140) The Rolling Stones – “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”

The Rolling Stones arrived relatively late to the British Invasion. Most of the band’s compatriots scored major hits almost overnight after “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” often on their first or second US single. With the exception of “Time is on My Side” (#6, Dec ’64), though, the Stones’ blues and R&B covers that made up the bulk of their early material mostly failed to move US record buyers. The band’s luck improved stateside when they began focusing on their own poppier material: “Tell Me” (the first Jagger/Richards A-side and the group’s Top 40 debut, Aug 1964), “Heart of Stone” (Top 20, Feb ’65), “The Last Time” (Top 10, May ’65). By the time the band netted their first US chart-topper, though, they weren’t just contending with The Beatles and Herman’s Hermits. The Byrds’ success with “Mr. Tambourine Man” heralded the first real threat to the British Invasion: soft, sunny folk rock, pop that was supposed to have a message.

But while The Byrds were dressing Dylan’s ragged clown in a fringe vest and a vacant smile, The Rolling Stones were topping the charts with a more potent kind of protest music. The hero of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” rails against everything around him, from TV advertising and “useless information” on the radio to his inability to get off with a girl. But “Satisfaction” is too sharp-witted to be mistaken for a litany of grievances. A line like “he can’t be a man ’cause he does not smoke/ the same cigarettes as me” seems to parody the self-righteous folkie moralist, while the sneering vocals frame the complaints in quotation marks, as if to acknowledge the absurdity of a rock star whining about how hard he has it. The Rolling Stones didn’t just score a hit with an anti-establishment message; they mocked the self-indulgence of it, made it seem as solipsistic as moaning about not getting laid.

Of course, all suggestions of social critique and irony are secondary to the song’s shocking-for-1965 salaciousness (“tryin’ to make some girl”!), and all lyrics period are secondary to that guitar riff, as fuzzy and unshakeable as a hangover headache. It’s the first sound you hear on the single, and it’s pushed to the front of the mix, dominating the rest of the record. The riff cycles without changing, heavily syncopated as if scoffing at the confines of the beat. Even when it knocks off for a bit, the bass keeps circling in place, the snare drum snaps on every beat, the tambourine gets its three shakes in at the end of each measure. There barely needs to be a verse or a chorus, and there barely is; the song wants to be a 12-bar blues, but it never gets to resolve itself. There’s no middle eight or guitar solo to churn up the monotony — and at nearly four minutes long, it does get monotonous. You don’t need to hear the lyrics to tell you the song’s about being stuck in a rut without release or escape.

Nor do you need them to understand Mick Jagger’s chewy, drippy, overly-underenunciated drawl, simultaneously a frank come on and a caricature of our narrator’s sexual/societal frustration. The real Mick Jagger may want satisfaction, but he certainly doesn’t have trouble getting it; the real Mick Jagger will write a song bemoaning advertising, then spend the royalties on a Bentley. Perhaps it’s this duality that’s helped the song withstand decades of over-exposure. ”Satisfaction” is pro-hedonism and anti-consumerism, social commentary and a mockery of social commentary, an ain’t-got-no blues for middle class white kids self-aware enough to know they don’t have real problems but are going to complain anyway. That, and it’s got a massive guitar riff. 9

Hit #1 on July 10, 1965; total of 4 weeks at #1
140 of 1010 #1′s reviewed; 13.86% through the Hot 100

139) The Byrds – “Mr. Tambourine Man”

The British Invasion didn’t so much kill the folk music revival as put it out of its misery. What had begun as a virtuous quest to bring a sense of history and social conscience to popular music had ended up overly polished, collegiate and dull. But while some folkies dismissed rock and roll as inauthentic and commercialized, others recognized that it shared the directness and anti-establishment bent of protest songs. The Animals’ success with “House of the Rising Sun” proved a rock band could cover traditional material without sacrificing the music’s integrity; records by The Searchers, Jackie DeShannon and The Beatles further blurred genre lines. Rock and roll started gaining acceptance as a native art worth repatriating, and so American musicians began “bringing it all back home,” to quote the title of Bob Dylan’s half-electric, half-acoustic LP. The album wasn’t his first foray into rock and roll, either: his debut single, 1962’s “Mixed Up Confusion,” was backed by an electric band, while 1964’s Another Side of Bob Dylan found him moving increasingly toward pop song structures and themes. In May 1965, Dylan scored his first Top 40 hit with the Chuck Berry-biting “Subterranean Homesick Blues.” The following month, another song from Bringing It All Back Home would even top the charts – just without Dylan.

