WCSX Classic Cuts
The Rolling Stones: “Gimme Shelter”
The Hook: Keith Richards wrote most of it, then handed it off to Mick Jagger to finish.
Album: Let It Bleed
Year: 1969
Writers: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards
Stats: Never released as a single, but an all-time classic Stones cut that lent its title to the band’s Altamont documentary a year later.
Background: Guitarist Keith Richards was the driving force behind The Rolling Stones’ classic “Gimme Shelter,” but he tells us he didn’t write it on his own.
Keith Richards on the writing of “Gimme Shelter.” OC:…it off. :17
“It was pretty much written, it just came out, ‘A storm is threatening my very life today.’ I had the sequence and the first couple of verses and this is one of those periods where everything was, y’know, I was trying to sort of patch it all together and Mick was doing two things at once and he polished it off and finished it off.”
