NO ES SÓLO ROCK AND ROLL: CINCO CANCIONES POLÍTICAS DE LOS ROLLING STONES
No Es Sólo Rock and Roll: Cinco Canciones Políticas de los Rolling Stones*Por Marcelo Sonaglioni
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Rock y política. ¿Les suena? No es ninguna novedad, la conexión entre la música y aquello mejor definido…
LECTURE 18: COMING APART (PART 1): Dig this flashy, hypnotic music video for the song “Street Fighting Man” by the Rolling Stones! The song, released around the same time as the Beatles’ hit “Revolution,” was co-written by Stones frontman Mick Jagger and the band’s lead guitarist, Keith Richards. Jagger wrote the lyrics after attending an anti-Vietnam War demonstration involving around 25,000 protesters at the U.S. Embassy in London in early 1968. Mounted police disrupted the huge gathering by charging into the crowd, resulting in chaos and violence. At one point during the protest, a large group of people mobbed Jagger, begging for his autograph. Jagger realized that he was more of a distraction than an asset at the event, which made reluctant to attend any more antiwar protests. The song begins hopefully with Jagger singing, “the time is right for fighting in the street,” but it takes a more despairing turn when he laments, “But what can a poor boy do, 'cept sing in a rock and roll band.” Interestingly, the media and antiwar activists alike turned the song into a protest anthem, and there were heated debates in the radical underground press about which song was more revolutionary: the Stones’ “Street Fighting Man” or the Beatles’ “Revolution.” A lot of militant New Left insurgents preferred “Street Fighting Man,” which they regarded as a song celebrating clashes between the police and street demonstrators. Many of these youthful radicals seemed to ignore the lyrics about Jagger expressing his unhappiness about not going to any more antiwar demonstrations. As for the Beatles, the more violence-prone radicals attacked “Revolution” as a reactionary, counterrevolutionary song, while some antiwar pacifists regarded it as a sympathetic warning to activists to avoid the fruitless trap of violence. Once more, the Stones and the Beatles were pitted against each other by opposing camps of fans.
Rolling Stones are Minor Co-stars to Street Fighters in “Chronicles” Episode 4
Sleepy London town wasn’t the only world city overrun with street-fighting folks in 1968. The scenes - the subject of “The Rolling Stones Chronicles” No. 4 - also played out in such places as Northern Ireland, Czechoslovakia and the United States, where the cry for freedom echoed through Vietnam, Stonewall and the country’s segregated cities.
“The riot is the language of the unheard,” Martin Luther King says before counting off America’s injustices toward its own.
The Stones themselves are bit players in this episode, save for the soundtrack of “Street Fighting Man” and a brief philosophical discourse from Mick Jagger.
“I’m not interested in violence at all unless it’s part of a serious movement … a serious alternative plan,” he says. “We’ve all got to try to change the world because that’s the only thing that we can do.
“It’s a very slow job but we can make that contribution. We all have to.”