Mick Jagger / Keith Richards / 3:16
Musicians
Mick Jagger: vocals, maracas
Keith Richards: acoustic guitars, bass
Brian Jones: sitar, tambura
Charlie Watts: drums
Nicky Hopkins: piano
Dave Mason: shehnai, bass drum
Jimmy Miller (?): claves
Recorded
Olympic Sound Studios, London: March–May 1968
Technical Team
Producer: Jimmy Miller
Sound engineer: Glyn Johns
Assistant sound engineer: Phill Brown
When Mick Jagger wrote the words to “Street Fighting Man” in the studio in May 1968 (June by some sources), the world was caught up in an infernal spiral of violence. In Southeast Asia, the Tet Offensive had been unleashed (January 1). In the United States, Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated (April 4) and then Robert Kennedy was shot dead by a Palestinian extremist (June 6). The situation was also worrying in Europe: in Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubček’s “socialism with a human face” would soon be shattered by Warsaw Pact tanks (August 20–21), while in France, the student revolt highlighted the precarious position of President de Gaulle.
How true is it to claim that the United Kingdom was spared this tumult? On March 17, Mick Jagger took part in a protest in London against the Vietnam War during the course of which a large number of people were taken to the hospital and another 240 were arrested. However, the anger felt in Britain did not burn with the same intensity as elsewhere. And it is precisely this exceptional situation in the United Kingdom that is the focus of “Street Fighting Man.” The refrain leaves no room for doubt on this matter: Well what can a poor boy do/Except to sing for a rock ’n’ roll band. ’Cause in sleepy London town/There’s just no place for a street fighting man. Everywhere else, however, revolution was apparently under way. The narrator, who is also a participant in the generalized revolt, hears the sound of marching, thinks the time is right for a palace revolution, and will shout and scream [that he’ll] kill the King and rail at all his servants.
Mick Jagger as an instigator of revolution? No, merely an observer of his times. Although inspired to write “Street Fighting Man” by the Trotskyite leader Tariq Ali (himself one of the organizers of the March 17 London demonstration) and allowing the lyrics to be published in the newspaper Black Dwarf (to which Ali contributed), he refused to become a spokesperson of the so-called progressive movement—another thing he had in common with Dylan. The Stones’ singer never was, and never would be, a “working-class hero.”
“Street Fighting Man” was released as a single (with “No Expectations” as the B-side) in various countries, including the United States, France, West Germany, and the Netherlands, in 1968. Banned by many US radio stations because of what was judged to be its subversive message (the single was released in the United States on August 31, just a few days after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the police brutally suppressed a demonstration by the Yippies [Youth International Party]), the song climbed no higher than number 48 on the Billboard chart. In the United Kingdom, it was not released until 1971 (with “Surprise Surprise” as the B-side) and reached number 21 on July 24.
“The music came first—before Mick [Jagger] wrote the lyrics,” explains Keith Richards to the Wall Street Journal. “I had written most of the melody to ‘Street Fighting Man’ sometime in late 1966 or early ’67—before ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’—but I couldn’t figure out how to get the sound I wanted.”72 The sound in question turned out to be that of the cassette recorder: “Playing an acoustic, you’d overload the Philips cassette player to the point of distortion so that when it played back it was effectively an electric guitar,”2 explains Keith. And he would proceed exactly as with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” After sitting down with Charlie and Mick in front of his little cassette player and cheap microphone, they recorded a take of the song together. Keith played his acoustic guitar (Gibson Hummingbird) in open-D tuning, Mick was on maracas, and Charlie played a drum kit of a rather unusual kind: “‘Street Fighting Man’ was recorded on Keith’s cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I’ve still got at home,”9 explains Charlie. The results possess a distorted sonority that appealed to the guitarist: “After we listened to the playback, the sound was perfect,”72 Keith would confirm. Jimmy Miller and his team then captured the playback of the cassette with a Neumann U67 mic and transferred it onto one of the tracks on the Ampex eight-track. The overdubs could then begin. Charlie added another drum part with prominent bass tom and a stinging snare. “Actually, I think ‘Street Fighting Man’ is Charlie’s most important record,”72 explains Keith. It is certainly true that the two drum parts combine to form a fantastic rhythm section. To boost the sound of his first guitar, Keith plays another acoustic part on five strings, this time in open G: “On ‘Street Fighting Man’ there’s one six-string open and one five-string open. They’re both open tunings, but then there’s a lot of capo work. There are lots of layers of guitars on ‘Street Fighting Man.’ There’s lots of guitars you don’t even hear. They’re just shadowing. So it’s difficult to say what you’re hearing on there.”34 Bill was absent on the day of the session and so Keith plays the bass part on his Fender Precision, which is, in fact, the only electric instrument on the track.2 Nicky is on piano, and Brian adds a sitar and a tambura, a sort of Indian lute that produces a harmonic drone. Dave Mason, the guitarist of Traffic, contributes to the recording on the bass drum and most importantly the shehnai (from 2:28), which is really an Indian oboe. Mick double-tracks his vocal to give it a more substantial sound, and also, it would seem, sings harmonies. Furthermore, he supplements his maracas, as recorded by the cassette player, with a second maracas part that comes in at 2:28. Finally, claves can be heard on all the refrains, in all likelihood played by Jimmy Miller. The production is nothing short of a tour de force, one of the Stones’ greatest successes. “‘Street Fighting Man’ was the first time I had a sound in my head that was bugging me. That would happen again many times, of course, but after that song I knew how to deal with it,” says Keith, adding that “When we were completely done recording ‘Street Fighting Man’ and played back the master, I just smiled. It’s the kind of record you love to make—and they don’t come that often.”72