Let it bleed

The strength of the first track, Gimme Shelter, carries this entire album on its back. Seeing that more than 40 years have passed since its first release, it's hard to hear Richards' reverbed-out intro guitar part without conjuring images of jungles aglow with agent orange, but if you can divorce all pop-culture decorations from your mind but the sound, it still carries heavy fire power.

At once head-bob worthy and yet fiercely dirty blues, the introduction presages Jagger's iconic opening image: "Oh a storm is threatening / my very life today" Is this an internal or external storm? Is it truly as deadly as this serious sounding voice would have us believe? He follows with the consequence, "if I don't get some shelter / ooh yeah, I might fade away." What kind of shelter is he looking for? Physical or mental? Chemical or metaphysical? And what does it mean to fade?

The first chorus, and the entrance of Merry Clayton's emotional overdrive, gives us an answer, although the dichotomy is just as stark, "war, children, it's just a shot away." As with the storm, is the war external or internal? Like the best blues lyrics, this chorus is repeated several times, exposing the ambiguous nature of the lyric and elevating its resonance. Can this be the cry of the national victims of a war ravaged land? Certainly. Can this be the suffering of an emotionally wracked, spiritually spent individual? Certainly.

The last two choruses, "rape, murder / it's just a shot away," and the possible solution, "love, sister / it's just a kiss away," continue to fit the setup, with a deteriorating mind as likely to lead to these terrible consequences as war, and love, perhaps, the only solution (or road, anyway) to either.

The album recording sounds absolutely fantastic still, even with it's little imperfections, like Merry's voice cracking and Mick shouting, "yeah!" In fact, these little pieces will bring you back for a re-listen even if you've heard it a thousand times in dozens of movies.