The Rolling Stones wrote a song 50 years ago in support of the Red protests in the streets in Paris and London in ‘68.
Street Fighting Man is still “relevant” it seems.
Street Fightin’ Man - The Rolling Stones
Ev’rywhere I hear the sound
Of marching charging 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
Except to sing for a rock n’ roll band?
‘Cause in sleepy London town
There’s just no place for a street fighting man, no
Hey think the time is right
For a palace revolution
But where I live the game
To play is compromise solution
Well now, 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, no. Get down.
Hey so…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Fighting_Man
Originally titled and recorded as “Did Everyone Pay Their Dues?”, containing the same music but very different lyrics, “Street Fighting Man” is known as one of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards’ most politically inclined works to date. Jagger allegedly wrote it about Tariq Ali after he attended a 1968 anti-war rally at London’s US embassy, during which mounted police attempted to control a crowd of 25,000.[5][6] He also found inspiration in the rising violence among student rioters on Paris’ Left Bank,[7] the precursor to a period of civil unrest in May 1968.
Mick Jagger explained in a 1995 interview with Jann Wenner in Rolling Stone: “Yeah, it was a direct inspiration, because by contrast, London was very quiet ... It was a very strange time in France. But not only in France but also in America, because of the Vietnam War and these endless disruptions ... I thought it was a very good thing at the time. There was all this violence going on. I mean, they almost toppled the government in France; de Gaulle went into this complete funk, as he had in the past, and he went and sort of locked himself in his house in the country. And so the government was almost inactive. And the French riot police were amazing.”
(Keith) Richards said, only a few years after recording the track in a 1971 Rolling Stone interview with Robert Greenfield, that the song had been “interpreted thousands of different ways”. He mentioned how Jagger went to the Grosvenor Square demonstrations in London and was even charged by the police, yet he ultimately claims, “it really is ambiguous as a song”
...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.[11] 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.”[13] 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.”[13]
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.”[13]
...Jagger continues in the Rolling Stone interview when asked about the song’s resonance thirty years on; “I don’t know if it [has any]. I don’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 don’t really like it that much.”[8] Despite this, the song has been performed on a majority of the Stones’ tours since its introduction to their canon of work.
““If you really want us to cause trouble, we could do a few stage appearances. We are more subversive when we go on stage.”
Then came Altamont in 1969. The Stones completely abandoned any revolutionary fervor after that.
Richards remarked “Then we understood who would be taking over the world and it scared the sh!t out of us”.
And let’s not forget Lennon’s “Revolution” in late 1968.