“Mr. Tambourine Man,” as performed by The Byrds, was more than just a number-one record; it became the template for the entire folk rock subgenre. The record was the debut single for the band, a bunch of LA folkies (ex-New Christy Minstrels, -Limeliters, -Les Baxter’s Balladeers) converted to rock and roll by The Beatles, inspired not only by Lennon-McCartney’s melodies and George Harrison’s 12-string Rickenbacker, but also their commercial success and distinctive image. The Byrds came to Dylan a bit later – their manager more or less forced him on the group* – but he soon became sort of the band’s patron saint, the tambourine man they’d spend the rest of the ’60s following. Four of his songs appear on their debut album, and he’d remain a steady source of material for most of their career.

The original “Mr. Tambourine Man” is one of Dylan’s early experiments with non-literal, stream-of-consciousness writing. While the specifics of what the title character represents are debatable – interpretations range from artistic inspiration to LSD to death – the narrator’s following him in hopes of a diversion from his numbing desolation, even if only for a short while. Dylan’s ever-ragged vocals and acoustic strumming emphasize the narrator’s dejected state, while Bruce Langhorne’s electric guitar countermelody offers the promise of an escape. For their cover, The Byrds cut all but the chorus and second verse, ostensibly to trim the track down to a radio-friendly 2:30. But abridging the lyrics shifts the song’s focus to the alluring new world (“the magic swirling ship”) instead of the narrator’s existential weariness. The Byrds’ arrangement, with its rolling guitar arpeggios and intertwining, sweet-voiced harmonies, further situates the song in some sort of peaceful dreamland, while altering the time signature from 2/4 to 4/4 ensures any vestiges of melancholy can be danced away in the warm California sunshine.

The Byrds knew their blend of folk and rock made a statement, but they seem conflicted on how to treat the new sound. There’s an overly formal quality to the record, an unwillingness to cut loose, that, along with the Bach-inspired guitar intro, insists on being taken seriously; but Jim (aka Roger) McGuinn’s simpering lead vocals come off as sardonic, as if mocking the material.** Thus it’s even more remarkable that by the time the Mr. Tambourine Man album was recorded, the rest of the tracks (particularly Gene Clark’s compositions) blend folk and rock so naturally as to render them inseparable. Less than a month after “Mr. Tambourine Man” topped the charts, Dylan released “Like a Rolling Stone,” a full-on rock single that would earn him his biggest hit (at #2) without having to lop off verses or polish up his sound. Next to “Like a Rolling Stone,” The Byrds’ single comes off as superficial, soft, self-conscious. But “Mr. Tambourine Man” proved there was an audience for this kind of music while providing a more accessible, imitable route into what folk rock could become — in the process, helping invent the Late Sixties as a cultural concern, its lineage stretching from folk rock, through psych rock, to Woodstock. 7

*Bassist Chris Hillman: “Jim Dickson picked the song [“Mr. Tambourine Man”]; we didn’t really like it or even understand it at the time, but he drove it down our throats until we realized what it was. That’s the way it went.” (Quoted in Robert Shelton, No Direction Home: The Life and Music of Bob Dylan)

**Part of the single’s stiffness may also be attributed to the fact McGuinn is the only Byrd actually playing on the record. The rest of the band was replaced by studio musicians for this session (though not for the album).

Hit #1 on June 26, 1965; total of 1 week at #1
139 of 1010 #1′s reviewed; 13.76% through the Hot 100