| "Get Off of My Cloud" | ||||
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| Single by The Rolling Stones | ||||
| from the album December's Children (And Everybody's) | ||||
| B-side | "I'm Free" (US) "The Singer Not the Song" (UK) |
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| Released | 25 September 1965 (US) 22 October 1965 (UK) |
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| Format | 7" single | |||
| Recorded | 6–7 September 1965, RCA Studios, Hollywood | |||
| Genre | Blues rock[1] | |||
| Length | 2:55 | |||
| Label | London 45-LON 9792 Decca F12263 |
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| Writer(s) | Jagger/Richards | |||
| Producer | Andrew Loog Oldham | |||
| The Rolling Stones singles chronology | ||||
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"Get Off of My Cloud" is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones. It was written as a follow-up single to the successful "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction". The song topped the charts in the United States and the United Kingdom in the weeks following its release in November 1965.
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Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the song was recorded in early September 1965. The song is noted for its drum intro by Charlie Watts and twin guitars by Brian Jones and Keith Richards.[2] The lyrics are defiant and rebellious, which was common practice for the Rolling Stones around that time; they were beginning to cultivate their infamous "bad boy" image. The Stones have said that the song is written as a reaction to their sudden popularity after the success of "Satisfaction". The song deals with their aversion to people's expectations of them.
| “ | I was sick and tired, fed up with this and decided to take a drive downtown; It was so very quiet and peaceful, there was nobody, not a soul around; I laid myself out, I was so tired and I started to dream; In the morning the parking tickets were just like flags stuck on my windscreen | ” |
On the song, Richards said in 1971, "I never dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea, but we rushed it as the follow-up. We were in L.A., and it was time for another single. But how do you follow-up "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 worst productions." [3] In a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, Jagger said, "That was Keith's melody and my lyrics... It's a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very ordered society in the early '60s, and I was coming out of it. America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and dress." [4] In the 2003 book According to... The Rolling Stones, Richards says: "'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 the knock at the door and of course what came out of that was 'Get off of My Cloud'."
The song is in E major and is a variation on the Louie Louie riff: I-IV-V-IV, in this case E A B A. Brian Jones' guitar part can only just about be heard in the mono mix of the song as it is buried under the sound of the other instrument parts. It can only be clearly heard in some, but not all, unofficial stereo remixes.
| Preceded by "Tears" by Ken Dodd |
UK number-one single "Get Off of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones 4 November 1965 (three weeks) |
Succeeded by "The Carnival Is Over" by The Seekers |
| Preceded by "Yesterday" by The Beatles |
Billboard Hot 100 number-one single "Get Off of My Cloud" by The Rolling Stones 6 November 1965 (two weeks) |
Succeeded by "I Hear a Symphony" by The Supremes |
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