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Rolling Stones songs: Gimme Shelter
Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’ our very street today/ Burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost its way…
Original titles: Gimme Me Some Shelter, Gimmie Shelter Written by: Jagger/Richard Recorded: Olympic Sound Studios, London, England, Feb. 23-25, March 15 1969; Elektra Studios, Hollywood USA and Sunset Sound Studios, Los Angeles, USA, Oct. 17-Nov. 3 1969 Guest musicians: Nicky Hopkins (piano), Merry Clayton (backing vocals), Jimmy Miller (percussion) *Data taken from Martin Elliott’s book THE ROLLING STONES COMPLETE RECORDING SESSIONS 1962-2012
One stormy day in autumn 1968, Keith Richards was hanging out at his friend Robert Fraser’s apartment when London got slammed by a massive downpour. Watching from the window, he saw people scrambling for cover, rain lashing their faces—perfect inspiration for what would become Gimme Shelter. Meanwhile, Anita Pallenberg was off filming Performance with Mick Jagger, a project directed by Nicolas Roeg and Donald Cammell. Keith absolutely loathed Cammell, calling him a “twister and a manipulator” with a “razor-sharp mind poisoned with vitriol”. Safe to say, the guy wasn’t on his Christmas card list.
Keith Richards didn’t bother showing up to the Performance set, but that didn’t stop his mind from spinning. “God knows what’s happening”, he later wrote in his autobiography Life. On one hand, there was Cammell—the director he despised—and on the other, there was Mick Jagger, sharing a steamy bathtub scene with Anita Pallenberg. Safe to say, Keith wasn’t exactly at ease. Between the chaos outside—the raging storm—and the turmoil brewing inside, he found the perfect storm of inspiration to create one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll songs of all time. For the record: Keith played the song’s opening riff on an electric-acoustic guitar, inspired by one of Chuck Berry’s songs.
“A storm is threatening my very life today” isn’t just Keith Richards venting—it perfectly captures both his personal turmoil and the chaos of the late ‘60s. The Vietnam War, Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the brutal crackdown on the Prague Spring, the horrifying murder of Sharon Tate—violence was everywhere, making the whole “flower power” dream feel pretty ridiculous. Gimme Shelter builds toward a full-blown apocalypse: fire raging in the streets, a crazed bull on the loose, floods closing in. It’s right up there with Bob Dylan’s A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall or Desolation Row—a dark, poetic warning of the storm ahead.
Mick Jagger later summed it up perfectly: “It’s apocalypse; the whole record’s like that”. But despite all the darkness, Gimme Shelter doesn’t leave us completely hopeless—it throws in a lifeline. “Love, sister, it’s just a kiss away” hints at redemption, a glimmer of hope in the chaos. And then there’s the music—the hypnotic intro, that unmistakable rhythm setting the stage for Jagger’s haunting vocals and harmonica, pulling you right into the storm.
As for the powerhouse female vocals on Gimme Shelter, which opened the Let It Bleed album (and what a start!), that’s Merry Clayton. In fact they had tried Bonnie Bramlett first. A gospel singer with an impressive resume—she’d backed up legends like Ray Charles—Clayton was pregnant when she got the late-night call for the session. She rolled in wearing silk pajamas and curlers, probably wondering what she’d signed up for. Then Jagger told her she’d be singing the chilling line: “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.” She nailed it on the first take but wasn’t done yet. Determined to “blow them out of this room”, she went again, this time belting it an octave higher. When her voice cracked on “murder”, the raw intensity was so powerful that you can actually hear Mick Jagger in the background, letting out an awed “Whoo!”.
More from Jagger: “That song was written during the Vietnam War and so it’s very much about the awareness that war is always present; it was very present in life at that point. Merry Clayton who did the backing vocals, was a background singer who was known to one of the producers. Suddenly, we wanted someone to sing in the middle of the night. And she was around. She came with her curlers in, straight from bed, and had to sing this really odd lyric. For her it was a little odd – for anyone, in the middle of the night, to sing this one verse I would have been odd. She was great.”
Gimme Shelter stands as a timeless anthem, embodying the chaotic and uncertain spirit of its era while resonating with future generations. The song’s dark, haunting tone captures the anxiety of the late 1960s, with Mick Jagger’s lyrics speaking to the fear of violence, war, and societal collapse. As a classic, Gimme Shelter has transcended its time, remaining relevant in today’s world, where its themes of survival, crisis, and the need for shelter continue to echo with listeners, both old and new.
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