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.
