"Street Fighting Man" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, written by the songwriting team of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.

The B-side of the American single featured "No Expectations", considered one of the final Stones tracks in which founding member Jones played a significant role in its construction.

While "Street Fighting Man" was originally written with an entirely different set of lyrics, growing violence at political events throughout 1968 inspired Mick Jagger to alter the song to directly address such topics.

As a result of this, the song peaked only at number 48 on the Billboard Hot 100, after the previous Stones single "Jumpin' Jack Flash" reached the top three in America.

Despite the initial poor chart reception and controversy, "Street Fighting Man" was praised by the music press upon its release, and played a role in elevating the Rolling Stones' reputation as a culturally subversive group.

Throughout 1965 and 1966, the Stones moved further from their traditional blues-based sound and experimented more and more with Indian timbres in their music, with prominent examples of this trend in their work including "Mother's Little Helper" and "Paint It Black"[4][5] Additionally, Brian Jones, the original leader of the Rolling Stones, became an important creative force within the band due to his contributions on multiple instruments during the sessions for Aftermath, Between the Buttons, and Their Satanic Majesties Request.

According to Richards, the melody was influenced by the sound of police sirens, despite the song not having acquired its final, politically conscious lyrics at this stage of its evolution.

", and featured a set of lyrics about adult brutality,[6] The finalized version of "Street Fighting Man" is known as one of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' most politically inclined works.

Jagger allegedly wrote a new set of lyrics to the song 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.

[10]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".

Jimmy Miller, the Rolling Stones' producer during this period described guitarist Keith Richards as "a real workhorse" while recording the album, mostly due to the infrequent presence of Brian Jones.

Charlie Watts plays drums while Nicky Hopkins performs the song's piano which is largely buried in the mix, but is most distinctly heard during the coda.

According to music journalist Anthony DeCurtis, the "political correctness" of "Street Fighting Man", particularly the lyrics "What can a poor boy do/'Cept sing in a rock and roll band", sparked intense debate in the underground media.

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.

"[17] 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 didn't want to be involved in violent confrontation.

"[17] Music journalist Greil Marcus, who was demonstrating in Berkeley during the weekend of the convention in Chicago, contrasted "Street Fighting Man" to the contemporary Beatles b-side "Revolution".

Lennon accused Godard of being insincere in his criticism, and alleged his true motivation for his attacks was the Beatles' choice to decline working with him on his film One Plus One, while the Stones agreed to participate.

"[9] In 1979, Dave Marsh wrote that as part of Beggars Banquet, "Street Fighting Man" was the "keynote, 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.

[22] 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.

"[16] Despite Jagger's statements, the ban and general aversion to the song among radio programmers was likely a factor in its commercial underperformance relative to other Stones singles.

Colin Larkin, in his Encyclopedia of Popular Music (2006), wrote that Beggars Banquet was "a return to strength" which included "the socio-political 'Street Fighting Man'.

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?'