Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969
. . .
Here’s a little trivia for you: Let it Bleed was the first time the Rolling Stones named an album after one of the songs on that album, something all of their major British Invasion peers had already done, and a thing they only ever did three times afterwards (and not at all in the last 40 years), so the assumption at the Certain Songs Home Office is that “Let it Bleed” must have been truly special, while others thought that they were stealing from The Beatles, whose Let It Be album had already been recorded, though it’s possible they’d heard the song “Let it Be” and decided to top it.
Of course, neither is probably the truth: they probably just like “Let it Bleed” as a title for the darkest batch of songs they’d yet recorded, and of course, the then-abandoned Beatles project was originally called “Get Back,” anyways.
Well, we all need someone we can lean on
And if you want it, well, you can lean on me
Yeah, we all need someone we can lean on
And if you want it, well, you can lean on me
With Mick singing in a countryish twang that instantly tells us to relax, it’s just a song, “Let It Bleed” opens with its chorus, riding on top of Ian Stewart’s boogieing (and woogieing for that matter) piano, Keith’s big acoustic guitar and Charlie’s even bigger beat, and for all the world sounding like a precursor to Bill Withers’ “Lean on Me,” but almost instantly Mick Jagger pivots to, well, sex and drugs. As you do.
She said, “My breasts, they will always be open
Baby, you can rest your weary head right on me
And there will always be a space in my parking lot
When you need a little coke and sympathy”
Apparently, this was all inspired by Marianne Faithfull, “parking lot” being her euphemism for exactly what you’d expect it to be, and Mick commenting on their druggy affect.
Meanwhile, Keith starts up with the slide guitar, and “Let It Bleed” is pretty much out of musical tricks, content to ride it’s country-blues (as oppose to country blues) groove as far as it can, Watts and Bill Wyman in perfect locksync as Mick tells us that we all need someone we can dream on, cream on, feed and bleed on in successive choruses while hanging out at steel guitar engagements drinking jasmine tea with knife-wielding junkie nurses. As you do.
Also, Keith is making the rudest noises with his slide guitar, there are occasional faint pings of the autoharp that Bill’s playing, Stew is having the time of his life on piano and Mick is referencing Robert Johnson for the second (but not the last) time on the album, as the second song on the album was a cover of Johnson’s “Love in Vain.”
Ah, get it on rider, woo, get it on rider, get it on rider
You can bleed all over me, yeah
Get it on rider, woo, get it on rider, yeah
You can be my rider, you can come all over me, oh
Get it on rider, babe, get it on rider, get it on rider
You can come all over me
Gee, thanks Mick!
That said, by the time “Let It Bleed” hits its fade, they’ve made one helluva big noise for a song that doesn’t really have any big electric guitars on it, another typical bit of Stones alchemy.
“Let It Bleed” Official Lyric Video
“Let It Bleed” live in Hampton, VA 1981
“Let It Bleed” live in New York, 2003
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