James McManus is the author of “Positively Fifth Street,” “Cowboys Full,” and eight other books of poetry, fiction, and memoir.
As we mark the 60th anniversary of the release of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction,” on June 6, we might still wonder what this game-changing song is about. I was 14 when it hit the airwaves, and with all the wisdom of those 14 years, I believed I knew the answer.
In the summer of ’65, rumor had it, Keith dreamt the wicked guitar hook of “Satisfaction.” He woke up, grabbed his guitar, recorded the hook on a tape deck next to his bed, and fell back asleep. Replaying it the next morning, he heard the notes and a couple of chords, followed by 40 seconds of snoring.
Mick wrote the words, and Keith helped make them better. With the other Rolling Stones, they flew to Chicago and recorded the track at Chess Records on the South Side, 25 miles east of my family’s house. They’d just performed three pretty good songs on Ed Sullivan, but none were as good as this new one. No song was, really. One mag said Keith used special tuning and something called a fuzzbox to make his guitar sound so aggro and dirty.
Five years before that, our Grandma Grace had moved from the Bronx to our new house in Lisle, Ill. Her husband had died back in 1928, and she loved telling me about my namesake grandfather — mine-laying sailor during the war, stalwart teetotaler, devout and pious Catholic — and how much he respected Jesuits, how thrilled he’d be to look down from heaven and watch me serve on God’s altar. I was 9. “My little lamb,” she called me, as in Lamb of God.
Next thing I knew, she’d landed a job as the secretary at our parish’s rectory and talked Father Fred into letting me start serving Mass two years early. I became the youngest altar boy in the history of St. Joan of Arc! But that was just part of her plan. After serving at Masses, weddings, and baptisms from fourth through eighth grade, for high school I would attend St. Stanislaus Jesuit Seminary in Florissant, Mo., where I’d “accept the gift of celibacy.” After four years there and four more at a Jebby university, I’d be ordained as a Jesuit priest.
As she drove me to and from the 6:15 a.m. Masses I served almost daily, Grandma Grace told me that if a boy became a Jesuit priest, his grandparents, parents, brothers, and sisters would all go straight to heaven the moment they died, skipping what could be dozens or even millions of years in purgatory. “Most indulgences remove only some of the penance,” she said, “but a plenary indulgence, like when you get ordained, removes all of it.” I promised her many times I would do it. I didn’t think that lifelong celibacy was a deal-breaker, if I thought about it at all. Plus I was proud to be able to spare my whole family the stinging, cleansing fires — cooler than hell’s, but still pretty hot — so our souls could all zoom up to heaven the second we passed away.
Our plan stayed on track until I was 12 or 13, when what celibacy forbids started sinking in. What the hell had I been thinking? For months and months, I seesawed back and forth about breaking my promise, though I forgot about the whole thing for long stretches during football or baseball season.
As the summer between eighth grade and the seminary rolled around, “Satisfaction” was on the radio all the time, most predictably when WLS counted down to the No. 1 song every night at 10 o’clock. My parents would be watching TV downstairs, and I’d turn it up as loud as I dared. I dug when Mick sang, “He can’t be a man ‘cause he doesn’t smoke the same cigarettes as me,” because my friends and I were smoking them too, especially when we played poker. Keith, Mick, Charlie, and Brian all smoked, sometimes while playing onstage. The biggest difference was, they never had to get haircuts; we couldn’t avoid them because our parents were so strict. Mick is “tryin’ to make some girl,” though he’s obviously made a few others. But the coolest thing was that even Mick couldn’t “get no satisfaction” that summer, since we couldn’t get any ourselves.
In late July, the paperwork for St. Stanislaus had to be signed, and I somehow found the courage to tell Grandma and my parents that instead of the seminary, I wanted to go to St. Procopius, the all-boys prep school right there in Lisle. Thank God, whom I no longer completely believed in, that my dad supported the switch, because he secretly hoped I’d become a good Catholic businessman and usher, like him. If he hadn’t, I’d be Stanislaus-bound.
Grandma was stunned, which killed me and her son. She couldn’t have known that in 1999 I’d name my fourth child after her. All she knew was that in five years I’d gone from being probably her favorite kid (there were six of us now, and counting) to an undevout promise-breaker. She said she no longer recognized me, and not because I was taller than she was and had whiskers. “In here,” she said, touching her heart.
When she asked why I changed my mind, I wasn’t sure what to say, but I didn’t want to lie. “Maybe I’ll change it back while I’m at Proco,” I said. Proco was Benedictine but Catholic, I reminded her, and half the teachers were priests. Their motto was U.I.O.G.D., “Ut in Omnibus Glorificetur Deus” — That in all things God may be glorified. Grandma just sniffed, shook her head, looking down and away, like she did when she really wanted you to know how disappointed she was.
If I’d been totally honest, I would’ve told her girls, sports, poker, and “Satisfaction.” That whatever’s the opposite of becoming a priest is what the words and Keith’s riff are about.