How Keith Richards Dozed Off and Dreamed Up the 'Satisfaction' Riff

In May 1965, Keith Richards woke up in a Florida motel room with a guitar riff stuck in his head and no memory of playing it. He’d fallen asleep still holding his Gibson fuzzbox-equipped guitar, and a nearby tape recorder had captured two minutes of the riff followed by forty minutes of snoring and the sound of him dropping the pick.

Richards called the cassette “Satisfaction” simply because it described his own state of mind after hearing it back—he initially thought it was a joke. The next day he played it for Mick Jagger, who wrote the lyrics about commercialism and frustration. The song became the Stones’ first U.S. number one and one of the most instantly recognizable riffs in rock history, all because Richards hadn’t bothered to turn off his recorder before passing out.