Did Keith Richards Really Record the Guitar Riff of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” in His Sleep?

The Rolling Stones‘ classic 1965 hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” has an instantly recognizable guitar riff in the beginning courtesy of Keith Richards. Additionally, it’s a highly-regarded rumor that Richards wrote the riff in his sleep while the band was at a hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Is this the truth, or a well-circulated tall tale?

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According to Richards himself, it’s all true. In his 2010 book Life, Richards explained that he woke up in the middle of the night with the riff stuck in his head. He then recorded a rough version on a cassette player. As he wrote in the 1994 memoir Keith Richards: In His Own Words, the recording included about two minutes of acoustic guitar.

Richards further described the recording, noting that it featured the sound of him dropping his guitar pick, “then me snoring for the next forty minutes.”

Keith Richards Came Up With an Instant Classic in His Sleep, and More Proof the Rolling Stones Are Legends

While Keith Richards admitted to writing the guitar riff in his sleep, there’s still some debate as to where the band was staying when this happened. There are several sources that claim this occurred at the Fort Harrison Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. Still more say it was in a Chelsea house, or the Hilton in London.

Richards clarified that one, too. In Life, he stated that the sleep recording actually happened at his home in Carlton Hill, St. John’s Wood in London. The stories often get confused because Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics at the hotel in Clearwater just four days before the band was due in the studio to record.

Quickly-penned lyrics and a mid-snooze guitar riff made up the bones of what would become the Rolling Stones’ first no. 1 song in the U.S. They initially recorded it in Chicago, then re-recorded it in Hollywood, adding a fuzzbox to sustain the guitar riff.

There was almost a third version of “Satisfaction” as well. Keith Richards and Mick Jagger envisioned another recording with a horn section over the guitar riff. According to Richards, the second recording “was just a little sketch, because, to my mind, the fuzz tone was really there to denote what the horns would be doing,” as he said in 2012. However, the rest of the band vetoed the idea, and “Satisfaction” became its own advertisement for the Gibson fuzzbox.

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