LET IT BLEED
(Decca SKL 5025) (stereo edition)
dec. 1969
produced by Jimmy Miller

'Let It Bleed' is often compared to 'Beggars Banquet'. It is the 2nd Stones LP to have been produced by Jimmy Miller, and it is approximately the same length as it's predecessor, but that is pretty much where the similarities end.

While it's true that listening to both 'BB' and 'LIB' one can tell they're by the same band, and probably by the same producer, 'Let It Bleed' seems, on first listening, to be obviously inferior. It does seem better furnished with originality, and "songs", but seems to be recorded more haphazardly than it' s predecessor, and not to have all been 'played' at once, and recorded immediately, which "Beggars Banquet" does.

'Beggars Banquet' is often noted as having been the last album which Brian Jones played on. It wasn't, of course. Jones plays on 'Let It Bleed'. (On "Midnight Rambler" he plays marimbas)
While Brian's successor, Mick Taylor, also appears on 'Let It Bleed', the fact is that for most of the time recording it The Stones were without a permanent 2nd guitar. The onus was on Keith Richards to pretty much write, play and record any material which would form an LP for release in 1969. Coupled with the fact that they had to organise the biggest tour anyone had ever undertaken in the winter of '69, it all makes the release of even a fairly mediocre LP look unlikely, never mind the staggeringly brilliant one which appeared in record shops in December 1969.

Like it's predecessor, 'Let It Bleed' opens with a piece of music which seems impossibly good, and as a consequence does the rest of the album few favours. "Gimme Shelter" (described in Rolling Stone by Greil Marcus as "the greatest ever rock and roll recording") is so intense, so fraught, so perfectly pressurised that the first time listener's emotions are not entirely available to properly ingest how well Robert Johnson's 'Love In Vain' is re-interpreted immediately afterwards.

"Country Honk" is commonly thought to be a 'C&W version' of "Honky Tonk Women", but is in fact the original version of this song. If anything, "Honky Tonk Women" is an electric rock version of "Country Honk". The violin player, Byron Berline, liked playing outdoors, and he played his contribution stood in the studio car park. The car horn you can hear is from a car driving past while he did so.

First time listeners, mindful of how strongly side 1 had opened, and hardly expecting side 2 to offer anything like as dazzling must have almost fainted when "Midnight Rambler" thudded and fucked it's way out of the speakers. Malevolent and sinister, 'Midnight Rambler' employs that soon-to-be arch Rolling Stones device of at first seeming to glory in the foulest, blackest human traits, but ultimately reveals it's intention, that of warning it's listeners of what people are capable of doing, anytime, anywhere, to anyone.

"..if you ever see the midnight rambler, crawling down your marble hall.....you can say I told you so...."

Tragically, this is all true. Wise words indeed. And none of it is The Rolling Stones' fault. People were brutal way before The Stones sang songs about it.

By the time "You Can't Always Get What You Want" appears, the listener has long since forgotten 'Let It Bleed''s obvious flaws. The album's finale is so uplifting and so galvanising it seems to draw a line under the 1960s, as far as The Rolling Stones are concerned.
The London Bach Choir, who sing on "You Can't Always Get What You Want", were horrified when they heard the rest of 'Let It Bleed', and wanted their name removed from the credits on 'moral grounds'. When they found out they would receive royalty payments for each copy sold, they hastily reviewed their 'morality' and reluctantly allowed their name to appear.

"Let It Bleed" is the album which the likes of Led Zeppelin think they have made, but nothing else has ever come close.

You haven't properly heard rock and roll music until you have heard it.