The Rolling Stones: Let it Bleed (1969)
50 years ago, on the 5th of December, 1969, The Rolling Stones unveiled their latest album, Let it Bleed, and on the 6th, they fulfilled its appellative prophecy at Altamont.
You simply can’t make this shit up!
My point being: that the album title would convey such callous, careless violence, just prior to Mick, Keith and co. inadvertently killing the ‘60s at an ill-planned music festival that proved the antithesis of Woodstock, is the sort of freakish, unfortunate coincidence from which rock legends (and countless blogs such as this one) are made of.
Adding to the high drama that surrounded the Stones’ career during this period (documented brilliantly here by the Maysleys brothers), the band had just discarded their one-time leader, Brian Jones, earlier that year, only for him to perish in a bizarre swimming accident, weeks later.
And, though Jones was expediently and very effectively replaced by the talented Mick Taylor, Taylor barely played on Let it Bleed, meaning that the crying guitars wafting over “Gimme Shelter’s” supernatural opening sequence are remarkably all Keef!
I personally consider this song one of Rock’s all-time masterpieces, and I encourage you to watch this clip from 20 Feet from Stardom to fully appreciate Merry Clayton’s impassioned, ragged vocal contributions in isolation, as well as its amazing backstory.
By contrasts, the listless cover of Robert Johnson’s “Love in Vain” is a very disappointing comedown, threatening to derail things completely, and so is “Country Honk,” quite frankly, as it can hardly compare to the proper, absolutely kinetic “Honky Tonk Women.”
But the album is pretty much a five-star ride after that (“You Got the Silver” being the arguable exception), as the group recovers their spunk and their funk on “Live with Me” and “Monkey Man,” wallows shamelessly in the decadent title track, before peeling back successive, onion-like layers of murderous insanity and brutality on “Midnight Rambler,” until the tension is virtually unbearable.
And, for a grand finale, they pile on seven-plus minutes of weary resignation, if not temperance (it was a little too late for that) on “You Can't Always Get What You Want,” which gained all kinds of new meanings, references, and metaphors across The Rolling Stones’ career, following the horrific events) at that California speedway, none worse than the slaying of concert-goer Meredith Hunter.
Triumph and tragedy: that was Rock ‘n’ Roll a half-century ago, when it defined the zeitgeist, instead of Dad Music.
More Rolling Stones: Out of Our Heads, Aftermath, Between the Buttons, Flowers, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Beggars Banquet, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St., Goat’s Head Soup, It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll, Black and Blue, Some Girls, Tattoo You, Rewind (1971-1984).
