{"id":526302,"date":"2025-10-25T05:04:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:04:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/526302\/"},"modified":"2025-10-25T05:04:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-25T05:04:13","slug":"mick-jagger-picks-the-best-song-on-let-it-bleed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/526302\/","title":{"rendered":"Mick Jagger picks the best song on \u2018Let It Bleed’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Decca Records)<\/p>\n

Sat 25 October 2025 3:00, UK <\/p>\n

Let It Bleed poured with such vigour that tender listeners got to the end of \u2018You Can\u2019t Always Get What You Want\u2019 and found themselves in need of an ICU ward. In a non-stop barrage of rousing rock \u2018n\u2019 roll, The Rolling Stones<\/a> threw the kitchen sink of the 1960s into a bonfire of vanities at its closing party.<\/p>\n

Behind Delia Smith\u2019s infamous cake lay 42 minutes of music that could write a disgruntled worker\u2019s resignation letter for them. America was enduring an ugly period as the Vietnam War reached a fever point, the Manson Murders terrified Los Angeles, political assassinations were proving eerily commonplace, and Mick Jagger was harnessing all of it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200b\u200bEven though I was living in America only part time, I was influenced,\u201d he told Jann Wenner. \u201cAll those images were on television. Plus, the spill out onto campuses.\u201d In the band\u2019s most political album, Jagger looked to encapsulate this tinderbox with songs that swirled like a hurricane. There is no finer example of that than the definitive \u2018Gimme Shelter\u2019.<\/p>\n

The opening track to the record is the perfect rock anthem that reflects the stormy day on which it was written, and the stormier zeitgeist it belongs to, the dirge that decreed the death of the 1960s. It is the best song that the Rolling Stones have ever written, and if you disagree, you\u2019re not only wrong, you\u2019re a grotesque freak. Just ask Jagger.<\/p>\n

When appraising the apocalyptic masterpiece, the pouting singer explained, \u201cWe thought, \u2018Well, it\u2019d be great to have a woman come and do the rape\/murder verse,\u2019 or chorus, or whatever you want to call it\u2019. We randomly phoned up this poor lady [Merry Clayton<\/a>] in the middle of the night, and she arrived in her curlers and proceeded to do that in one or two takes, which is pretty amazing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Merry<\/a>Merry Clayton in full flow. (Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n

This set the tone for a song that seemed to arrive with all the haste of Roadrunner. \u201cShe came in and knocked off this rather odd lyric,\u201d Jagger recalled of Clayton\u2019s contribution. \u201cIt\u2019s not the sort of lyric you give everyone \u2013 \u2018Rape, murder \/ It\u2019s just a shot away\u2019 \u2013 but she really got into it, as you can hear on the record. She joins the chorus. It\u2019s been a great live song ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

Away from the stage, it defined the mood that the band were looking to muster with Let It Bleed from the off. In an age of flower power, there was really no other band who could cut such a searing song and have it appeal to the masses. Thus, Jagger thinks it is not only the best pick from the \u201869 record, but the best they\u2019ve ever offered.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a very moody piece about the world closing in on you a bit,\u201d Jagger said of the song that now sadly has a sustaining prescience. \u201cWhen it was recorded, early \u201969 or something, it was a time of war and tension, so that\u2019s reflected in this tune. It\u2019s still wheeled out when big storms happen, as they did the other week. It\u2019s been used a lot to evoke natural disaster.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Jagger\u2019s typical pomp and passion, the track swaggers with ease. It is the perfect anthem to bring out his searing side. As Roger Daltrey put it, \u201cI\u2019ve always thought that you cannot take away the fact that Mick Jagger is still the number one rock and roll show. The only other people I\u2019d put up against him would be perhaps James Brown.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not without irony that the Stones\u2019 decade began in earnest with Brown whipping the floor with them, and everyone else for that matter, on the TAMI show. Almost five years later to the day, the group had learned enough from that human maelstrom to exact a storm of their own, and it still rattles the shutters as soon as the needle drops on Let It Be to this day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Decca Records) Sat 25 October 2025 3:00, UK Let It Bleed poured with such…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[77,9941,269,9942,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-526302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-mick-jagger","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-the-rolling-stones","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115433063480803872","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}