Composers: Mick
Jagger & Keith Richards
Recording date:
February-March & October-November 1969
Recording locations: Olympic
Sound Studios, London; Sunset Sound & Elektra Studios, Los Angeles
Producer: Jimmy
Miller
Chief engineer: Glyn
Johns
Performed onstage: 1969-70,
1972-73, 1975, 1989-90, 1995, 1997-99, 2002-03, 2006
Line-up:
Drums: Charlie
Watts
Bass: Bill Wyman
Electric guitars: Keith
Richards
Lead vocals: Mick
Jagger & Merry Clayton
Background vocals: Mick
Jagger, Keith Richards & Merry Clayton
Piano: Nicky
Hopkins
Harmonica: Mick
Jagger
Percussion (incl. maracas): Jimmy
Miller
Oh a storm is threatening my very life today
If I don't get some shelter, oh yeah, I'm
going to fade away
War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away
Ooh, see the fire sweeping our very streets
today
Burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost
his way
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away (yeah), it's just a shot away
The floods is threatening my very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter or I'm going to fade
away
It's just a shot away...
I tell you love, sister, it's just a kiss away,
it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away...
TrackTalk
Gimmie Shelter is a classic (example of a song where the music and words came together). That, I just slapped down on a cassette while waiting for Mick to finish Performance.
We did Gimmie Shelter in a big room
at Olympic Studios, and then did the overdubs in L.A. with Merry Clayton.
In London Keith had been playing the groove a few times on his own - although
I think Brian was still around at that point; he might even have been in
the studio actually - but there was no vocal. The use of the female voice
was the producer's idea. It would be one of those moments along the lines
of I hear a girl on this track - get one on the phone.
The guitar I used on Gimmie Shelter
on Let It Bleed - as if by design, it fell apart on the last take.
That (song too, like Midnight Rambler)
was done on a full-bodied, Australian electric-acoustic, f-hole guitar.
It kind of looked like an Australian copy of the Gibson model that Chuck
Berry used... It had all been revarnished and painted out, but it sounded
great. It made a great record... And on the very last note of Gimmie
Shelter, the whole neck fell off. You can hear it on the original take.
That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really.
It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that.
And I know it was during that time of the
Vietnam War and so on, so it was very much the awareness that war is always
present, or almost... very present in life.