Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed (1969)

Yes, I’m a sack of broken eggs

I always have an unmade bed

Don’t you?

In 2010, the Royal Mail – the British postal service – issued ten stamps that depicted classic album covers.

(NOTE: Did you know that the Royal Mail is owned by a wealthy Czech businessman?  That’s right – the Brits converted their postal service from a government-0wned-and-operated operated into a publicly-traded stock corporation in 2013.  Last year, that corporation was acquired by EP Group, a Czech-based company owned by Daniel Křetínský, for £3.57 billion.)

Not surprisingly, all the recording artists whose albums were chosen for the series are British.  But the music on those albums is quite varied, ranging from classic rock (Let it Bleed by the Stones, David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust, Led Zeppelin IV) to punk (London Calling by the Clash) to post-punk (New Order’s Power, Corruption & Lies) to Britpop (Blur’s Parklife).

I was pleased that Primal Scream’s genre-bending Screamadelica was included – it’s an amazing album.

But I was puzzled to see Pink Floyd’s The Division Bell and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells on the Royal Mail’s list.

If you had to pick one Pink Floyd album to put on a stamp, would you pick The Division Bell?  (One critic wrote that “avarice is the only conceivable explanation for this glib, vacuous cipher of an album, which is notable primarily for its stomach-turning merger of progressive-rock pomposity and New Age noodling.”)

The Tubular Bells album cover

And Tubular Bells?  If its opening theme hadn’t been featured in The Exorcist, that album would have attracted little notice – it’s interesting, but more of a novelty than anything else.

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Eventually, it dawned on me that the Royal Mail didn’t choose these albums for their music.  They chose them for the visual appeal of their album covers. 

Given that, I suppose we should be thankful that a number of the albums in the series contain first-rate music – including, of course, Let It Bleed.

It wasn’t easy for me to choose just one Rolling Stones album for this year’s 28 Posts in 28 Days.  I thought about an out-of-the-box choice like Between the Buttons or Their Satanic Majesties Request.  But in the end I decide to play it safe and go with the ne plus ultra of Rolling Stones albums.

Why Let It Bleed?  Start with “Gimme Shelter” – which is only the G.O.A.T. of classic-rock album tracks, you know. 

Follow that up with “Live With Me” and “Monkey Man,” two little-known cuts that I think are the equals of “Jumping’ Jack Flash.”

“Let it Bleed” and “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” are classics, of course.  And then there’s “Midnight Rambler” – seven minutes of very scary stuff.  (It’s not quite as scary as “Stray Cat Blues,” but it comes close.)

The album’s cover is pretty cool, too – good choice, Royal Mail!

Click here to listen to Let It Bleed.

Click here to buy that album from Amazon.