by When The Rolling Stones began, America was a sparkling dream. That was the case for so many British bands, especially those that decided to lead the charge of the British invasion.
For years, it was what they strived towards. Just as The Beatles were desperate to break the States, using the Ed Sullivan Show to do it, The Stones watched on, knowing exactly what they wanted.
It was easy for them, and that seems inevitable. I’m sure plenty of strangers to the band members would even mistake the group for being from the States, as Jagger has always and forever sang in an American drawl, and Richards’ guitar playing feels more like that of a deep south blues king than a kid from Kent.
Especially as the rock and roll age truly kicked into gear, the band’s half-sleazey, half-well-to-do energy was bound to work a charm on the yanks. They had the look of classic British boys and the accents to make them melt, but when they stepped onto the stage, they transformed. That’s what made them the world’s greatest rock and roll band.
The song that finally got them there was ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’. Released in the US first, clearly the band knew it would work stateside better, as the UK was still lagging behind and would later refuse to play the track anywhere except pirate radios due to its sexual innuendos.
They were right, though. It did work in the States, granting them their first-ever US number one and finally breaking down that door. They’d done it, they were victorious, and then, they hated it.
“I remember after ‘Satisfaction’, which was a time of great triumph, a worldwide hit, Mick and I were sitting back in some motel room, in San Diego, if I remember rightly,” Keith Richards recalled. “We gave this big sigh of relief, and it was exactly at that moment that there was a knock at the door, and the phone started ringing, and people wanted the next hit,” he said, as suddenly the hit only brought more pressure, more work, and more intensity; “It was a hard training ground.”
They quickly realised that having a hit isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially in a country like the States, where there was still such an intense undercurrent of social norms to be adhered to.
“The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early ’60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behaviour and dress,” Jagger said, “Outside of [New York City and Los Angeles], we found it the most repressive society, very prejudiced in every way.” His feelings were intense, adding, “There was still segregation. And the attitudes were fantastically old-fashioned. Americans shocked me by their behaviour and their narrow-mindedness.”
In response, with so much frustration building up, they poured it into ‘Get Off Of My Cloud’, a track Jagger called a “stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song”. “Do you have to drive me out of my head?” he asks in the song, addressing it to the entire country, later moaning, “I was sick and tired, fed up with this.”
America didn’t get it, unsurprisingly. They made it a hit anyway, even though they were the butt of the joke.
