How Keith Richards’s Fuzz Gratefulness Almost Killed 'Satisfaction'

The most famous guitar riff of the 1960s—the one that supposedly started with a “farting” sound—almost never saw the light of day as a single. Keith Richards wrote the riff on an acoustic guitar while half-asleep, then recorded it at RCA Studios in Hollywood using a Maestro Fuzz-Tone FZ-1 pedal he’d just bought. He’d intended it as a scratch track, a placeholder to be replaced later with horns. But that harsh, distorted opening caught everyone’s ear, especially producer Andrew Loog Oldham.

London Records, the Stones’ U.S. label, hated the fuzzed-out guitar. They thought it sounded like a broken radio, like a mistake. Executives argued the noise would never get radio play. They wanted the band to release a cleaner version or relegate “Satisfaction” to album filler. Oldham fought back, convinced the rawness was exactly what a hit needed. The Stones backed him, and the single came out in June 1965—with the fuzz intact. It became their first No. 1 in the U.S. and effectively launched the fuzz pedal into rock history.