Rolling Stones – "Gimme Shelter" (1969)

A storm is threatening

My very life today

The great rock critic, Greil Marcus, once said that "the Stones have never done anything better" than "Gimme Shelter.”  He couldn’t have been righter.   

"Gimme Shelter” is the opening track on the Rolling Stones' best album, Let It Bleed.  It begins with a nervous, twitchy guitar solo by Keith Richards, but then drummer Charlie Watts – always unsung, but perhaps the most essential of all the  Stones – takes over, propelling the song down the tracks as only he can.  

Mick Jagger's lead vocal is unusually strong, but the crucial element of "Gimme Shelter" – the one thing that lifts it above just about anything else the Stones ever recorded – is backup singer Merry Clayton.

I’ve written about “Gimme Shelter” before.  I’m not sure how you could have expected me to write about a thousand different songs without writing about “Gimme Shelter,” which belongs on the Mt.  Rushmore of rock songs.  

(What other rock songs belong on Mt. Rushmore?  That’s not an easy question to answer.  Maybe “Helter Skelter,” by the Beatles.  Maybe “I Can See For Miles” by the Who, and “Eight Miles High” by the Byrds.  Maybe Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild,” or Led Zeppelin’s “Dazed and Confused.”  And there are some other worthy candidates.)

Click here to read my original “Gimme Shelter” post, which focused on Merry Clayton.

Scorsese and Robert DeNiro
on the set of "Goodfellas"

Martin Scorsese has used a lot of classic pop and rock songs on his movie soundtracks, including a half-dozen or so songs by his favorites, the Rolling Stones.

“Gimme Shelter” is on the soundtracks of no fewer than three of Scorsese’s movies: Goodfellas, Casino, and The Departed.  Here’s a video containing the “Gimme Shelter’ scenes from all three of those movies:

I hope you enjoyed this year's "29 Songs in 29 Days."  NOT THAT ANY OF YOU SAID YOU ENJOYED IT AND THANKED ME FOR DOING IT.

What the hell – just click on an ad or two and we'll call it even.

Here’s “Gimme Shelter”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Rolling Stones – "Monkey Man" (1969)

Yes, I'm a sack of broken eggs

I always have an unmade bed

Don't you?

I’ve always wondered what the point of making your bed is – after all, you’re just going to get back into it when it’s time to go to sleep tonight and mess it up again . . . right?  

I also don’t understand why you have to put your bath towel in the washing machine.  You’re clean when you use a bath towel, so the towel doesn’t get dirty – it just gets wet.  So why the need for the washing machine?

Rolling Stone magazine ranks the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed #32 on its list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

That’s about 31 spots too low.

I wouldn’t insist on ranking Let It Bleed as the best album of all time.  You could make a case for Pet Sounds or Revolver or Are You Experienced or the first Led Zeppelin album, all of which rightfully made the magazine's top 15.  

But I would give Let It Bleed the nod over all of them because it is the Platonic ideal of a rock album – Jagger sneers and leers, Richards slashes, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman are rock steady, and the dollops of piano, vibraphone, and tenor sax contributed by various guest musicians add just the right amount of seasoning to the basic Rolling Stones stew.

And let’s not forget Merry Clayton’s heart-rending vocals on “Gimme Shelter” – not only the best song on Let It Bleed, but the best song PERIOD.

Rolling Stone also ranked U2’s The Joshua Tree and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumors and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band and The White Album ahead of Let It Bleed.  YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!

The arrangements of the songs on Let It Bleed are almost perfect – none more so than “Monkey Man,” which begins quietly enough with a series of piano arpeggios (played by the inimitable Nicky Hopkins) before Keith Richards gives everyone a good jolt with some defibrillator-like chords.  From that point on, the song is 50% controlled, 50% chaotic . . . the tried-and-true Rolling Stones formula for success.

Two different snippets of “Monkey Man” are heard during the incomparable “Last Day as a Wise Guy” sequence at the end of Goodfellas.  Click here to view a fascinating discussion of that sequence.

Click here to listen to “Monkey Man.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Harry Nilsson – "Jump Into the Fire" (1971)

You can climb a mountain

You can swim the sea

You can jump into the fire

But you’ll never be free

I really don’t know why I bother with you people.    

No one has guessed what this year’s “29 Songs in 29 Days” have in common – even though I gave you clue after clue after clue.  

And even though all you would have had to do to get the answer was take six or seven of the songs’ titles and put them into a Google search.

Are you all so clueless that you never thought to do that?  Or is the problem apathy?

Maybe we’re dealing with cluelessness and apathy.

