A Soulful Reckoning: Otis Redding Versus The Rolling Stones
The Tamla Motown UK Tour was a long-overdue arrival in 1965, but it certainly wasn’t the first time Black American artists had crossed the Atlantic. Years before Motown’s polished harmonies graced British stages, the raw, unfiltered power of blues and rock & roll had already laid the foundation.
Otis Redding. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
• A MUSICAL AND RACIAL AWAKENING •
In 1963, just before Beatlemania swept the U.S., Little Richard stormed through the UK with Bo Diddley and the Everly Brothers, backed by a then-unknown Rolling Stones. Even earlier, in 1962, the American Folk Blues Festival introduced European audiences to legends like Memphis Slim, T-Bone Walker, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, Willie Dixon, John Lee Hooker, and Shakey Jake.
Little Richard. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
Bo Diddley. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
For British musicians, those early soul and Motown tours were nothing short of a musical awakening—a masterclass in rhythm, grit, and emotional truth. They soaked it up like sponges, ears wide open and minds blown. But for the American artists, the experience hit differently. After years grinding through the segregated Chitlin’ Circuit in the U.S., they suddenly found themselves center stage in front of white British crowds who didn’t just listen—they revered. Gone were the backdoor entrances and second-class treatment. In the UK, they were royalty. The applause, the respect, the sheer admiration—it was liberating, even surreal.
But not everyone welcomed them with open arms. While the fans offered devotion, the British press delivered condescension. Journalists often portrayed these artists as exotic spectacles rather than the musical innovators they were. Reviews dripped with racial undertones, missing the point entirely: that these weren’t novelties—they were the architects of a global sound. The headlines may have been loud, but they were tone-deaf.
Even in moments meant to celebrate the artists, the British press often revealed its blind spots. Coverage was laced with exoticism and racial stereotyping, reducing complex individuals to caricatures. Alan Smith of the New Musical Express, writing about the Four Tops’ Abdul “Duke” Fakir, offered a striking example:
“Meeting Abdul is something of a surprise for the first few minutes. He is a tall, lean man with a flowered sun shirt fluttering from his shoulders, a face completely un-Negroid apart from the fact that it is Black; and a soft, whispering voice not unlike James Cagney. He is friendly, as easy to talk to as any Tamla artist, and when he smiles he occasionally tends to look like an amiable Nasser. He explains his Eastern features by telling you his father came from Pakistan.”
“A face completely un-Negroid apart from the fact that it is Black.”
- Alan Smith of New Music Express writing about Duke Fakir of the Four Tops
James Brown. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
• SOUL GODFATHER HANDS THE STONES THEIR ARSES •
By the mid-1960s, the British had planted their flag at the top of the global music charts. What was once Soul territory had been overtaken by a new wave of guitar-driven swagger—the British Invasion was in full force. Leading the charge were The Rolling Stones, born in London in 1962, and steeped in the very American blues and Soul traditions they now helped displace. But when the Stones crossed the Atlantic, they weren’t just chasing hits—they became the rebellious face of a generation, rebranding rock & roll with a sneer, a swagger, and a sound that echoed its Black American roots while reshaping them for a new, mostly white audience.
It was 1964, and backstage at the Teenage Awards Music International Show, Keith Richards stood frozen, heart pounding in his chest. Onstage, James Brown was a force of nature—his performance of “Please Please Please” an explosive tempest that electrified the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Every beat, every scream echoed like thunder. The Rolling Stones were up next and it felt like a rising storm. The reckoning had begun.
WATCH JAMES BROWN PERFORM “PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE”
James Brown collapsed to his knees, only to rise again and again in relentless cycles. The Famous Flames—his trusted band and handlers—draped a flowing cape over his shoulders each time, as if he’d just stepped out of a brutal boxing match. But Brown wasn’t finished. With a sudden, fierce defiance, he ripped the cape away and dove back into the frenzy, only to drop once more into a raw, gripping singing fit. This wasn’t mere performance—it was a spiritual exorcism. By the time Brown, drenched in sweat and on the brink of hysteria, exploded into “Night Train,” it was as if the Holy Ghost had seized him completely. His wild fervor mirrored the ecstatic outpourings of a Pentecostal revival—a possession he himself later called “a Holiness feeling,” a force so overpowering “they try to stop you and you just don’t want to stop.”
WATCH JAMES BROWN PERFORM “NIGHT TRAIN”
“Here was white America, blond, blue-eyed surfing girls screaming their brains out,” said Steve Binder, T.A.M.I. show director. “One of my camera guys said to me, ‘I can’t be right but I think I’m hearing “fuck me fuck me fuck me” from the audience.’ We couldn’t edit it out. Those kids were reacting with honest emotions—there were no applause lights flashing on and off, it was all too real.”
How in the hell were the Stones supposed to top that? Richards was consumed by a sickening wave of anxiety, so much so that Marvin Gaye had to pull him aside and deliver a hard-hitting pep talk: just get out there and give it everything, no matter how wildly overshadowed they might be. Brown’s performance was a calculated ambush—he had held back during rehearsals, saving his full firepower for the live show, refusing to “let the cat out of the bag.” Years later, Richards would admit with bitter clarity that stepping onstage after James Brown at T.A.M.I. was the biggest mistake of his life. The Stones’ egos were bruised, battered, and bloodied that night.
