Early within the Sixties, The Rolling Stones weren’t essentially the most political band. On their varied albums and singles, the Stones largely caught to issues of the guts, physique, and soul. All of that modified, in considerably dramatic vogue, in 1968 after Mick Jagger attended an anti-Vietnam battle rally in London and bore witness to comparable protests taking place in America and France. As Jagger’s bandmate Keith Richards put it, “Our generation was bursting at the seams.”
The Recording
The continuing civil unrest bled into one of many Stones’ strongest songs. Recorded for the group’s 1968 album Beggars Banquet, “Street Fighting Man” finds Jagger reflecting the spirit of the time as he requires “a palace revolution” and, in a nod to a Martha & the Vandellas hit that he would later cowl with David Bowie, insists that “summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the street.”
Within the studio, Jagger bounced concepts off Richards, writing them down as they went, earlier than they reduce the paper up and rearranged the weather. Their work collectively generated maybe the tune’s most well-known couplet: the self-damning “But what can a poor boy do/except to sing in a rock ‘n’ roll band?”
The music for the tune really started nicely earlier than the band hit Olympic Sound Studios to put down the tracks for “Street Fighting Man.” The 12 months earlier than, Richards had been looking for a guitar tone he had in his head – a “dry, crisp sound,” as he put it, that he solely achieved by way of enjoying a close-miked acoustic guitar into an early cassette recorder.
The opposite key ingredient was Charlie Watts’ use of an vintage observe drum equipment that got here packed in a small suitcase. Whereas that was augmented within the studio with an even bigger bass drum sound, the tinny slap of that tiny entice set proved to be the right backdrop for Jagger’s forceful vocal and Richards’ bassline. Threaded all through are different gracefully psychedelic touches just like the drone of a sitar (performed by Brian Jones) and a shehnai, a reed instrument utilized in Indian music (performed by Site visitors member Dave Mason).
The Reception
“Street Fighting Man” was launched within the US in August of 1968, proper as protestors had been clashing with police in Chicago on the Democratic Nationwide Conference. Some radio stations refused to play the tune, nervous that it could incite additional violence. However whereas it didn’t catch hearth on the charts on the time, it has since grown to turn into one of many Stones’ signature songs and has been featured within the setlists of most of the band’s excursions since.
Richards, particularly, remembered “Street Fighting Man” fondly when he was interviewed concerning the tune by Marc Meyers for The Wall Avenue Journal in 2013. “That’s where the vision met reality,” he stated. “When we finished recording ‘Street Fighting Man’ and played back the master, I just smiled. It’s the kind of record you love to make.”
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