Back in 1971, Keith Richards had an interview with Rolling Stone where his brutal honesty shed light on the story behind their song ‘Get Off of My Cloud’. He revealed his dissatisfaction with the final result. Keith is one of the ruthless critics in the music world and his own band sometimes gets the rants.
Keith explained that he didn’t like the song ‘Get Off of My Cloud’. He revealed its connection with another Rolling Stones song and thought that the newly produced song was a cheap makeover. He also added that it was supposed to sound like the work of some other artist and in the final cut, it didn’t make it.
The band was following the success of the song ‘Satisfaction’ during that time. It was their first number-one record in the United States. The band also had pressure to do it all over again and that’s when they created ‘Get Off of My Cloud.’
He said, “It’s difficult to realize what pressure we were under to keep producing hits, Each single you made in those days had to be better and do better.” He also added, “If the next one didn’t do as well as the last one, everyone told you you were sliding out, It got to be a state of mind. Every eight weeks you had to come up with a red-hot song that said it all in two minutes, 30 seconds.”
Richard was very unimpressed by the result. He felt that the song was rushed. In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1971, he revealed. “‘Get Off of My Cloud’ was basically a response to people knocking on our door asking us for the follow-up to ‘Satisfaction’… We thought ‘At last. We can sit back and maybe think about events’. Suddenly there’s a knock at the door. And of course, what came out of that was ‘Get Off of My Cloud'”.
Years later in 1995, he still complained about the song. He also blamed Richards for the lyrics. He said the song was, a “stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song.” He said that the song was, “the grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early ’60s, and I was coming out of it.”
Another thing about rushing the song came up. He discussed, “The chorus was a nice idea but we rushed it as the follow-up.” He added, “We were in L.A. and it was time for another single. But how do you follow ‘Satisfaction?’ Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew [Loog Oldham]’s worse productions.”
Despite his ranting, ‘Get Off of My Cloud’ was a big hit in the United States. It was the number 1 Billboard Hit 100 for two weeks in the United States. The song was in the chart for 12 weeks which is very remarkable. It also topped the chard in the UK for three weeks. There, it spent 12 weeks on the chart. The song also appeared on the compilation Hot Rock 1964-1971. The album itself was No.4 on the Billboard 200 and remained there for 394 weeks.
Even though Keith was not a fan, it sure went on to become a hit for the band. Listen to the song below.
