Today in Music (1969): The Rolling Stones released Let It Bleed

Let It Bleed The Rolling Stones

Released: November 28, 1969 Peak: 3 US, 11 UK, 4 CN, 2 AU, 16 DF Sales (in millions): 3.6 US, 0.73 UK, 7.0 world (includes US and UK) Genre: classic rock

Tracks: Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks) Click for codes to charts. Gimme Shelter [4:31] (11/28/98, 1 CL, 29 AR, 42 CN, 1 DF) Love in Vain [4:19] (Robert Johnson) (13 CL) Country Honk [3:09] (21 DF) Live with Me [3:33] (14 CL) Let It Bleed [5:26] (1/70, 5 CL, 4 DF) Midnight Rambler [6:52] (5 CL, 13 DF) You Got the Silver [2:51] (1/70, B-side of “Let It Bleed,” 25 CL) Monkey Man [4:12] (7 CL, 16 DF) You Can’t Always Get What You Want [7:28] (7/4/69, 42 BB, 34 CB, 35 GR, 36 HR, 1 CL, 68 CN, 1 AU, 1 DF) Songs written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 42:21 The Players: Mick Jagger (vocals, harmonica, acoustic guitar) Keith Richards (guitar, backing vocals) Brian Jones (congas, autoharp) Bill Wyman (bass, autoharp, vibraphone) Charlie Watts (drums) Mick Taylor (guitar) Nicky Hopkins (piano, organ) Ian Stewart (piano on “Let It Bleed”)

Rating: 4.672 out of 5.00 (average of 34 ratings) Quotable: “A true classic that captures the Stones in their prime and at the peak of their creative powers.” – Tim Morse, Classic Rock Stories Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

