Listen No 3 - Let It Bleed by The Rolling Stones

Genre: Rock, Blues

Context: Released in 1969, Let It Bleed is an album heavily influenced by events at that time. ‘Well, it (was) a very rough era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning…Even though I was living in America only part-time. Plus the spill out onto campuses.” (Jagger, 1995)

Notable facts: The cake part of the well-known cover image was made by Delia Smith (before she was famous). And the cover was featured in a Royal Mail stamp set in 2010. Most people know that there’s a choir in You Can’t Always Get What You Want. The London Bach Choir took part, but later asked for their name to be removed from the album. They disliked the album title, and all the drug references in the songs. But they’ve got over that now, and mention it here.

My favourite track: No contest. It’s Gimme Shelter. Richards’ opening riff is superb, and then I kept thinking ‘who is the amazing backing vocalist here?’ Well, it’s Merry Clayton. But her contribution to the song came at huge personal cost. You can read about this (and  her long music career) in this article.

What critics made of it: They loved it. Steven Davis (biographer of the Stones) said ‘No rock record, before or since, has so ever completely captured the sense of palpable dread that hung over its era.’

Listening to this inspired me to: Buy all the Stones albums! That’s this year’s project.  And Merry Clayton features heavily in a documentary about backing singers called 20 Feet from Stardom. I really must watch this. Backing singers can turn a song from okay to great, and this idea alone fascinates me.