Composers: Mick
Jagger
& Keith Richards
Recording date: July and/or September 1965
Recording location: RCA
Studios, Los Angeles, USA
Producer: Andrew
Oldham Engineer: Dave Hassinger
Performed onstage: 1965-67, 1975-76,
1999, 2005-07, 2012-14, 2016-19, 2021-22
Probable line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Rhythm electric guitar: Keith
Richards
Lead electric guitar: Brian
Jones
Lead vocal: Mick
Jagger
Background vocals: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Piano: Ian Stewart
Handclaps: ---
I was
sick and tired, fed up with this and decided to take a drive
downtown
It was so very quiet and
peaceful, there was nobody, not a soul around
I laid myself out, I was so
tired and I started to dream
In the morning the parking
tickets were just like flags stuck on my windscreen
I said Hey you, get off of my cloud
Hey you, get off of my cloud
Hey you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around 'cause two's a crowd
On my cloud
I said Hey you, get off of my cloud
Hey you, get off of my cloud
Hey you, get off of my cloud
Don't hang around, baby, two's a crowd
On my cloud
Hey you...
TrackTalk
The first impression you get of our records is an exciting sound. We've never brought any vocal out much more than on Cloud. It's a case of hunt the words! But you can hear them if you concentrate.
That was the follow-up to
Satisfaction. I never
dug it as a record. The chorus was a nice idea but we rushed
it as the follow-up. We were in L.A. and it was time for
another single. But how do you follow Satisfaction?
Actually, what I wanted was to do it slow like a Lee Dorsey
thing. We rocked it up. I thought it was one of Andrew's worst
productions.
(The piano on the
record) I think... was just a matter of saying, Stu, this
sounds a bit thin... Yeah, that was just one of those
things you could do in those days - shadow a guitar with a
piano. As long as you didn't make it obvious, it would add
some different air to a track.
Get
Off My Cloud was not very groovy.
That was Keith's melody
and my lyrics... It's a stop-bugging-me,
post-teenage-alienation song. The grown-up world was a very
ordered society in the '60s, and I was coming out of it.
America was even more ordered than anywhere else. I found it
was a very restrictive society in thought and behavior and
dress.
(The lyrics are not
good), they're crap. It's nothing. Thank you for the
compliment but I don't think they are great at all.
It's really difficult now
to realize how important it was to have a hit single. If the
last one didn't do as well as the one before, that meant you
were out, you were sliding out. I mean, it was a state of
mind. So each one had to be better and DO better, it didn't
just have to be better. I mean, you could make a better record
each time but if it didn't DO better as the other one or at
least as good, it was a sign that you were declining. You
know, it was just real pressure to come up with a red-hot song
that says it all in 2 minutes 30 seconds every 8 weeks. I
mean, it's got to be ready within 8 weeks and released every
12 or 14 weeks, you know. You've just finished Satisfaction
- I'd been wrong about that, it's an enormous hit, and you're
going, Wow, lucky me - and you're just taking a
breather for a couple of days and Andrew Oldham comes along
and says, Where's the next single?
Mick
was incredibly prolific then. It was as much as I could do
to come up with a riff. Much as I love it now, when I
first did it, I thought "Get Off of My Cloud" ain't no "Satisfaction". But it was the best I
could do.