THE ROLLING STONES - LET IT BLEED @ 55

 

Celebrating 55 years on the shelves today is the eighth studio LP from The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed, which was released on November 28th, 1969, in the US, and December 5th in the UK. While the record contains some of the band's most iconic staples, the period of its creation was fraught with turmoil as founding member, Brian Jones, spiralled towards his ultimate demise.

The album continues the group's move back to revitalizing its blues roots after its dalliances with psychedelia and baroque pop on albums like Between the Buttons & Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967). Their previous LP, Beggars Banquet (1968) had adjusted the band's trajectory back to the basics of the blues, though with this album, they were also dabbling in other forms of traditional Americana, including gospel and country influences. And while the majority of the group were on point with their contributions, Brian Jones was on his last leg.

Issues with Jones had come to the fore during the Beggars Banquet sessions, with Brian often showing up to the studio heavily inebriated, and grossly unprepared for the work ahead. He had become disillusioned and disconnected from the group, and by the time of the Let It Bleed sessions, he was nearly incapable of contributing at all. He only ended up participating in two of the LP's nine tracks before he was fired from the group. It was only a month later that he was found dead in the swimming pool of his home. It was a horrifyingly tragic and controversial end to the wildly creative spirit who had been responsible for getting the band off the ground in the first place.

After the dismissal of Jones, Mick Taylor was brought in to fill his slot on 2nd guitar, though his contribution to this album was also limited. As he had done for the previous album, Keith Richards stepped up as the band's workhorse to provide nearly all of the guitar parts. In addition to the rest of the band, who were also involved in nearly every track, guest musicians included percussionist Jimmy Miller (who also produced the album), keyboardists Nicky Hopkins and Ian Stewart (himself a former member of the band), and Ry Cooder.

As already mentioned, the focus was back to basics, with a heaviness and darkness pervading the overall mood. Journalist Jann Wenner described the lyrics as "disturbing" and the scenery as "ugly". When asked if the Vietnam War played a role in the album's worldview, Jagger said: "I think so. Even though I was living in America only part time, I was influenced. All those images were on television. Plus, they spill out onto campuses". Of the album's songs, the standouts include Gimme Shelter, Midnight Rambler and You Can't Always Get What You Want, all of which became staples in the band's live sets going forward, and though there were no hit singles, those songs received regular rotation on the radio, helping to establish them as mainstays of the band's repertoire.

For the LP's packaging, Mick Jagger originally asked surrealist illustrator, M. C. Escher, to design a cover, but he declined, so Robert Brownjohn was approached instead. His design displays a surreal sculpture with the image consisting of the Let It Bleed record being played by the tone-arm of an antique phonograph, and a record-changer spindle supporting several items stacked on a plate in place of a stack of records: a film canister labelled Stones – Let It Bleed, a clock dial, a pizza, a bicycle tire and a cake with elaborate icing topped by figurines representing the band. The reverse of the LP sleeve shows the same "record-stack" melange in a state of disarray. The artwork was inspired by the scrapped working title of the album, "Automatic Changer". The album cover was among the ten chosen by the Royal Mail for a set of "Classic Album Cover" postage stamps issued in January, 2010.

Upon its release, it was generally well received by critics and shot to the number 1 slot in the UK, and peaked at #3 in the US. In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone magazine, music critic Greil Marcus said that the middle of the album has "great" songs, but Gimme Shelter and You Can't Always Get What You Want "seem to matter most" because they "both reach for reality and end up confronting it, almost mastering what's real, or what reality will feel like as the years fade in." Robert Christgau named it the fourth-best album of 1969 in his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's annual critics poll. In later commentaries, he has said the album "still speaks to me with startling fullness and authority", with the quality of the "playing" alone "fantastic", and that despite some "duff moments" on side two, every song "stands up". Contextually, it is at the centre of what many feel is the band's high water mark of classic albums, from its predecessor, Beggars Banquet, through to the two LPs that followed, Sticky Fingers and Exile on Main Street.