Let It Bleed

Certain Songs #2054: The Rolling Stones – “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”

March 9, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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“You Can’t Always Get What You Want” had humble beginnings: a folk song that Mick Jagger wrote by himself, calling it “one of those bedroom songs,” a tiny acorn from which grew an absolutely massive oak.

The first thing you hear on “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is the London Bach Choir, singing both the first verse and the chorus, as arranged by Jack Nitzche — one last great contribution to their music — and interesting in that they didn’t even hide their Englishness, despite the fact they were taking the place of a gospel choir.

Just one of the many tensions inherent in “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” — perhaps the greatest song ever written about serendipity that was also inspired by watching people succumb to heroin addiction — the biggest album closer that the Rolling Stones ever attempted.

Certain Songs #2053: The Rolling Stones – “Monkey Man”

March 8, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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In the mid-1970s, I became friends with a guy on my block, Steve, who was a couple of years older than me, played guitar (he would eventually be the guitarist for very popular Fresno new wave covers band Aqua Bob), and was enough of a Rolling Stones fan that he had a poster of Mick Jagger on his bedroom wall.

It was a poster for Ampex tapes, featuring a close-up of Mick doing his thing with a giant “AMPEX” in black letters below him. Only Steve had crossed out the “M” and the “X” so that the poster just said “APE.” Which teenage Jim always found pretty hilarious.

Certain Songs #2052: The Rolling Stones – “You Got The Silver”

March 7, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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“You Got The Silver” is the fourth song that is cited as “the first song Keith sang lead vocals on,” after “Connection,” which was a dual vocal with Mick, “Something Happened To Me Yesterday,” where he sang the choruses, and “Salt of The Earth,” where he sang the first verse.

But “You Got The Silver” is all Keith, supposedly because engineer Glyn Johns accidentally erased Mick’s vocals while Mick was in Australia shooting his second film, Ned Kelly. Though why they didn’t have Mick just send them a file via Dropbox is beyond me. In any event, while Johns told this story in his book Sound Man, it doesn’t explain why there is a high quality bootleg floating around of “You Got The Silver” with Mick singing. And given that “You Got The Silver” was recorded in February 1969, but the Let It Bleed sessions went off and on until July, why didn’t they just wait until Mick got back?

Certain Songs #2051: The Rolling Stones – “Let It Bleed”

March 6, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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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.

Certain Songs #2050: The Rolling Stones – “Live With Me”

March 5, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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Time to pour one out for Bobby Keys, a sharp-witted, fun-loving Texas-born saxophonist who became one of Keith’s best friends at least partially since they shared the exact same birthday, right down to the year. While Keys would be integral to the next few Stones records — eventually either being tossed for filling a bathtub with Dom Perignon or voluntarily leaving their orbit to deal with his inevitable smack addiction — on Let It Bleed, he only had a cameo.

But, as we’ll see, it was a pretty fucking great cameo.

Certain Songs #2049: The Rolling Stones – “Gimme Shelter”

March 4, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969

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Objectively the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded, “Gimme Shelter” is an apocalyptic maelstrom never ever gets old, no matter how many times you listen to it. And while it had roots in a rather mundane situation, it also somehow ended up symbolizing one of the greatest apocalyptic maelstroms in rock history, Altamont.