“That’s a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It’s apocalypse; the whole record’s like that. It’s a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens. Pillage and burning.” That’s how Mick Jagger described Let it Bleed in 1995, and that’s how it seems to have gone down in history – as the Rolling Stones’ ‘darkest LP’. But having listened to it for the first time in 2023, I can’t say that I agree, entirely. It’s obviously there on the opener, and on a couple of other songs, but most of the album comprises twangy, bluesy country music and, I will contend, somewhat tongue in check lyrics about bad romance and rock’n’roll depravity.
Certainly, two of the Rolling Stones’ darkest songs appear on Let it Bleed. There’s not much to say about “Gimme Shelter” that hasn’t already been said. It’s my favourite Stones song and probably my favourite song of the 60s. An unforgiving, menacing, swaggering, vindictive paeon to – in a sense – civilisation itself, the thin veneer of socialised self-restraint that separates human beings from anarchy, death, and destruction, and to love, which is “just a kiss away.” Eros and Thanatos locked in eternal struggle. The charms of 60s rock’n’roll are generally lost on me, but few songs in the history of rock music can hold a candle to this demonic, exuberant masterpiece. “Midnight Rambler” is less of a masterpiece, but it’s still memorable, a dark, dirty, sexy, terrifying tribute to the Boston Strangler, who murdered thirteen women in the 1960s. The song starts as sinister, harmonica-laced blues, then builds and builds to a frenzy, whereupon the killer strikes, and the song abates to complete silence – the unending silence of the victim – before building again to a second frenzy. The compulsive and recurring need of the serial killer to get their ‘fix’. Just a shot away, indeed. And yet, this being the Rolling Stones, there’s an undercurrent of dark irony and mischief.
Alongside songs about mass murder, Let it Bleed also treats us to a couple of ditties about the Rolling Stones’ fabled penchant for rock’n’roll excess. “I got nasty habits”, begins the amusing “Live with Me”, an utterly depraved account of the maniacal Jagger propositioning some poor benighted woman to live with him, share his mansion with a cast of equally unhinged characters, and take care of his idiotic children. Who could say no to such an offer? “Monkey Man”, meanwhile, flags Mick’s fabled resemblance to some kind of primitive beast, detailing his fallen state of sinful, pleasure-seeking animalism – with a bit of humour, obviously. The ending to the song is thoroughly demented, a feral Jagger shrieking “I’m a monkey” and making bizarre, simian noises.
How much of this is a piss take? This question always detains me when listening to the Rolling Stones. To wit: most of Let it Bleed is comprised of bluesy love songs, but it’s never completely obvious to me how seriously we are supposed to take them, how firmly the tongue is in the check. “Love in Vain” comes in with a deceptive, lazy, straw-chewing peacefulness after the black inferno of “Gimme Shelter”. It’s about Robert Johnson, who wrote the song, going to get his girlfriend from the train station and being forced to accept that she can’t really be arsed. It’s sad but, somehow, silly – the melodrama of Jagger’s vocal gives the lie to the melancholy of the lyrics. The same might be said of “You Got the Silver”, a song of utter devotion and borderline addiction to a lover who possibly can’t be bothered, but where the singer is, somehow, in on the joke.
Perhaps this inability to be sincere, this interminable irreverence, is quintessentially British. And yet, on several of these love songs, the Kentuckian twang is turned up to ten. This is particularly the case on “Country Honk”, another forlorn, Deep South-flavoured, drunken love song, which sounds like the very cliché of a redneck in a straw hit strumming the guitar on their porch while the sun sets over the Bayeux. I know the Stones were in love with this kind of music, but in the end, it’s four lads from Dartford, and the whole thing is done with an almost cartoonish theatricality, like a satire of country music. Maybe it sounded different in the 60s, but I doubt it. And if their seriousness seems dubious on these songs, then on the title track, I’m absolutely convinced that they’re joking. “Let it Bleed” is lackadaisical and sleepy, and the lyrics consist of Jagger assuring a prospective partner that she can depend on him for “a little coke and sympathy” against a backdrop of jivy piano-driven rock’n’roll. How romantic.
And yet, against the backdrop of all this knowing irony and cynical humour, the closing song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” seems genuinely sad and sincere. The twangy, jokey guitars and harmonicas of the rest of the album are conspicuous by their absence, replaced by a good natured, calming, resigned trumpet. In a way, perhaps, Jagger’s sad lament that you can’t always get what you want is aimed at his contemporaries, the acid-dropping hippies who believed that they could build a new society or transcend the restrictions of bourgeois consciousness by taking a pill and checking out. By the end of the decade, of course, they’d belatedly realised that it was easier said than done (or, failing that, they’d moved to Californian communes).
For my money, “Gimme Shelter” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” are the sole moments of sincerity on Let it Bleed. The opener’s apocalyptic warnings of the id unleashed are deadly serious, while the closer’s melancholy, and most un-sixties-like invocation to accept limits on our desires is equally heartfelt. The two songs are, of course, linked – in true Freudian fashion, it’s the appeal to self-restraint, to suffocating the destructive inner imp of want, that makes us both civilised and sad. If we accept that we can’t always get what we want, then maybe rape and murder won’t be just a shot away after all. And yet, as ever, the Rolling Stones don’t bear their souls very often or for very long – they quickly retreat to dark British irony and a garish satire of country music that I simply cannot accept is meant to be taken seriously. At times, it makes for good music that’s easy to listen to – not least because the production is superb and crystal clear, which cannot always be taken for granted with the Stones. But only twice on this album do they really let it bleed.
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Highlights: “Gimme Shelter”, “Monkey Man”, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”