Released in 1969,Let It Bleed was The Rolling Stones' eighth studio album and tenth in the USA. The second in a sequence of four consecutive records that comprised their creative peak, it is considered by many to be their best. After a period of turmoil culminating in drug busts, the enforced departure and sudden death of founding member Brian Jones, they delivered a powerful set of nine tracks that encompassed hard rock, blues, country, folk, gospel, and even funk. From the eerie 'Gimme Shelter' to the epic 'You Can't Always Get What You Want', with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and the band plus an array of guests including Al Kooper, Ry Cooder and The London Bach Choir, it was a set that captured the uncertain prevailing mood at the end of the 1960s and the era that produced the Woodstock and Altamont festivals. Number one in Britain and number two in America, it still sounds just as fresh, urgent and challenging more than half a century later.
This account examines in detail the background, inspiration and recording of the songs, the reception of the work as a whole, and its legacy and influence on subsequent generations of bands and performers to this day.
The author
John Van der Kiste has published over seventy books, mostly historical biography and music, including titles on The Beatles, Jeff Lynne/ELO, Led Zeppelin, Lindisfarne and Steve Winwood. He has also reviewed books and records for the local and national press and fanzines, and co-founded and edited the 70s fanzineKeep on Rockin'. He has performed with groups, run mobile discos, and written booklet notes for CD reissues from EMI and other labels. An occasional musician and songwriter, he also co-wrote one track on Riff Regan'sMilestones (2015) and played harmonica on London's The Hell for Leather Mob (2020). He lives in Devon, UK.
Sessions for the album, or at least one track, probably began in the late autumn of 1968, just as the release ofBeggars Banquet was imminent. There are conflicting theories about ‘You Got The Silver’, taped at Olympic Studios, Barnes, London, under the original title of ‘You Got Some Silver Now’. Some sources say it was recorded or at least started around May and June that year, others that it was not begun until February 1969 or perhaps slightly earlier. What is certain is that by now the group had got in the habit of recording more tracks for an album that they needed at any one set of sessions, especially as the limitations of the long-playing record allowed for only twenty minutes or so of music per side before sound quality and volume began to deteriorate. The 26 minutes on each side ofAftermath in 1966, the UK release, was an interesting (and rare if not unique) outlier. Songs would often be shelved and appear on an album some years later, often but not always reworked to some extent and sometimes completely renamed in the process. A few tracks onSticky Fingers andExile On Main St had been started much earlier, and either took a little longer to see the light of day or else underwent a certain amount of fine-tuning and development before they were considered ready for release.
None of the recent remastered reissues ofLet It Bleed have included any early demos or alternate versions, outtakes and the like. While The Beatles supplemented a 50th anniversary reissue of their ‘White Album’ in 2018 with an additional 27-track CD of ‘Esher Demos’ and further discs containing previously unavailable material, as well as having put out other long-archived items on the threeAnthology releases in 1995 and 1996, there was little if anything left in the Rolling Stones’ vaults from the 1968-69 period, after the appearance in 1975 ofMetamorphosis, a 16-track collection of odds and ends taped between 1964 and 1969. Another reason is that both bands went about recording albums of original material in a very different way. Most new Beatles songs had been wholly or partly written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney or George Harrison, and their creator would bring them to the studio so that the other three, and producer-cum- arranger George Martin, could help guide and shape each one through several recorded versions, up to 20 or more, transforming the basic lyrics and melody into a fully-fledged single or album cut. The Stones had a more free and easy approach in that they would start jamming in the studio, throwing in ideas, riffs and so on, as a basic song gradually developed. Most of them would make some contribution, although the end result was nearly always credited to Jagger and Richards, sometimes much to the frustration of Wyman or Taylor, whose input, had they belonged to any other band, would almost certainly have resulted in their name appearing on the record label in brackets afterwards and thus composers’ royalties. Richards would claim that he used to set up the riffs, the hook and sometimes the title, and it was Mick’s job as a wordsmith to fill in the rest. As a result, few out- takes or discards were left over, and almost everything not used for the next album was kept to be reworked, recycled or taken to pieces and started again.
When asked in 1995, in the wake of The Beatles’ Anthology, why there was no unreleased Stones material being put out, their former manager Allen Klein said there wasn’t any. He only wanted their fans to hear what was worth hearing. If it wasn’t made available at the time, then it probably wasn’t worth doing so at all. How many early versions or remixes did the most devoted listener
