The politics of “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is what most interested rock’s early historians. From the beginning, Jagger’s bedroom song was viewed as a definitive statement on the failures of his generation to carry forth a revolution. “This era and the collapse of its bright and flimsy liberation are what the Stones leave behind with the last song of Let It Bleed,” Greil Marcus wrote in Rolling Stone when the album was released. “The dreams of having it all are gone, and the album ends with a song about compromises with what you want—learning to take what you can get, because the
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