Manchester ensemble The 7:45s impressed last year with their soulful re-imagining of The Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’.

For their latest release, they’ve tackled a tune from another iconic British rock group. The Rolling Stones’ ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ has been the subject of soulful readings in the past, most notably by Otis Redding (1965) and Aretha Franklin (1967). Written in 1965, the tune’s iconic guitar riff (with shades of Martha Reeves & the Vandellas ‘Nowhere to Run’) came to Keith Richards when sleeping in a Florida hotel. Mick Jagger wrote the lyrics – often misinterpreted as being solely about sexual frustration – as an expression of his alienation from 1960s consumerism.

The 7:45s chose the song to capture their frustration with the current COVID-19 pandemic. On the arrangement, band leader Sam Flynn explains: ‘Keith Richards has always said that the iconic fuzz guitar riff of “Satisfaction” was originally intended as a placeholder for a Stax-style horn section. But their producer out-voted him, the fuzz riff stayed, and rock was born! So I guess our version is what rock music might have sounded like if Richards had got his way.’

The group slow down the groove to a funky strut; the horns in particular give a powerful thrust to the piece. Compared to Jagger’s agitated delivery, there is something more freeing about this rendition. In pure Lockdown style, the audio was recorded via Zoom by Matt Brown of Manchester’s Fog Lane Studios and the video was put together by Manchester’s 491 Film Co.