Street Fighting Man: Lead Sheet

This lead sheet collection captures the complete DNA of early Stones material in one resource. The inclusion of TAB notation for 29 pivotal guitar riffs removes the guesswork from learning how these songs actually sit on the instrument, while the full-color discography and facsimile sheet music covers ground rarely found in standard fake books. Guitarists studying the evolution from blues covers to psychedelic rock will find everything needed for serious analysis and performance preparation.

Raw, propulsive, blues-soaked. These songs pulse with swagger and swagger and groove rooted in American blues but filtered through British sensibilities and studio sophistication. Whether you're reading "Sympathy for the Devil" or a Buddy Holly cover arrangement, there's an undeniable sense of a young band testing limits and discovering what happens when tradition meets ambition.

Guitarists serious about understanding rock songwriting fundamentals and those studying how blues forms became the foundation for modern popular music. This resource suits both jazz-trained players expanding into rock repertoire and rock musicians seeking a deeper understanding of chord-melody relationships and arrangement conventions. Music students writing papers or theses on mid-20th-century rock history will find the discography and facsimile covers invaluable.

• Reference the TAB section for the iconic riffs and solos featured in your chosen song; these notated figures are essential to the Stones sound and should be learned alongside the lead sheet changes.
• Study the early studio recordings while reading the corresponding lead sheets to hear how arrangement details (stops, dynamics, rhythmic anticipations) sit atop the basic chord progression.
• Pay close attention to the fundamental instrumental riffs included with each song; these figures often define the song's identity and should be incorporated into comping or solo interpretation.
• Use the full-color discography to identify which album version you're learning from, since Stones songs sometimes vary between live and studio recordings in phrasing and structure.

Include individual songs in a survey course on rock history or popular songwriting, pairing them with listening sessions to ground students in what the sheet music represents. For applied guitar lessons, select songs at appropriate difficulty levels to teach lead sheet reading, transposition, and interpretation across multiple musical eras represented in the Stones' early output. The extensive TAB section makes this resource especially valuable for group guitar classes learning to notate and analyze iconic riffs.

• Reading lead sheets with fundamental riffs and figures notation
• Translating TAB notation to fretboard and understanding its relationship to harmonic content
• Recognizing blues-based harmonic structures in a rock context
• Analyzing arrangement and groove through comparison of lead sheet symbols to recorded versions
• Understanding how traditional blues forms were adapted and evolved in 1960s rock composition