Brown later admitted that no performance demanded more from him—or received more of his energy—than The T.A.M.I. Show. “I danced so hard my manager cried. But I really had to. What I was up against was pop artists—I was R&B. I had to show ’em the difference. And believe me, it was hard.”
“I danced so hard my manager cried. But I really had to. What I was up against was pop artists—I was R&B. I had to show ’em the difference. And believe me, it was hard.”
- James Brown on performing on The T.A.M.I. Show
Richards knew he could not follow an act like Brown. “His whole show is just too much,” Richards said in 1964. “We phone him first, and then went to see him at the Apollo in New York. The place was packed out, although we were the only two white people in the house. Halfway through his act he stopped the music and introduced us to the audience, and wouldn’t start playing again until we went up on stage and bowed.”
Bill Wyman, bass guitarist for the Stones, continued: “You could put Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley on one side of the stage, and James Brown on the other and you wouldn’t even notice the others were there! When we met him backstage at Louisville, Kentucky, he said ‘the gas would be for the Rolling Stones and James Brown to tour together,’ and we told him he could keep that idea.”
Animation and Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
• (I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION •
In the summer of 1965, deep in a Los Angeles studio, the Rolling Stones struck lightning. With Mick Jagger and Keith Richards scribbling out lyrics and Andrew Loog Oldham—manager, producer, and self-appointed visionary—at the helm, they laid down what would become their most iconic track: “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” From the opening fuzz-drenched riff to Jagger’s sneering vocals, the song pulsed with frustration and cynicism, a restless anthem for a generation tired of being sold to.
Jagger's delivery wasn’t just attitude—it was Soul-infused swagger, a conscious nod to the Black American artists the Stones idolized. The lyrics, laced with anti-establishment jabs and dripping with sexual tension, were both a rebellion and a revelation. That title? A grammatical double negative—“can’t” and “no”—a phrase that shouldn’t work, but did, perfectly capturing the song’s mood of defiance and discontent.
“Satisfaction” was a firecracker—and not everyone was ready to handle it. In the UK, mainstream stations shied away from the track, so it blared instead from pirate radio stations. In America, it shot straight to Number 1, becoming the band’s first U.S. chart-topper.
LISTEN TO “(I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION” BY THE ROLLING STONES
Television, always late to the party, tried to rein it in. Shindig! clipped parts of their performance, fearful of suggestive content, but somehow The Ed Sullivan Show let it slip through uncensored the following year. The Stones had pushed the boundaries—and the boundaries had blinked.
“The lyrics to this were truly threatening to an older audience,” said critic Paul Gambaccini. “This song was perceived as an attack on the status quo.”
In a twist of the usual script—where white artists borrowed liberally from Black musicians without always giving credit—the tables were about to turn. The Rolling Stones had already covered three of Otis Redding’s songs, a familiar pattern of white appropriation that had long shaped the music industry. But now, Redding had a chance to flip the dynamic.
Steve Cropper, Redding’s guitarist and trusted collaborator at Stax in Memphis, had an idea: why not cover one of the Stones’ biggest hits—“(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction”? It would be a bold move. Not just payback, but a reclamation. A chance for Redding to inject the song with its original soul, to reach Stones fans on his own terms, and to show the world how different a song could sound when delivered from the source of its inspiration.
But when Otis walked into the studio, he dropped a quiet bomb. He told Cropper he’d never actually heard the track. It didn’t matter. What came next would be pure Redding—gritty, breathless, and brimming with the kind of soul no imitation could touch.
“They [Steve Cropper and Booker T. Jones] asked me if I’d heard the new Rolling Stones song, but I hadn’t,” Redding said. “If you notice, I use a lot of words different from the Stones’ version. That’s because I made it up.”
Cropper adds, “...if you ever listened to the record, you can hardly understand the lyrics, right? I set down to a record player and copied down what I thought the lyrics were and I handed Otis a piece of paper and before we got through with the cut, he threw the paper on the floor and that was it.”
Redding didn’t just tweak the lyrics when he took on “Satisfaction”—he transformed it from the inside out. With a sly, nasal tone that bordered on parody, he threw a playful jab at Mick Jagger’s own attempts to sound Black. Then came the real show: a whirlwind of soulful grunts, guttural groans, improvised scat syllables, and fiery vocal runs that turned the song into something entirely his own.
“Maybe in fact, Otis’ ‘Satisfaction’ was retaliation,” wrote critic Dave Marsh years later. “You botch mine and I’ll botch yours.”
This wasn’t just a cover—it was a total reinvention. In 1965, nothing sounded like what Otis Redding did to “Satisfaction.” He didn’t just perform the song; he ignited it. With raw soul and explosive energy, Redding owned it so completely that some listeners assumed the Stones had borrowed his track—not the other way around. While the original version had already topped charts, Redding’s take exposed something deeper: the emotional grit and urgency buried beneath the Stones’ swagger. For all its success, the Stones’ version now felt like a missed opportunity—one buoyed by white privilege, polished and packaged for mass appeal, while Redding’s burned with something real, something the original only gestured toward.
