Keith Richards Didn’t Think This Song Written in His Sleep Was Single-Worthy, but It Turned Into One of The Rolling Stones’ Biggest Hits

In 1965, The Rolling Stones guitarist claimed a miracle happened. On the night of May 12, Keith Richards leaped up from his sleep and hit record on his little Philips tape recorder to capture a quick idea. A little three-note guitar riff and a few mumbled words were recorded, and he then fell back to sleep. Richards wrote about the experience in his 2010 memoir Life.

“I had no idea I’d written it. When I woke up in the morning, the tape had run out. I put it back on, and there’s this, maybe 30 seconds of ‘Satisfaction’ in a very drowsy sort of rendition. And then suddenly, the guitar goes ‘CLANG,’ and then there’s like 45 minutes of snoring.”

Richards Didn’t Take the Song Seriously

Richards brought this recording to Jagger later that day, who wasn’t sure what to think about the outcome. “He only had the first bit, and then he had the riff. It sounded like a country sort of thing on acoustic guitar. It didn’t sound like rock. He didn’t really like it, he thought it was a joke. He really didn’t think it was single material, and we all said, ‘You’re off your head.’ Which he was, of course.”

Mick Jagger took the idea and wrote the lyrics for “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” while sitting by a hotel pool in Clearwater, Florida. Jagger wrote the lyrics about commercialism and the “girl chasing” frustrations of American tours. The band briefly took this idea into the studio in Chicago before flying out to record the track in Los Angeles. It was there that Richards added his distinctive Gibson fuzz box sound on the track. Initially, the group wanted to add horns to the song, but this idea was abandoned.

“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” Became Their First No. 1 in the US

In the summer of 1965, the song topped the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. “Satisfaction” became one of the band’s most identifiable songs and their first No. 1 hit in the US. In 1975, Mick Jagger famously stated, “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ when I’m 45.” In 2026, at 82 years old, Mick Jagger still performs the song at nearly every Rolling Stones concert.

Richards isn’t the only rock star to conjure up a hit song in their sleep. A similar experience happened to Paul McCartney in 1969. McCartney was visited in his sleep by his late mother, who told the overly stressed McCartney to just “Let It Be.” McCartney awoke and wrote The Beatles’ hit song “Let It Be.” The song became the band’s second to last No. 1 hit.

In 2001, the rock group Train released their biggest hit, “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me), after lead singer Pat Monahan had a dream about his recently deceased mother. Monahan claims his mother brought him the song in his sleep, and all he had to do was wake up and write it down. The song hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100.

It really makes you think, how many other hit songs were written while asleep and were forgotten upon waking up?