Watts said in 2003 : Richards commented on the recording : The song opens with a strummed acoustic guitar riff . In his review , Richie Unterberger says of the song , " I t 's a great track , gripping the listener immediately with its sudden , springy guitar chords and thundering , offbeat drums . That unsettling , urgent guitar rhythm is the mainstay of the verses . Mick Jagger 's typically half-buried lyrics seem at casual listening like a call to revolution . " Unterberger continues , " Perhaps they were saying they wished they could be on the front lines , but were not in the right place at the right time ; perhaps they were saying , as John Lennon did in the Beatles ' " Revolution " , that they did n't want to be involved in violent confrontation . Or perhaps they were even declaring indifference to the tumult . " Other writers ' interpretations varied . In 1976 , Roy Carr assessed it as a " great summer street-corner rock anthem on the same echelon as ' Summer in the City ' , ' Summertime Blues ' , and ' Dancing in the Street ' . " In 1979 , Dave Marsh wrote that it was the keynote of '' Beggars Banquet '' , " with its teasing admonition to do something and its refusal to admit that doing it will make any difference ; as usual , the Stones were more correct , if also more faithless , philosophers than any of their peers . " The song was released within a week of the violent confrontations between the police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago . Worried about the possibility of the song inciting further violence , Chicago radio stations refused to play the song . This was much to the delight of Mick Jagger , who stated : " I 'm rather pleased to hear they have banned ( the song ) . The last time they banned one of our records in America , it sold a million . " Jagger said he was told they thought the record was subversive , to which he snapped : " Of course it 's subversive ! It 's stupid to think you can start a revolution with a record . I wish you could . " Keith Richards weighed into the debate when he said that the fact a couple of radio stations in Chicago banned the record " just goes to show how paranoid they are " . At the same time they were still requested to do live appearances and Richards said : " If you really want us to cause trouble , we could do a few stage appearances . We are more subversive when we go on stage . " Bruce Springsteen would comment in 1985 , after including " Street Fighting Man " in the encores of some of his Born in the U.S.A. Tour shows : " That one line , ' What can a poor boy do but sing in a rock and roll band ? ' is one of the greatest rock and roll lines of all time ... The song has that edge-of-the-cliff thing when you hit it . And it 's funny ; it 's got humour to it . " Jagger continues in the '' Rolling Stone '' interview when asked about the song 's resonance thirty years on ; " I do n't know if it has any . I do n't know whether we should really play it . I was persuaded to put it on Voodoo Lounge Tour because it seemed to fit in , but I 'm not sure if it really has any resonance for the present day . I do n't really like it that much . " Despite this , the song has been performed on a majority of the Stones ' tours since its introduction to their canon of work
1968 Democratic National Convention
1968 Democratic National Convention
Street Fighting Man