“Maybe in fact, Otis’ ‘Satisfaction’ was retaliation. You botch mine and I’ll botch yours.”
- Critic Dave Marsh
Releasing “Satisfaction” as a single was a bold gamble for Otis Redding—but it paid off. The track stormed the R&B chart, peaking at number four, claimed the top spot on the Cashbox chart, and held its ground for three weeks. More than just a hit, it marked a breakthrough. Redding had struck crossover gold, capturing the ears of rock audiences while staying true to his soulful core. Performances at L.A.’s legendary Whisky a Go Go and on Britain’s Ready Steady Go! in 1966 sealed the deal—Redding wasn’t just a soul star; he was a cultural force on both sides of the Atlantic.
LISTEN TO “(I CAN’T GET NO) SATISFACTION)” BY OTIS REDDING
By then, record labels had started pressing artists for at least one hit per album, and Redding delivered in spades. The Otis Blue/Otis Redding Sings Soul album didn’t just feature “Satisfaction”—it also included heavy-hitters like “Shake,” “Respect,” and the aching ballad “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long.” The demand was so high that white stickers were slapped onto the album covers in bold red letters, declaring: “This LP contains SATISFACTION.” Atlantic Records exec Bob Rolontz, author of the album liner notes, declared: “Otis Redding has it, to a degree almost unrivaled by any other young singer in sight…It is part of the quality of Otis Redding’s dramatic and highly personalized style that he makes every song he sings completely his own, even when the material has previously been recorded by another outstanding singer. He does it here too, and that perhaps is another meaning of soul, or the Otis Redding version of it.”
• A TALE OF TWO LICKS •
While Redding may have borrowed a song from a white British band and made it unmistakably his own—crediting the original writers in full—the same courtesy might not have been returned by the Rolling Stones. In 1965, Memphis label Hi Records released “That Driving Beat” by Willie Mitchell, a track whose driving rhythm and groove sound suspiciously similar to licks the Stones would later make famous.
Willie Mitchell. Illustration by J.D. Humphreys
At the time, Mitchell was already a key figure at Hi Records, both as a recording artist and a producer, steadily releasing a string of soulful singles like “Soul Serenade” that found their way onto the charts. And by the end of the decade, “Papa Willie” would quietly take over operations at Royal Studios, helping to steer Hi Records into its golden era. Under his leadership, the label would become the launchpad for Al Green and a wave of Southern soul legends.
Half a minute into Mitchell’s “That Driving Beat,” a sharp horn lick cuts through the groove—tight, insistent, unforgettable. That same lick, transformed and transposed, would resurface months later as the fuzzed-out opening guitar line of the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.”
LISTEN TO “THAT DRIVING BEAT” BY WILLIE MITCHELL
Originally, the Stones had intended to replace Richards’ distorted guitar with a brass section—an arrangement that would have made the song’s roots in Mitchell’s composition far more obvious. But the fuzz stuck, and with it, the lick took on a new life. What remained wasn’t just a melodic echo—it was an interpolation with striking similarities, more alike than not. The question that lingers, still unanswered, is whether it was coincidence or something more deliberate.
For the Stones, that lick became iconic—etched into the DNA of rock and into their own legend. But at the time, its resemblance to Mitchell’s work went largely unnoticed, buried beneath the noise of rising fame. For decades, no one seemed to question its origin.
That changed in January 2018, when Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell—son of Willie Mitchell and the current owner of Royal Studios—took the stage at TEDxMemphis. With quiet gravity, he revealed that he and his sister had only recently discovered the uncanny similarity between the two licks. The audience sat stunned. What had seemed like a piece of rock history was, perhaps, something borrowed from a Memphis soul man whose name had been left out of the story all this time.
• UNMASKING SOUL THIEVES •
When the first issue of SOUL newspaper hit stands on April 14, 1966, it didn’t pull any punches. Splashed across the cover in bold type was a headline that cut straight to the heart of the matter: “White Artists Selling Negro ‘Soul.’” Beneath it, two photographs told a story of cultural tension—James Brown, captioned “Message for Stones,” and Mick Jagger, beneath the biting line “Listen—Don’t Look.”
It was a searing critique of the growing trend: white artists riding the wave of Soul music’s popularity while the Black pioneers who created it were sidelined, under-credited, and underpaid. The cover wasn’t just calling out appropriation—it was demanding accountability.
“We jumped out there with controversy,” said Regina Jones, who co-founded SOUL newspaper with her husband. “We were often in trouble with record companies and they would withhold advertising even though there was already not enough. We didn’t play the publicity game as we considered ourselves truth tellers. We had a lot of pride and arrogance as we learned how to be publishers.”
That fearless approach resonated. The first issue sold out all five thousand copies, each priced at just fifteen cents. Published weekly, SOUL found vital support from local radio station KGFJ, which provided on-air promotion in exchange for ad space in the paper—an essential partnership that helped the publication carve out its place in the industry despite resistance from the record labels.
The message was clear: Soul wasn’t a costume to be worn. It was lived experience, and it had been hijacked.