The 1968 classic The Rolling Stones purposefully recorded on shoddy equipment
Nearly a decade before punk, The Rolling Stones captured the day’s political turmoil with a suitably urgent recording method for one massive 1968 song.
It was here that the Stones were embarking on their golden age. Prior to that, the London outfit had been leading the charge of the British Invasion, just behind the Fab Four, burnished on a bluesy footing before veering into rock and pop territory, much to the alienation of band founder Brian Jones. After a psychedelic wobble on the half-interesting Their Satanic Majesties Request, the 1960s’ collapse into unrest, coupled with the burst of roots rock on the charts, heralded the Stones’ return to their creative element.
All over the world, it appeared everybody was scrapping. The era’s peace-and-love promise soon curdled into a global clash with the Man; Vietnam War protests triggered a hotbed of riots across the States and spilt out into Europe, race relations were inflamed in the wake of Martin Luther King’s assassination, France and Germany were in the throes of student-led movements, and even communist Czechoslovakia was trying to defy the Soviet sphere of influence with some street-level force.
Such fraught air was poured into ‘Street Fighting Man’. The sole single from Beggars Banquet, the Stones’ lyrical snapshot of raised fists and establishment attack sought a novel means to bottle the dramatic atmosphere engulfing the West and beyond.
While later imbued with Jones’ penchant for Indian elements via his sitar and tamboura touches, ‘Street Fighting Man’s ephemeral urgency was first sketched by Keith Richards on an acoustic guitar and its melody shaped by the alarming sounds of police sirens, long before its political lyrics were realised.
Danger coursed throughout ‘Street Fighting Man’s veins in its very earliest demos, its raw energy informing the unusual recording process when attempting to grapple with their belligerent anthem. The basics were all captured via a cheap, mono Philips cassette recorder, Richards’ open-tuned guitar and Jones’ sitar crudely teeming with all kinds of distortion, adding to the track’s sonic and thematic bite.
Then came Charlie Watts’ toy. Discovered in an antique store, Watts dusted off an old 1930s London Jazz Kit Set, essentially a child’s practice set-up that came in a little suitcase that folded out to place the various drums and cymbals. Much to Watts’ delight, the kit’s unique snare sound and Richards’ lo-fi recording technique proved the essential ingredients for the thick compression they were after.
“Keith loved playing with the early cassette machines because they would overload, and when they overload, they sounded fantastic, although you weren’t meant to do that,” Watts looked back on 2003’s According to the Rolling Stones.
Adding, “We usually played in one of the bedrooms on tour. Keith would be sitting on a cushion playing a guitar, and the tiny kit was a way of getting close to him. The drums were really loud compared to the acoustic guitar and the pitch of them would go right through the sound. You’d always have a great backbeat.”
Maybe too distorted? While a future concert staple, ‘Street Fighting Man’ would only peak at a lowly 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, its scrappy volatility and lyrical ambiguity stand Beggars Banquet’s big number as a stark document of the era’s dark storm clouds, more effective than The Beatles’ mushy political tirades on ‘Revolution’ the same year.
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