149. The Rolling Stones — Let It Bleed (1969)
- In 2013, a music documentary called 20 Feet From Stardom was released to great acclaim — scoring a 99% “Fresh” score on Rotten Tomatoes and winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature. It’s an undeniably fascinating look at the history and importance of backup singers in pop music, featuring one moment that made waves across social media and in the zeitgeist — a sequence isolating the vocals Merry Clayton’s backup vocals on The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter.” The reverence each participant feels toward the moment is palpable; Mick Jagger is giddy listening to it. “Gimme Shelter” is, for my money, the greatest Stones song ever, and one of the best songs of all time. That isolated vocal captures why. It’s a dark song, passionate and rageful and fearful and intimidating. “Rape, murder / it’s just a shot away,” Clayton sings. It feels less than a shot away.
2. The strength of that song and that moment washes over the whole album, which sees the Stones embracing not just their blues side but the sounds that contributed to their love of the blues — gospel, country, rock and roll. The band expands its palette without losing its north star. A countrified version of “Honkey Tonk Woman” (“Country Honk”) leads to the country blues of “Live With Me,” which transitions into the slower country rock “Let It Bleed.” For forty two minutes, the Stones manage to further hone in on the sounds they cultivated on Beggars Banquet, resulting in their most complete album to date.
3. Of note, this album more than any other thus far captures the core of the band the Stones would end up becoming, led by Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts on drums. All three shine throughout; Richards handles all guitar work on the album — both rhythm and lead guitar, including some truly excellent slide guitar work — while Watts ably flips between genres to provide the backing the group needed on all but the album closer (“You Can’t Always Get What You Want”). This is in part borne of necessity, as founding member and multi-instrumentalist Brian Jones had devolved into deep drug addition, was fired, and ultimately died before the album was released. Consider it a stripping down to their core; the band was in the midst of a truly classic four album run, and the elemental approach works great.
4. I really love that Let It Bleed opens with “Gimme Shelter” and closes on “You Can’t Always Get” — opening in a dark place, going through pain and struggle throughout the album, before landing in an ultimately optimistic place. It’s by no means a concept album, though it is an album that captures the unrest and unease of the Vietnam War era. Gimme Shelter is the name of another Stones-centric documentary, a concert film about the end of the Stones 1969 tour culminating in the disastrous Altamont Free Concert in which, among other things, a man was stabbed to death while attempting to force his way onto the stage during the Stones performance. In many ways, that environment is reflected by the spirit of Let It Bleed, though the album had long been finished by the time Altamont happened.
5. Still — “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” offers a compelling counterpoint to the societal agitation of the time. If you try some times, you just mind find, you get what you need.
Next up: the cult of Nick Drake emerges
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