I just love this. That great big drum sound from Charlie...
- Street Fighting Man was all acoustics. There's no electric guitar parts in it. (Even the high-end lead part was through) a cassette player with no limiter. Just distortion. Just two acoustics, played right into the mike, and hit very hard. There's a sitar in the back, too. That would give the effect of the high notes on the guitar. And Charlie was playing his little 1930s drummer's practice kit. It was all sort of built into a little attaché case, so some drummer who was going to his gig on the train could open it up - with two little things about the size of small tambourines without the bells on them, and the skin was stretched over that. And he set up this little cymbal, and this little hi-hat would unfold. Charlie sat right in front of the microphone with it. I mean, this drum sound is massive. When you're recording, the size of things has got nothing to do with it. It's how you record them. Everything there was totally acoustic. The only electric instrument on there is the bass guitar, which I overdubbed afterwards.
- Keith Richards, 1977
I remember the first cassette machines came out. I thought, Oh great, a portable tape recorder, fantastic. And then I started to like put songs down on it and I realized that... that little microphone in there had something. If you overloaded it, it basically became a pick-up.
- Keith Richards, 2003
(The Phillips) didn't smooth the sound out, it broke up a lot. So recording in bedrooms, and with little tambourine sets or little percussion things, sounded thunderous.
- Charlie Watts, 2003
I'm leaning right over into the mike and Charlie's got this little - he had this practice (drum kit)... It was for drummers on their train ride. And it had a little sort of tambourine thing and a little sort of fold-up cymbal. It was so cute and it had been made in the '30s. And it was like an antique, you know. And two little sticks. And... that's how we cut the track.
- Keith Richards, 2003
Street Fighting Man was recorded on Keith's cassette with a 1930s toy drum kit called a London Jazz Kit Set, which I bought in an antiques shop, and which I've still got at home. It came in a little suitcase, and there were wire brackets you put the drums in; they were like small tambourines with no jangles. The whole kit packs away, the drums go inside each other, the little drum goes inside the snare drum into a box with the cymbal. The snare drum was fantastic because it had a really thin skin with a snare right underneath, but only two strands of gut... Keith would be sitting on a cushion playing a guitar and the tiny kit was a way of getting close to him. The drums were really loud compared to the acoustic guitar and the pitch of them would go right through the sound. You'd always have a great backbeat.
- Charlie Watts, 2003
