Song
Gimme Shelter
The Rolling Stones
Album:
Let It Bleed
Song Meaning of Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones, and what it is about
Gimme Shelter, is a song by English rock band the Rolling Stones and is the opening track on their 1969 album Let It Bleed, the track covers the brutal realities of war, including murder, rape and fear.
On a song that Keith Richards penned in only 20 minutes, the Stones tapped into the emotional devastation of the late 1960s.
The electric-acoustic guitar used in the intro, which is modelled after a Chuck Berry favourite, creates an atmosphere of unmatched dread.
With her soul-crushing cry, singer Merry Clayton brings Armageddon down: "Rape, murder, it's just a shot away." Days after Meredith Hunter was killed at the Altamont music festival, the song started to circulate. In 1995, Mick Jagger remarked, "That's kind of an end-of-the-world song, really."
"It’s apocalypse" Later, Richards said that his guitar broke on the final take "as if by design."
Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone magazine:
‘Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense. The thing about Vietnam was that it wasn't like World War II, and it wasn't like Korea, and it wasn't like the Gulf War. It was a real nasty war, and people didn't like it. People objected, and people didn't want to fight it ... That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that.’
The song's inspiration was not initially Vietnam or social unrest, however, but Richards seeing people scurrying for shelter from a sudden rain storm. According to him:
‘I had been sitting by the window of my friend Robert Fraser's apartment on Mount Street in London with an acoustic guitar when suddenly the sky went completely black and an incredible monsoon came down. It was just people running about looking for shelter – that was the germ of the idea. We went further into it until it became, you know, rape and murder are 'just a shot away'.’
Gimme Shelter lyrics by The Rolling Stones
Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, 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 your 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
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
It's just a shot away
It's just a shot 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
It's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away
Kiss away, kiss away
Release Date
1969
Songwriter/s
Jagger-Richards
Producer/s
Jimmy Miller
Label/s
Decca, ABKCO
