THE ROLLING STONES: Let It Bleed (ROCK): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

There are albums that have left their mark on the history of rock, not only for their intrinsic qualities, but also for what they represent. "Let It Bleed", if it is also full of artistic qualities that we will discuss in a few lines, represents a turning point in the existence of the Rolling Stones. Recorded over almost a year across the United States, sometimes in sessions not approved by the American authorities, this album also has the originality of counting among its musicians, Brian Jones and Mick Taylor. The first one, as an historical guitarist and founder of the band, appears only on 2 tracks, and even then, not as a six-string player. Indeed, completely destroyed by his addiction problems, he will be fired from the band during the recording before dying 3 weeks later, drowned in his swimming pool. The second one, who arrived during the recording, will not play on more titles, not having yet the time to be really integrated.

It is thus Mick Jagger and Keith Richards who profit from their complicity and their overflowing inspiration, to reign without sharing on the 9 titles of what will become an essential legend. It is necessary to say that it is with a true voyage through the North American grounds that the subjects of its gracious majesty invite us, that it is along the tracks of a railroad, the time of the cover of "Love In Vain" of Robert Johnson, the streets of Chicago following the peregrinations of a psychopathic killer on the apocalyptic blues of "Midnight Rambler", or the Texas ranch on whose porch Jagger and Richards composed "Country Honk", a country version of what would later become the hit "Honky Tonk Women" under the influence of Mick Taylor.

The instruments apart from the basic formation are also legitimate and take part in the immense richness of this album, and we will particularly remind Leon Russell's bastring piano and Bobby Keys' fiery saxophone without which "Live With Me" would lose its contagious ardour, or Ian 'Stu' Stewart's piano which leads a "Let It Bleed" with disillusioned lyrics and a masterly rise in power, in company of Keith Richards' slide. But what would the haunting "Gimme Shelter" be without Mary Clayton's female backing vocals? Because it is her who lets the rage burst out so far hardly contained by Mick Jagger after an introduction to the disturbing arpeggios and a detour by the bad districts of a US megalopolis, and gives all its power to the unstoppable refrain from now on entered in the legend : "Rape, murder, it's just a shot away ! ".

"Let It Bleed" is also the first song officially sung in its integrality by Keith, the time of a tormented blues ("You Got The Silver") on which Brian Jones comes to put some notes of autoharp. But most of all, there are a few monuments that still shine with a thousand lights now. We have already talked about the hypnotising "Midnight Rambler" which takes us into a demented trance, varying the rhythms and the intensities, but we will not forget the outburst of a Mick Jagger inhabited on a nocturnal and funky "Monkey Man". Finally, "You Can't Always Get What You Want" comes to close the whole album like a sermon on the relativity of the existence, introduced by an angelic choir and unrolling its organs towards a gospel atmosphere for a result mixing wisdom and melody.

"Beggars Banquet" had marked the passage of the Rolling Stones to a higher level, "Let It Bleed" comes to set them up definitively at the top of the hierarchy of the Rock that they share from now on with their compatriots of the Beatles. Varied and coherent as a journey through the United States, this album is a cornerstone of a musical movement by concentrating all its facets and its quintessence within 9 songs that will mark the history of Rock forever! - Official website

THE ROLLING STONES

LET IT BLEED

EMI

ROCK