Summary: <br> Keith Richards (born 1943) in 1965<br> <br> <br> <br> It was most likely sometime during the evening of May 6, 1965 – 54 years ago today – that Keith Richards, the lead guitar player for the Rolling Stones, worked out the opening riff for the song (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction. Satisfaction went on to become one of the most important rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time; in 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine went so far as to rate it number two on its list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” (Number “two” on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time?” Duh. Perhaps, maybe, “The 500 Greatest Rock ‘n’ Roll Songs of All Time,” although I’m not sure I’d even go that far. I will rant about this rather extensively in tomorrow’s “Dr. Bob Prescribes” post, <a href="https://www.patreon.com/RobertGreenbergMusic" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">which can be accessed on my Patreon site</a>.)<br> <br> <br> <br> But back to Satisfaction and what makes it truly memorable. I would assert that more than Richard’s rising/falling eight-note riff that generates the song’s melody; and much more than Mick Jagger’s cynical, rebellious, but nevertheless (we must be honest, here) borderline-insipid lyrics, it is the “sound” of Keith Richard’s guitar that gives Satisfaction its dramatic edge and its wonderful sense of sleaze: its defining character. (It is a defining character that, to a huge degree, went on to define the Stones as well!)<br> <br> <br> <br> A 100% reliable account of the creation of Satisfaction has yet to emerge because the one person who could provide it – Keith Richards – keeps changing the story. For example, writing in his autobiography entitled My Life (Little, Brown, & Co., 2010), Richards claims that he recorded the riff that powers Satisfaction on a portable cassette player while he was asleep. (I must assume this means that he was experiencing the effects of some non-prescription pharmaceutical or another.) Whatever: Richards asserts that had no idea he had recorded anything until he listened to the tape the next day, which consisted of two minutes of guitar playing followed by forty minutes of snoring. The given location of this parasomnial recording session has been variously identified as being the Jack Tarr Harrison Hotel in Clearwater Florida; a house in the Chelsea section of London; or the London Hilton Hotel.<br> <br> <br> <br> The location momentarily aside, the one irrefutable fact is that Richards’ immediate inspiration for Satisfaction was a toy he acquired, presumably on the day of Satisfaction’s creation. The most commonly told version of the story goes like this.<br> <br> <br> <br> The Rolling Stones – in the middle of a North American tour – were performing in Clearwater Florida, on the Gulf Coast. Sometime immediately prior to or on the day of May 6, 1965, Keith Richards acquired a device called a “Maestro Fuzz-Tone”, made by the Gibson (guitar) company of Kalamazoo, Michigan. <br> <br> <br> <br> <a href="https://d3fr1q02b1tb0i.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/06092413/2MAESTRO_FUZZTONE_05.jpg" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener"></a>Maestro Fuzz-Tone advertisement, 1962<br> <br> <br> <br> Gibson released its Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal under its “Maestro” brand in 1962; the unit retailed for $40.00. Here’s how it works. You plug an electric guitar or bass into the unit and the unit into an amplifier. The Fuzz-Tone converts (“clips”) the smooth, rounded sine-waves received from the guitar (or electric bass) into square waves, which are sent on to the amplifier. These amplified square waves produce a gritty, dirty, raw and distorted sound which can resemble horns: saxophones and brass instruments. <br> <br> <br> <br> According to its patent application, filed on May 3, 1962,
