Let It Bleed

Album review

Whether it's the atmospheric reverb on "Midnight Rambler," Byron Berline's fiddle (recorded outside on the street) on "Country Honk," or the meaty bass part that opens "Live with Me," Let It Bleed has always been an album full of intriguing sound. Add to that Merry Clayton's unforgettable vocal overdubs on "Gimme Shelter" (as well as its opening ghostly voices, washboard guiro scrapes and reverb-drenched guitar) and Let It Bleed, newly remastered by Bob Ludwig for its 50th anniversary reissue, is an album especially suited to the world of high resolution audio.

From 1968 through 1972, no popular music act (except The Beatles) made better albums than The Rolling Stones. Their blockbuster run began in late 1968 with Beggars Banquet and continued through Let It Bleed (1969), Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main Street (1972). If Beggars Banquet was the sound of the band stripping down their sound and working out their frustrations over their legal tangles and impending departure of Brian Jones (replaced in June 1969 by Mick Taylor), Let It Bleed was the band emerging unbowed, with a new confidence and a dramatic leap in songwriting quality from Jagger/Richards, bookended by the ominous "Gimme Shelter" and the common sense rock gospel of "You Can't Always Get What You Want."

Let It Bleed also acknowledges the band's deep roots in the blues with with an acoustic cover of Robert Johnson's "Love in Vain," Richards' prolific slide guitar parts and "Midnight Rambler," the band's "blues opera." Despite its popularity (#1 in UK and #3 in US), there's even a sleeper track—the underrated "Monkey Man," whose lyrics sum up the swinging '60s with impenetrable lines like, "I'm a cold Italian pizza / I could use a lemon squeezer / What you do?”

Originally produced by Jimmy Miller and engineered by Glyn Johns, the new remastering is a sonic refresh with a larger soundstage that adds new detail to Jagger's vocal performance of "Love in Vain" and Richards' guitar work in "Midnight Rambler". Like all the recent ABKCO reissues from this period, this may well be the best Let It Bleed will ever sound. © Robert Baird / Qobuz