My song today is “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction”. This song is by The Rolling Stones and was released in 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. The lyrics refer to sexual frustration and commercialism.
The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and was also featured on the American version of the Rolling Stones' fourth studio album, ‘Out of Our Head’. “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction" was a hit, giving the Stones their first Number 1 in the US. In the UK, the song initially was played on pirate radio because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive. It later became the Rolling Stones' fourth number one in the United Kingdom.
It is one of the world's most popular songs and is second on Rollin Stone’s ‘500 Greatest Songs of All Time’. It was inducted into the 'Grammy Hall of Fame’ in 1998, and it is the 10th best-ranked song on critics' all-time lists according to ‘Acclaimed Music’. The song was added to the ‘National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress’ in 2006.
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At the time when I first married, unless it was a ‘shotgun wedding’ (which was greatly frowned upon by all and sundry), it was usual for the courting couple to have a period of engagement lasting a few years before one’s wedding, and for the couple not to engage in full sex before one’s wedding night. I should imagine that almost sixty years later, the practice of such restraint would constitute a rarity.
From my own personal experience, and in the role of matrimonial guidance counsellor during my thirties, I would have to say that it is probably better if a couple can establish the presence of being sexually compatible before they commit themselves to marriage, as opposed to tying the knot first, only to discover that things start to unravel from the first night you each remove your under-garments. Going into any marriage ‘sexually cold’, is like being wedded to an iceberg; you never know what lies beneath the surface. You could find yourself married to an Ice Maiden or a Red-Hot Mama!
I feel really sorry for all of the young women who married between the two World Wars when a wife had few rights within her relationship with her husband, and absolutely no redress after marriage regarding her husband’s sexual behaviour and demands in the bedroom. How he wanted sex in terms of either frequency or manner appears to have been the sole domain of male prerogative. Indeed, as there was no such offence as rape within a marriage and the police rarely intervened in physical disputes between a husband and his wife, the woman was left to the mercy of the man she had married. Marital rape is considered a form of sexual, domestic violence today, but it did not become illegal until 1992 in Great Britain.
One family I worked with in Huddersfield, during the early 1970s involved the brute of a man. He was a father and husband who would get drunk frequently, arrive home and demand sex from his terrified wife the very moment he arrived back in the house. It would not concern him if his children were present at the scene of his rape or whether his son and daughter heard him from an adjacent room after making themselves scarce. If his wife objected, he would beat her, along with any of his children who interfered, and afterwards, he would mock her, always alleging that she could not satisfy ‘a proper man’.
On one occasion, his twenty-year-old son came home to find his father viciously beating his mother in the lounge after having sexually assaulted her. Ten minute’s earlier, he had demanded sex in the lounge from his wife who requested they go upstairs to the bedroom lest the children walked in the lounge. Afterwards, he physically punched her several times in the face for not being passionate enough during the act. Her son, Peter, heard his mother scream as his father punched and kicked her and went to his mother’s aid. Peter came off the worse as his father was twice his size and weightier. Peter then told his father he would kill him if ever he laid a finger on his mother again. His father laughed in his face, telling him “You’re not man enough!”.
A short time after this incident, Peter, rearranged the cutlery drawer and placed the sharpest and longest knife in a position within the drawer where he could get immediate access in a hurry. Some weeks later, Peter arrived home to find his brutish drunken father physically assaulting his mother again. Without announcing his presence, Peter immediately went into the kitchen, got the sharpest knife he had previously positioned for immediate use, and returned to the lounge where he stabbed his father repeatedly in the back. When his father fell to the floor, he stabbed him a couple of times in the abdomen also. He then comforted his mother as a sister phoned an ambulance. Dad was dead long before the ambulance arrived. Peter was arrested and charged with murder.
Peter’s solicitor tried to get the Prosecution to agree to a charge of Manslaughter, but they refused because of his previously acknowledged threat to kill his father if he ever beat up on his mum again, plus the fact that his concealment of the kitchen knife for future use implied clear premeditation. Such forethought of action made the charge one of ‘Murder’ and not ‘Manslaughter’.
Neither Peter’s mother nor his teenage sister was at the court to see him sentenced, and once convicted of Murder, Peter received an automatic life sentence. I was appointed to maintain contact with Peter during the earlier years of his sentence. Initially, his mother and sister provided all the necessary statements to the police informing them of the brutish and animalistic behaviour of the deceased, but then for some reason, they would not explain, why they had decided to cut off Peter from future family contact for having murdered his father.
Neither Peter’s sister nor mother wrote to him or visited him once in prison during the four years I had contact with him. During my monthly prison visits to see Peter at Wakefield Prison, he always said he had acted on behalf of his mother and sister, to protect them both from further physical assaults, and could not understand why they had removed him from their affection. It would seem the mother and daughter felt under community pressure to reject Peter, or else the neighbours would think that the mother, daughter, and son had planned the murder together. In always felt that Peter had been the scapegoat for what they had all wanted.
I was never able to view the murdered man other than being a brutish and vile bully, who was oversexed, and who probably derived more excitement from raping his wife instead of indulging in agreeable sexual activity. and physically assaulting and abusing her afterwards.
Whenever I hear today’s song, it is Peter and his family who immediately come to mind.
Love and peace
Bill xxx