Scorsese and DeNiro

In any event, this year’s “29 Songs in 29 Days” all appear on the soundtracks of Martin Scorsese movies.  To be precise, they were taken from Martin Scorsese movies that starred either Robert DeNiro or Leonardo DiCaprio.

We’re talking classics like Mean Streets (“Be My Baby,” “Mickey’s Monkey”), Goodfellas (“Then He Kissed Me,” “Beyond the Sea,” “Sunshine of Your Love,’ “Layla”), Casino (“Working in the Coal Mine,” “I’ll Take You There,” “Boogaloo Down Broadway”), The Departed (“Baby Blue,” “Sail On, Sailor”), and Wolf of Wall Street (“Bang! Bang!,” “Never Say Never,” “Uncontrollable Urge”).

Scorsese and DiCaprio

If you’re a Scorsese fan, you know that he used a number of Rolling Stones songs in his movies.  I’m saving the best for last – the final four songs I’m featuring in this year’s “29 Songs in 29 Days” are Rolling Stones songs (including one that Scorsese used in not one . . . not two . . . but three of his movies).

“Jump Into the Fire” accompanies the astonishing “Last Day as a Wise Guy” sequence of Goodfellas – probably the best thing Scorsese ever did.  

Click here to watch that remarkable sequence.

*     *     *     *     *

The late Harry Nilsson was one of a kind.  

His two biggest hits – “Everybody’s Talkin’” and “Without You” – were written by other songwriters, while the best-known song he ever wrote – “One” – became a hit for Three Dog Night.

Nilsson had a strange sense of humor, as songs like “Coconut” (“You put de lime in de coconut”) and “You’re Breakin’ My Heart” (“You’re breaking’ my heart, you’re tearing’ it apart, so f*ck you”) demonstrate.

Click here to view the trailer for a 2010 documentary about Nilsson.

I think “Jump Into the Fire” (which was released on 1971's Nilsson Schmilsson album) is the best track Nilsson ever recorded.  

Click here to listen to the album version of “Jump Into the Fire.”

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.

Derek and the Dominos – "Layla" (1970)

Tried to give you consolation

When your old man had let you down

Everyone knows that Eric Clapton wrote “Layla” for Pattie Boyd when she was still married to his close friend and musical collaborator, George Harrison.  

George Harrison and Pattie Boyd

What you may not know is that the song was named for the heroine of 12th-century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi’s most famous work, Layla and Majnun.

In case you’re wondering how the hell Eric Clapton became acquainted with a 12th-century Persian poem, he received a copy of it from Ian Dallas, a Scottish playwright and actor who had converted to Islam in 1967, taking the name Abdalqadir as-Sufi.    

In Layla and Majnun, a young man named Qays becomes so obsessed with a young woman named Layla that the people in his community begin to refer to him as Majnun (which means “madman”). 

Layla and Majnun

Layla’s father refuses to allow her to wed Qays.  Instead, he marries her off to a rich merchant.  The heartbroken Qays leaves his tribe’s camp and wanders in the surrounding desert until he dies. 

Unlike Qays, Clapton eventually got what he wanted.  From Boyd’s autobiography:

We met secretly at a flat in South Kensington. Eric Clapton had asked me to come because he wanted me to listen to a new number he had written.

He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard. It was “Layla,” about a man who falls hopelessly in love with a woman who loves him but is unavailable.

Eric Clapton and Pattie Boyd

He played it to me two or three times, all the while watching my face intently for my reaction.  My first thought was: “Oh God, everyone's going to know this is about me.”

I was married to Eric's close friend, George Harrison, but Eric had been making his desire for me clear for months.  I felt uncomfortable that he was pushing me in a direction in which I wasn't certain I wanted to go.

But with the realization that I had inspired such passion and creativity, the song got the better of me.  I could resist no longer.

Pattie Boyd's autobiography,
"Wonderful Tonight"

Clapton also wrote “Wonderful Tonight” for Boyd.  (He penned that song just before attending Paul and Linda McCartney’s annual Buddy Holly party with her.)  

Pattie divorced Harrison (who had written “Something” for her) and eventually married Clapton in 1979.  But they separated after only a few years.  Apparently man – or woman – does not live by love songs alone.

“Layla” is actually two songs in one.  Clapton wrote the first part – the part with the words and the famous Duane Allman guitar riff.  After recording that part of “Layla,” Clapton heard Derek and the Dominos drummer Jim Gordon playing a piece on the piano in the recording studio, and asked Gordon if he could use it in “Layla.”

Martin Scorsese famously used Gordon's piano coda in Goodfellas:

By the way, Jim Gordon used a hammer and a butcher knife to murder his mother in 1983.  He’s been in prison ever since.

Here’s “Layla”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: