(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction

Devo released their version of the Rolling Stones song as a self-produced single on Booji Boy in 1977, then re-recorded it with Brian Eno for the debut album. The Warner Bros. single followed in 1978, after the recording was played for Mick Jagger's approval. The arrangement grew out of jam sessions. Bob Casale began with a guitar part, Alan Myers added a drum beat and Gerald Casale a bass part. At first the band tried the lyrics of Paint It Black over the music, and switched to Satisfaction when those did not fit.

Tom Carson heard the melody line almost completely erased and the lyrics delivered in a yelping, droogy chant to mechanical rhythms. At first it looked like a travesty, he wrote, but Devo were reshaping the old message into their own terminology. Steve Huey of AllMusic wrote that the cover reworks the original's alienation into a spastic freak-out that is nearly unrecognizable. The video, which got regular play on MTV, features the dancer Craig Allen Rothwell, known as Spazz Attack, whose signature move was a forward flip onto his back.

On 14 October 1978 Devo performed it on Saturday Night Live, a week after the Rolling Stones had hosted the show. It was the third date of their US tour, and Far Out Magazine described the performance as turning the Stones' swagger into a stilted, mechanical rumble. The recording was used prominently in Martin Scorsese's Casino in 1995 and appeared in the Netflix series Sex Education. The Residents had put out their own version as a single in 1976, and it gained attention partly through the success of Devo's cover.