Song Lyric Sunday – Gimme Shelter

Posted byChristine BoltonPosted inBlog, Song Lyric SundayTags:, , , , ,

This week for Song Lyric Sunday we are looking for a great opening song on an album. I really didn’t know what I was going to choose as I can rarely recall the order of songs from albums. After doing a little research I found several lists in order of someone else’s idea of what the top 20, 30 or 50 should be. There were plenty I could flip right on through until I came to the one I have chosen for today. There it was. ‘Gimme Shelter’ by the Rolling Stones. The video of a live performance is perfect, in my opinion. I did however include the recorded version so you can hear Merry Clayton’s incredible pipes!

The Song

Gimme Shelter was the opening track on The Stones 1969 album ‘Let it Bleed’ This song is about the political and social unrest at the time. There was the war in Vietnam, race riots, and Charles Manson. Mick Jagger sings of needing shelter from this “Storm.”

Keith Richards wrote most of this song. He strummed the opening on an electric-acoustic guitar modeled after a Chuck Berry favorite.

Merry Clayton is the female vocalist. She is a gospel singer who did backup vocals for a number of artists, including Ray Charles. She had a regular role on the ’80s TV show Cagney and Lacey, and played a maid in the movie Maid To Order.

Clayton is featured in the 2013 film 20 Feet from Stardom, where she talks about her appearance on this song. The Stones were recording late at night in Los Angeles when they decided to use a female vocalist to sing with Jagger on the track. Clayton, who was pregnant at the time, got the call and was retrieved for the session. She showed up with curlers in her hair wearing silk pajamas, and Jagger explained to her that she’s be singing the line, “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.”

She did a take of her line, then decided to “blow them out of this room” on the next take. This time, she delivered a chilling vocal an octave higher, her voice cracking on “murder.” This can be heard at about the 3:04 mark, and you can hear an impressed Mick Jagger in the background saying “Whoo!”

The Rolling Stones didn’t release this song as a single, so it never charted. Merry Clayton, who sang backup on the track, recorded her own version of the song which was released as a single, making US in the summer of 1970.

Jagger recollected the recording saying: “That song was written during the Vietnam War and so it’s very much about the awareness that war is always present; it was very present in life at that point. Merry Clayton who did the backing vocals, was a background singer who was known to one of the producers. Suddenly, we wanted someone to sing in the middle of the night. And she was around. She came with her curlers in, straight from bed, and had to sing this really odd lyric. For her it was a little odd – for anyone, in the middle of the night, to sing this one verse I would have been odd. She was great.”

“Gimme Shelter” is the title of the movie that documented The Stones 1969 tour, including the Altamont concert where a fan was stabbed by a Hells Angels security guard. The movie was rush released in 1970 to come out before the Woodstock documentary. It was released on video in 1992, and re-released in theaters in 2000 for the 30th anniversary. George Lucas of Star Wars fame was on the crew for the movie.

The Stones recorded this using old, worn out Triumph amplifiers to get a distinctive sound.

Keith Richards overdubbed layers of guitars on this track, making it a challenge to perform live. He told Rolling Stone: “That beginning is so eerie, sometimes in a stadium you start to hear echoes. I’m never sure if I’m the right volume.”

This has been covered by the Goo Goo Dolls, Grand Funk Railroad, and the Sisters of Mercy (who swapped the locations the words “kiss” and “shot” – “War, children, it’s just a kiss away” and “Love, sister, it’s just a shot away”). Patti Smith recorded it for her 2007 album Twelve.

Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese has used this song in three of his films: Goodfellas, Casino and The Departed.

Keith Richards stated in his memoir Life (2010): “I wrote ‘Gimmie Shelter’ on a stormy day, sitting in Robert Fraser’s apartment in Mount Street. Anita (Pallenberg) was shooting Performance at the time, not far away… It was just a terrible fucking day and it was storming out there. I was sitting there in Mount Street and there was this incredible storm over London, so I got into that mode, just looking out of Robert’s window and looking at all these people with their umbrellas being blown out of their grasp and running like hell. And the idea came to me… My thought was storms on other people’s minds, not mine. It just happened to hit the moment.”

The Lyrics

Come on
Ooh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Lord, I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Ooh, see the fire is sweepin'
Our very street today
Burns like a red coal carpet
Mad bull lost its way

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away

Rape, murder!
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, yeah

The floods is threat'ning
My very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter
Or I'm gonna fade away

War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
War, children, it's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, shot away, shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot away, shot away, shot away
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away, kiss away, kiss away
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter
Gimme shelter

Writer/s: Keith Richards, Mick Jagger
Publisher: Abkco Music Inc.
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Acknowledgement goes to Songfacts for background material.

Published by Christine Bolton

I have been writing poetry since I was a child and it has helped in the good times and bad times. I am always looking within to find the answers to life's problems and to write thought-provoking poetry and prose. Thanks for checking it out. Christine

28 thoughts on “Song Lyric Sunday – Gimme Shelter”

  1. Christine, *excellent* opener on an excellent album. I appreciate the background info on Merry and what was going through Keith’s mind as it came to life. Every time I hear this song, I think of that scene in Forrest Gump, where Jenny is all strung out and climbs up on the ledge. The song is electrifying and iconic.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. You’re welcome. I was wrong about the clip. It’s in the movie but it’s a battle scene. The clip I was thinking of is “Free Bird” with Jenny. I have a mental block about it!

        Liked by 1 person

  3. Last week I selected “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” from Let It Bleed as my featured closing song. The only reason I didn’t choose “Gimme Shelter” as my opening song is because I didn’t want to go with the Stones two weeks in a row. So I am so glad that you featured it this week.

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Great choice, Christine as this is the Stones at their best. ‘Gimme Shelter’ is perhaps the most celebrated and profound song by the Rolling Stones, and it was described by Mick Jagger as an “end-of-the-world song”, because it is so haunting, building into a brutal vision of war, threatening floods, sweeping fires, rape and streets burning “like a red coal carpet”.  I love that live video that you found as that made my day.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Thanks Jim. Yes, I loved this song and it still is quite powerful musically. The lyrics had a way of just saying a few words but they were the right words at the right time at the end of the 60s. People listened. Yes I loved that live video too. It was spot on. 🥰

      Liked by 1 person

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