We have many archetypes in popular culture when it comes to the arts. The lives of artists and celebrities come to us like caricatures: the manic painter, the tortured poet, the method actor, the broken child star. We rarely treat these people as anything other than the archetypes of their public personas present. In music you also have the archetype of the rockstar. And few bands have been as quintessentially "rockstar" as The Rolling Stones. In a way, they helped shape the very concept.

The excessive lives of talented men (and sometimes women), fame and trouble, drugs, parties, wasting money, having tons of sex and playing gig after gig after gig –summed up in the phrase sex, drugs and rock and roll– has caused both fascination and revolt. The general public, star struck with such decadence, such impudence and miraculously wild lifestyle sees these lives part dream life (a dream of money, fame, power) and cautionary tales. While they are often bad role models, they are also aspirational. I believe the rockstar also offers some level of subconscious exorcism¹: they live lives we will never have, but we can follow along closely enough to get a taste. At its core, it is an icarian story of the rise and fall. The cycle goes: the rockstar goes big, they have their lives exposed, the drugs eventually take over them, they take a hit in their careers, they stop performing properly, the public forgets about them because they are just another broken toy in the grinding machine –that is assuming they don’t die tragically young ². Yet, many live to tell the tale, both literally and metaphorically. The Rolling Stones are among those who have lived to tell the tale and continue to do so.

Today I want to take a look at two songs by the Stones, from different moments in their careers. Both of these songs take a sexual innuendo and turn it into an hymn of disaffection and restlessness.

1965

(I can’t get no) Satisfaction is one of the most famous songs by the band. Penned by Jagger/Richards, it was released in 1965 and basically catapulted the Stones’ careers. Keith Richards’ instantly recognizable guitar riff has become one of the most iconic in music history. The song’s lyrics talk about a narrator that can’t get any satisfaction, any reaction. He is frustrated because no matter how hard he tries, he can’t get what he wants. The main chorus is as catchy as it is cheeky. Mick Jagger sings with a somewhat mocking, somewhat pouring voice, highlighting the sexual innuendo. From the chorus alone, one might think it’s just the story of a young man and how much he wants to have sex, and no matter how much, he can’t get enough.

But then we get into the verses: the narrator listens to the radio and watches TV and gets too much useless information (commercials) and he sounds annoyed and bored with the entire thing. Wikipedia, my beloved, reads “The song's lyrics refer to sexual frustration and commercialism”. And surely, there is that but I think there is a bit more too. Jagger sounds bored as much as he sounds frustrated. In the last verse, he refers to trying to have sex with a girl who tells him to come back another day because she is menstruating³, which leaves our narrator all the more hot and bothered.

The lyrics are simple and on the nose. But I think the music, the pointy repetitive riff, the simple rhythm and the way it goes slightly up on the chorus as Jagger sings “I’ve tried and I’ve tried and I’ve tried” feels like a repetitive routine that reaches an angry high. The narrator is saying “no I can’t get no satisfaction, and I’m upset, I’m bothered, and I’m bored and things don’t look like they’ll change”. In the final verse, after the girl tells him to go back some other day, goes:

“'Cause you see, I'm on a losing streak”

Our narrator might be on a “losing streak” but there is nothing he can’t do about it other than muse on his own dissatisfaction.

1972

Some years later, the Stones are going through a “tax exile”, living in France. Their bandmate Brian Jones died a couple years ago. Drugs are more present than ever. Glam is still in vogue. The Rolling Stones release their double album Exile on Main Street, in which they explore a somewhat rougher sound, more grounded on their blues influences.

Their previous album, Sticky fingers (my personal favorite from the band), has multiple songs that deal with drugs and gloomy near-death topics such as Dead flowers, or the haunting Sister Morphine (co-written by Marianne Faithful). In particular, the song Sway has the beaten-down lyric “It’s just that demon life has got you in its sway”, in reference to the hectic and unsustainable rockstar life. The Stones are talking about their anguish at the same time they are building over their own myth. Exile on Main Street is perhaps less overt in these themes, or at least it sounds somewhat less gloomy by taking a slightly more detached approach (and even then we still find songs that sound borderline apocalyptic such as Ventilator blues). But the song I’m interested in today is the opening track, Rocks off.

