Issue No. 18 of Johnny Be Good features one of 45 songs from the book, Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop, by Marc Myers. Read John Pearson's review here. Order from Amazon here. Listen to the book on Libro (9 hours, 34 minutes). Each blog will spotlight a song from the book and a guest blogger’s color commentary. Click here to subscribe. Each issue of Your Weekly Staff Meeting will highlight the latest blog.
His Hands Looked Like Mike Tyson’s!
Today’s blogger is John Pearson
Song: #18 of 45
Title: Street Fighting Man
Musicians: The Rolling Stones
Released: August 1968
I APPRECIATED THIS:
Get this! In the lineup this week is a song from 1968 that, perhaps, has been shouted on U.S. university campuses during the last two weeks. Yikes!
Everywhere I hear the sound of marchin', chargin' feet, boy
'Cause summer's here and the time is right
For fighting in the street, boy
Well now, what can a poor boy do?
'Cept to sing for a rock-n-roll band
'Cause in sleepy London Town
There's just no place for street fighting man
No
It would be interesting to hear what the Rolling Stones think about the campus demonstrations concerning Israel and Hamas now in 2024. In reality, their 1968 song was pretty tame, even though Keith Richards noted to Marc Myers, “I doubt most people at the time knew what it was all about, you know?”
Listen to “Street Fighting Man,” sung by the Rolling Stones.
MY FAVORITE NOTES & QUOTES:
• Marc Myers interviews Keith Richards (lead guitarist and cowriter) for this chapter—and it’s fascinating, especially the deep dive into power chords and the U.K. scene in the 1950s and 1960s.
• “U.K. teens were unable to hear R&B and rock on British radio which was controlled by the BBC and generally limited in its fare to classical and adult pop. Teens could pick up Radio Luxembourg and pirate radio stations broadcasting from ships off the coast in international waters.”
• On the 1968 demonstrations against the Vietnam War: “Early on, I had played the tape of my melody for Mick, and his lyrics were about brutal adults. We recorded them and called the song, ‘Did Everyone Pay Their Dues?’ But we weren’t that crazy about the results, and the lyrics underwent several rewrites once we saw what was going on in the streets in London and Paris in 1968.”
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU FIRST HEARD THIS SONG?
In the summer of 1968, I was the program director at Lake Retreat Camp in Washington State. I probably first heard the song that fall when driving a 1960 VW bug from Seattle to Chicago—to start my first year of seminary at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. My dad’s contribution to my education was to give me the VW, but it had no radio. So on the road, I listened to local radio stations with a small transistor radio hanging from the rearview mirror.
JOHNNY BE...GOOD, BETTER, OR BEST?
• GOOD: Keith Richards tells Marc Myers he’s “a big string-breaker” on his guitars since he “likes to whip them pretty hard.” He adds, “On that opening riff, I used enormous force on the strings. I always did that and still do. I’m looking at my hands now, and they look like Mike Tyson’s. They’re pretty beat up.”
• BETTER: Richards: “I love the songwriting process, but I really don’t like writing by myself. I love the bounce of one person’s ideas off the other. Mick [Jagger] wrote a ton of lines. Then we tore the lines into strips and moved them around. Reams of pages were flying around—and some of them wound up burned [laughs]. Eventually they took shape and we laid down the vocal tracks.”
• BEST: “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—and they don’t come that often.”
John Pearson first heard "Street Fighting Man" on his transistor radio while driving from Seattle to Chicago in his '60 VW. (He brought his trumpet with him.)
THIS ISSUE'S COMMENTARY BY John Pearson
JOHN PEARSON faked his way into the music scene while serving on the Lake Retreat Camp staff every summer from eighth grade through his college years. He and his dishwashing buddies sang while washing dishes, he sang bass in a camp men’s quartet, and played his trumpet each week during skit night. One summer, he multi-tasked as the camp’s music director and athletic director. (He wasn’t great at either job, but he did have an important-looking clipboard and whistle.)
NEXT UP!
Song #19 of 45, “Stand By Your Man,” by Tammy Wynette
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It all started in 2023, when John Pearson read and reviewed a "fun" book, Anatomy of a Song: The Oral History of 45 Iconic Hits That Changed Rock, R&B and Pop, by Marc Myers. Read John's review here. Order from Amazon here. Listen to the book on Libro (9 hours, 34 minutes).
If you'd enjoy being one of 45 guest bloggers, along with John Ashmen, Dick Nelson, Suzy West, Dave Barton, Paul Palmer, Bill Butterworth, Jim West, Melinda Schmidt, Jason Pearson, Gary Rea, Callista Dawson, John Walling, Ed Barrett, Larry Beatty, and others, read more here and contact John Pearson. Click here to subscribe to this blog and enjoy the toe-tapping musicians in each weekly blog post—reminding you of these iconic songs of yesteryear.