
Many fail to remember that by 1967, the Rolling Stones were a spent force - they'd evolved from a tight-rocking R&B band into an acid-frazzled cod-psychedelic band with the tripped-out "Their Satanic Majesties Request" album.
Jagger and Richards had been busted by the police early in the year and were initially jailed for drug possession (which was overturned).
Their only single '67 was the limp "We Love You," accompanied by a film with Jagger dressed as Oscar Wilde, Marianne Faithfull as Lord Alfred Douglas and Richards, of all things, as the Marquess of Queensberry. They were also growing distant from producer Glyn Johns and from the basics of the music that had brought them to that point.
Even before the beating incident, Brian Jones was increasingly isolated from the Jagger/Richards writing partnership, and became morose over the loss of control of what had been "his" band. Under these circumstances, most bands would have called it a day and dissolved into sleazy abandon.
Instead in 1968, Richards emerged from cloud of weirdness and narcotics to create the tightest, sexiest riff ever written.
That wasn't all.
The Stones made a short film to accompany the single - a novelty in those days. It featured Jagger in all his sleazy voodoo glory. This lit-below witchdoctor wasn't a man who'd sold his soul to the devil, this man was the devil. He oozed hedonism and sex and no one, absolutely no one, could resist.
No one but Jim Morrison would come close to the embodiment of sex (androgynous or not) and evil ever again in rock 'n' roll.