GIMME SHELTER
“Gimme Shelter” is a song by The Rolling Stones. It first appeared as the opening track on the band’s 1969 album Let It Bleed. Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone magazine at the time of its release, said of it, “The Stones have never done anything better”. The song features female vocals by Merry Clayton. (More from Wikipedia)
You never really know though what is going to happen when a side man or side woman issues a solo album. The best guest vocalist performance on a Rolling Stones song is unquestionably Merry Clayton’s incredible harmony vocals on “Gimme Shelter”, yet her solo album was somewhat disappointing, even on her own version of that song.
(August 2011)
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The concert was made not long after the release of one of my favorite Rolling Stones albums, Beggars Banquet, and includes two songs from that album, “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man”, plus several more from their most recent album at that time, Let it Bleed: “Gimme Shelter”, “Love In Vain”, “Midnight Rambler”, “Live with Me”, and “Honky Tonk Women” – a country version of this song was included on Let it Bleed under the name of “Country Honk”, while “Honky Tonk Women” itself was released five months earlier as a single only. The Greatest Group on Earth was the only concert album that I had of the Stones for several years (in fact, I did not own very many albums back then, period) – just one live album by the Rolling Stones had been officially released previously, Got Live If You Want It! (1966) – so I played this record a lot.
(September 2017)