Farewell, Brian Jones The Rolling Stones were in turmoil when they recorded Let It Bleed. Brian Jones, the guitarist who originally lead the group, was booted during the sessions for his serious drug problem. He “drowned in a druggy haze” JD less than a month later. His final work appears on two tracks on the album. “To replace the filigree that he usually added to Jagger/Richards tunes, the Stones turned to a fluid young guitarist named Mick Taylor,” the man who’d replaced Eric Clapton in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. CRS “The addition of the blues veteran helped put The Rolling Stones at the top of the rock scene while ‘The Lads from Liverpool’ were too busy bickering to focus on their music.” RV In addition, “the songs begin to reflect the personalities that drive them.” IB “’Monkey Man,’ ‘Let It Bleed’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ cast a sharp writer’s eye on the decay seeping into the Stones’ camp, proving that Mick [Jagger] had become more than a pair of lips and hips.” IB Keith Richards played more guitar than ever and offered up a “musical vision…more intimate than ever, incorporating the restrained rhythm playing that would become his calling card.” IB Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts “are, as always, a rock-solid and wonderfully tasteful rhythm section.” JD It’s all rounded out by “a glittering cast of supporting players that included strings arranger Jack Nitzche, guitarist Ry Cooder, keyboardists Al Kooper and Leon Russell, country fiddler Byron Berline, soon-to-be-ubiquitous sax man Bobby Keys, and vocalist Merry Clayton.” JD The Big Four “The period between 1968-1972 was particularly golden for The Rolling Stones, and the group’s 1969 entry – its eighth long-player in the UK and 10th in the US — may well be the most definitive of that era.” CQ “The erstwhile bad boy outsiders of rock” CD “confident climb to its artistic peak” CD “was begun by Beggar’s Banquet, but Let It Bleed is a quantum leap even from that musical milestone.” CD It represents “The Rolling Stones in peak form, laying substantial groundwork as the World’s Greatest Rock Band.” CQ It is “a true classic that captures the Stones in their prime and at the peak of their creative powers.” CRS “Refining the country and blues-print of Beggars Banquet,” IB Let It Bleed “extends the rock & blues feel of Beggar’s Banquet into slightly harder-rocking, more demonically sexual territory.” AM “The entire album, although a motley compound of country, blues and gospel fire, rattles and burns with apocalyptic cohesion.” 500 Those two albums and 1971’s “Sticky Fingers formulated the Stones’ stadium sound and established their louche swagger, camp raunch and sometimes-cod-sometimes-retro sensibilities as the lasting blueprint of international rock’n’roll.” QM The End of the Sixties The Rolling Stones’ free concert on December 6, 1969, at Altamont Speedway, forty miles east of San Francisco, California, is often cited as a representation of the death of the Sixties. A far cry from the peace and love hippie vibe of the Woodstock festival just months earlier, Altamont was marked by the death of a fan who was stabbed by a member of the Hell’s Angels, who had been hired as security. Let It Bleed came out a week earlier and has been “inextricably linked with Altamont” JD and “the death knell for a generation’s Utopian fantasies.” JD “The ‘60s had ended and the ‘70s had begun. The Rolling Stones had delivered the eulogy, and rock would never be the same again.” JD Even before that, though, the Stones had been marketed “as the evil alternative to the cheerful, mop-topped Beatles.” JS Some of that makes sense when looking at Let It Bleed, an album that saw the Stones use as “the ultimate exploration of its darker shadows – an album of astounding power.” JD In bridging their past with their future, Let It Bleed showcases “every role the Stones have ever played…swaggering studs, evil demons, harem keepers and fast life riders—what the Stones meant in the Sixties” RS – while also signaling the beginning of the ‘70s.” RS As such, Let It Bleed “finds the band, for perhaps the first time, accurately reflecting the spirit of its age. [They] now found themselves firmly in the center of the social and political post-‘68 whirlwind, and faced up to the challenge magnificently.” CD The Songs Fittingly, Let It Bleed “contains some of the band’s most eerie hits” AZ and “tremendous songwriting that would never be equalled by the band.” CRS “If it only had the bookends of ‘Gimme Shelter’ and ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want,’ Let It Bleed…would still be essential. But the nine-track set also boasts ‘Midnight Rambler,’ ‘Live with Me,’ ‘You Got the Silver,’ ‘Monkey Man’ and the title track – all A-list entries in the Stones’ canon.” CQ Here are insights into individual songs from the album. “Gimme Shelter” The album opens with Gimme Shelter, “a dark and beautiful anti-war masterpiece.” RV “Its aura of menace eerily foreshadowed Altamont” JD and “came to symbolize…the death of the utopian spirit of the 1960s.” 500 The song “is the sound of a frantically braking freight train about to crush the ‘60s under its wheels” IB as it “leads us decisively out of Flower Power and into a world where rape and murder are ‘just a shot away.’” CD With “its insuating guitar introduction” CD and “shimmering guitar lines and apocalyptic lyrics” AM throughout, the song “builds on the dark beauty of the finest melody Mick and Keith have ever written.” RS The song “slowly [adds] instruments and sounds until an explosively full presence of bass and drums rides…into the howls of Mick and…Merry Clayton,” RS “proclaiming, ‘Murder is just a shot away,’ but that ‘Love is just a kiss away.’” RV “Does she think she was ripped off, used and tossed aside, or does she smile at the fact that she has her place in the greatest rock ‘n’ roll recording ever made?” WR Her “spotlight turn…marked the first significant appearance by a female musician on a Stones recording.” JD Her “cries of ‘Rape! Murder!’ at the end of the tune are haunting.” JD “She can stand up to Mick and match him, and in fact, she steals the song.” RS “The Stones have never done anything better.” RS “Country Honk” “The Stones take their last significant look at pure blues…and country…before folding both styles into a cohesive rock & roll vision.” AZ In regards to the latter, the Stones offer up “the spare country settings of Country Honk,” IB “the two-stepping alter ego of ‘Honky-Tonk Women.’” AZ The remix with “a country lilt” JD came courtesy of Keith Richards’ buddy Gram Parsons, JD sometimes called the Father of Country Rock. “You Got the Silver” “It’s thrilling to hear Keith’s exuberance [on that] and his first solo spot, You Got the Silver,” IB “a haunting ride through the diamond mines,” RS that displayed both the country and blues elements. As for the lead vocal duties, Keith He apparently earned the role after an engineer accidentally erased Jagger’s version. “Love in Vain” Nowhere was the Stones bluesy nature on better display than the “spooky” AZ and “brilliant revival of Robert Johnson’s exquisite Love in Vain,” RS “a mandolin-accompanied highlight.” CD That song and “Silver” “were as close to the roots of acoustic down-home blues as the Stones ever got.” AM “Love in Vain” “would become even more impactful on the following year’s Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out live set.” CQ “Live with Me” In the album’s middle trifecta, “the Stones prance through all their familiar roles, with their Rolling Stones masks on, full of lurking evil, garish sexuality, and the hilarious and exciting posturing of rock and roll Don Juans.” RS There’s “the sex-mad desperation of Live with Me” 500 alongside “the druggy party ambience of the title track.” AM “Midnight Rambler” “Jagger is at his most compelling on” JD the “menacing Midnight Rambler,” AZ “a horrifying depiction of a serial killer. Inspired by the Boston Strangler…Jagger displays a disquieting enthusiasm for the role; listen to the way he relishes the ending line, ‘I’ll stick my knife right down your throat, baby--and it hurts!’” JD The “murderous blues” 500 song features “some steam-powered harmonica.” IB “Monkey Man” “Hanging over the sessions was an acrid cloud of smoke from the heroin that Richards was always cooking up in the studio’s back room. Mick Jagger was disgusted by what the drug was doing to his bandmate, his ‘lady,’ Marianne Faithfull (for whom he’d written ‘Sister Morphine’ the year before), and many others in the Stones' inner circle.” JD Jagger’s frustrations show up in “the drug-reality anthem Monkey Man,” AZ “ a vivid reminder that the drug experience can produce bad trips as well as transcendent ones.” JD As a whole, though, the Stones “grandly submit to the image they’ve carried for almost the whole decade, and then crack up digging it: ‘All my friends are junkies! (That’s not really true...).’” RS The song also serves up “Keith Richards’ lethal, biting guitar.” 500 “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” “The stunning” AM You Can’t Always Get What You Want is “the band’s most ravishing work.” RV It “begins in a mood of complete tragedy and fatigue and ends with optimism and complete exuberance.” RS With its “epic moralism…honky-tonk piano and massed vocal chorus” 500 it “is one of the most outrageous productions ever staged by a rock and roll band.” RS It “was the Stones’ ‘Hey Jude’ of sorts, with its epic structure, horns, philosophical lyrics, and swelling choral vocals.” AM “Every note…works to perfection: the slow, virginal choral introduction,” RS “given an elegiac vibe courtesy of the majestic opening by the London Bach Choir.” JD From there we get the “despairing sounds” of Al “Kooper’s resplendent French horn solo” JD and “Keith’s slow strum,” RS “and then the first verse and first chorus by Mick, singing almost unaccompanied. From there it dissolves and builds again with surges of organ, lovely piano ripples, long lead electric runs by Richards, drumming that carries the song over every crescendo.” RS The song “looks for satisfaction in resignation” RS in “the wreckage of a once-glamorous social scene” JD as “Jagger tells sprawling stories” RV of “a party in a Chelsea mansion [where] the singer meeting a strung-out, vicious girl he apparently knew from some years before…It moves from there into street-fighting and frustration, and then to the strangest scene of all, a young man trying to strike up some sort of friendship with an old man.” RS It was “a song about…learning to take what you can get, because the rules have changed with the death of the Sixties.” RS

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for the Rolling Stones AM AllMusic.com review by Richie Unterberger AZ Amazon.com review by Steve Knopper CD Cd Universe CQ Consequence.net (9/12/2022). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” JD Jim DeRogatis (2006). “The Great Albums” IB Ink Blot Magazine by Jesse Fahnestock. QM Q magazine review by Mark Cooper. October 2000. CRS Tim Morse (1998). Classic Rock Stories: The Stories Behind the Greatest Rock Songs of All Time. New York, NY: St. Martin's Griffin. Page 184. RV The Review (Oct./Nov. 2001). “The 100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher RS Rolling Stone review by Greil Marcus. Originally in print issue #49 in 1969. 500 Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums of All Time WR The Wire (June 1992). “The 100 Most Important Records Ever Made” WK Wikipedia Other Related DMDB Pages: First posted 3/23/2008; last updated 8/21/2024.