The title of the song comes from slang referring to ejaculation. It opens up with the narrator overhearing a conversation, half-seeing, walking but barely awake in a drug-infused haze. Jagger sings, dragging the words a bit, adding to the general stupor. The song starts with a catchy guitar intro, followed by the rhythm section before the voice comes in, setting up the scene. It’s a bit like our narrator is late to the party. Now our narrator isn’t feeling mere dissatisfaction, he’s feeling something much worse. He wants to shout but can hardly speak.

The keys and brass, almost happily, become more prominent as the narrator/Jagger explains how he was with a girl and was unable to function sexually. While she “come every time she pirouettes over me”, the narrator can’t find any sexual release. The chorus follows:

“And I only get my rocks off while I’m dreaming”

While the sexual frustration in the song mirrors that of Satisfaction there isn’t a playful tone here anymore. The frustration is not just something he has to keep dealing with and hope for a day when the losing streak is over. It is now a thing that is actively eating him alive. Over the course of seven years, Jagger/Richards have gone from the frustration and boredom of regular life to existential nightmare of the rockstar life. In Satisfaction, all Jagger’s narrator needs is a girl. In Rocks off even when he’s with one, there is no way to find release.

The sexual frustration reveals something far deeper: a profound disaffection, a complete disassociation from life and feeling, from the body itself. As the narrator zips ”through the days at lightning speed”, he injects himself with heroin over and over again, but even that is not enough. The relief and escapism the drug once provided is not there anymore. There is no joyous listlessness. Pain may be used as a means to feel something. It is one of the darker edges of human nature and a recurring poetic motif. But unlike in Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt, where the narrator can focus on the pain (“the only thing that’s real”), the narrator of Rocks off has been stripped even from his pain. Jagger’s voice gets increasingly irritated, and he half sings, half spits out the words of the pre-chorus:

“Heading for the overload

Splattered on the nasty road

Kick me like you've kicked before

I can’t even feel the pain no more”

Similarly to the great Jagger/Richards Paint it black, the narrator would rather be surrounded by darkness, unable to handle any light. After the chorus and a bridge where the music dissorts and the words echo imitating the effects of drugs, he sings:

“The sunshine bores the daylights out of me

Chasing shadows, moonlight mystery”

As the prochorus and the chorus kicks in again, Jagger sounds more desperate and tired, modulating his voice softer before heading into the final part of the song, where the full band is jamming, the saxophone and keys sounding loud as they repeat the words “only get them off, get them off”, a danceable tune to finish a song that feels honestly quite anguished in its lyrics.

In my mind, the annoyance and cheekyness of Satisfaction and the somewhat satirical nature of Paint it black (a song which deals quite directly with depression), are the seeds of Rocks off. But by the time Rocks off was written and released, much had happened. Stripped from the agency of their own lives (as in Sway), with the dangers of addiction are knocking on the door (as in Sister morphine), Rocks off is a rushed cry of desperation. There is a void, a disquiet so deep nothing can fill it, except in the moment of sleep.

The disaffected tone and complete detachment from life are even more clearly reflected in the contrast between the strayed sense of purpose of the lyrics and the loud, bombastic, danceable and fun style of the music. The party goes on, and on. There is no moment to rest, but this is not enough, and will never be enough because what kicked before is not kicking now. There is no excitement, no satisfaction –and now, no escape. There is no need to paint anything black because the colors aren’t even there anymore. The sexual frustration has turned into sexual dysfunction. What lust for life there is, when your life becomes something you can’t control, something you can’t enjoy, when even pain has gone and there is nothing in its place? The narrator of Rocks off finds his days filled with meaningless sex, living life through a hazy lense: the hedonism that once granted so much pleasure has turned into a trap of his own making, abandoned to vices that have won the race. The rockstar, like Icarus, close to the sun yet sinking down so deeply.

But this was the seventies, and The Rolling Stones are nothing if not resilient little bitches. Exile on Main Street opens with the festive nightmare of Rocks off, but closes with a Soul Survivor, a song filled with spite and perhaps an angry refusal to back down. And given that they are still around over fifty years later one has to assume something of that disquiet must have, at least, become bearable.