Let It Bleed
About this Album
Released on November 28, 1969, Let It Bleed is the eighth British and tenth American studio album by The Rolling Stones, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest rock albums ever made. Recorded primarily at Olympic Sound Studios in London with producer Jimmy Miller and engineer Glyn Johns, it arrived at one of the most turbulent moments in modern history.[1]
The album was shaped by chaos within and beyond the band. Founding member Brian Jones, whose addiction and erratic behavior had made him impossible to work with, appears on only two tracks. He was fired from the band in June 1969 and died in his swimming pool on July 3rd of that year. Mick Taylor had only just joined as his replacement.[2]
The world outside was equally unstable. The Vietnam War ground on, anti-war protests roiled American campuses, and the Manson Family murders in August 1969 shattered the last illusions of the Summer of Love. Mick Jagger has described the album's tone: it is apocalypse; the whole record is like that.[3]
The record opens with Gimme Shelter and closes with You Can't Always Get What You Want, framing the entire arc of the 1960s between a cry of existential terror and a resigned, choir-backed elegy. In between are some of the band's most celebrated performances: the menacing Midnight Rambler, the blues sorrow of Love in Vain, and the raw title track. The album reached No. 1 in the UK and No. 3 in the US. Just days after its UK release, the Altamont Free Concert made its apocalyptic opener feel prophetic.[4]