Important Words of Warning

Song 321: This week the playlist comes around to Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones, written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, as my pick to honor the International Day of Peace that happens on Wednesday, 9/21. I arrived at Northwestern University’s Bobb Hall in September of 1969 as a major Beatles fan, but Hank Neuberger, who lived across the hall from me, strongly insisted that the Rolling Stones were much better than the Fab Four, and he soon started trying to prove his point. Having a well-stocked collection of LPs and a top quality stereo with large speakers, he happily played a lot of the Stones for my benefit. I heard Let It Bleed (their latest release) many times, and that album soon became a personal favorite. In particular, I remember one late afternoon when Hank put the needle down on it, with the system cranked loudly, and as much as I already liked this song, I felt at that moment that it sounded better than anything and everything, so he had essentially won the debate, at least for the 4 and a half minutes of this cut. Whatever I have attempted, and many other songwriters as well, I would credit Mick and Keith with creating a recording here that conveys the darkly destructive force of war in a much stronger and more compelling way than any other record by anyone else, myself included. At the time I was first hearing this track, I didn’t come close to grasping the horrors that the U.S. military presence was wreaking in Viet Nam and its neighbors, but Merry Cleyton screaming about rape and murder gives a powerful voice to the Apocalypse Now footage in the YouTube video at the link here, and makes you feel the horrific reality of those lyrics. Two decades later, in the period shortly before the 1991 Iraq war, tuned into the local NYC rock station, this track came across the airwaves, and it perfectly fit that moment of dread when people knew that a new war was coming soon. It had lost none of its power, and in fact, sounded even more powerful than it had in 1969. Today, after another 25 years, with Iraq still the scene of armed conflict, among the countless and endless wars raging in that part of the globe, and in far too many other places, this song serves as a forceful warning that war, rape and murder are all, indeed, just a shot away, and at this very moment, someone in Syria or Yemen could be saying, “Ooh, see the fire is sweepin’ our very street today.”