On Nov. 6, 1965, The Rolling Stones reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Get Off of My Cloud,” their follow-up to the massive hit “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” The song’s road to the top included an unusual detour through a British courtroom.
On March 18, 1965, the band was driving home after a concert when bassist Bill Wyman asked to use the restroom at a gas station. The attendant, Charles Keeley, said there wasn’t one available and asked them to leave. Things quickly escalated. Some members of the group relieved themselves against a wall at the station, and Jagger allegedly shouted a crude remark that others in the group repeated.
That July, Wyman, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones were found guilty of insulting behavior and fined £5 each, plus court costs. The court chairman told them that reaching the “exalted heights” of their profession didn’t give them the right to behave that way.
Two months later, the band recorded “Get Off of My Cloud.” The song was released in the U.S. in September 1965, and some music historians have pointed out that the title could have been inspired by Jones’ comments at the gas station.
Keith Richards had a different explanation. He has said the song was the band’s response to pressure from their record label to quickly follow up “Satisfaction,” calling it “our response to the knock at the door.” Jagger, who wrote the lyrics while Richards came up with the melody, called it “a stop-bugging-me, post-teenage-alienation song.”
Whatever inspired it, fans connected with the song’s message about wanting to escape the noise of fame. Backed by Charlie Watts’ pounding drums, “Get Off of My Cloud” became the Stones’ second No. 1 hit in America and also topped the charts in the U.K.
More than six decades later, the Stones are still recording and touring. Their gas station run-in is now one of rock history’s strangest footnotes, and the song that followed it is still a classic.