The Rolling Stones Top 75 Countdown (#03-01) & This Week's Statistics

While the Beatles heralded the commencement of the Summer of Love with the opening bars of Sgt. Pepper's and laid down the law with All You Need Is Love ("there's nothing you can do that can't be done: it's easy"), it was the Stones that gave us the bad news of the utopia's death. And the obituary read: "Rape, murder! It's just a shot away!"

In a moment of inspiration and serendipity, the above line, which Jagger felt he couldn't sing and which was initially intended for Bonnie Bramlett, who was unavailable, was given to New Orleans-born Merry Clayton, who was summoned at a last-minute late-night recording session during the mixing phase, arranged by her friend and record producer Jack Nitzsche. She seized the opportunity, wailing, "Rape, murder! It's just a shot away!" like the end times were nigh. It was more than fitting that this line be sung by a person most vulnerable to the threat of violence expressed by the lyric, both because of her gender, as well as because of her race.

"That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that," Jagger told Rolling Stone in 1995, describing Gimme Shelter. Like nothing else in Rock & Roll, the song embodies the physical experience of living through a tumultuous historical moment. It's the Stones' perfect storm: the ultimate Sixties eulogy and Rock's greatest bad-trip anthem, with the gathering power of Soul music and a chaotic drive to beat any Punk Rock. The song was born during a pounding English rainstorm. "It was just a terrible f*cking day," Richards recalled. He was killing time in the apartment of English art-scene guru Robert Fraser while girlfriend Anita Pallenberg was on set making Performance, a film in which she beds down with Jagger. With chords ghosted by a droning E-note, the music radiated dread – clearly inspired by a mix of Jimmy Reed's trance-inducing blues, Richards' own romantic anxiety, and heroin, which he'd just begun using. It took him about 20 minutes or so to get down the basics, which were fleshed out over several sessions in London and Los Angeles during 1969. The finished version is something entirely new for the Stones, with a slithering Watts-Wyman groove and full gospel-style backing vocals. When the band played the song at Altamont, minutes before concertgoer Meredith Hunter was stabbed, the lines seemed like grim prophecy. Richards later said that his guitar fell apart during the recording, "as if by design."

Gimme Shelter (our song at #3, which is upwardly mobile in my list: it may as well be #1 in a couple of years) first appeared as the opening track on the band's 1969 album Let It Bleed. Although the first word was spelled "Gimmie" on that album, subsequent recordings by the band and other musicians have made "Gimme" the customary spelling. Greil Marcus, writing in Rolling Stone magazine at the time of its release, said of it, "The Stones have never done anything better." It's definitely Keith's finest hour.

This version was filmed live at the Trans World Dome, St Louis, Missouri, on December 12 1997:

The original backing singer, Merry Clayton, recorded her own version in 1970 which entered the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #73.

Grand Funk Railroad covered the song on the album Survival in 1971; it was a #61 US single.

Patti Smith released the song as a single from her April 2007 covers album Twelve.

At #2 there's a song that was not recorded for their 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request as would seem befitting, but was instead the opening track on their 1968 album Beggars Banquet. Rolling Stone magazine placed it at #32 in their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

Jagger stated that his influence for the song came from Baudelaire and from the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (which had just appeared in English translation in 1967). The book was given to him by Marianne Faithfull.

No band ever summed up its mission on Earth as perfectly as the Stones did here. Sympathy for the Devil was a shot at their critics that also mirrored real-world evil. (Jagger had to change the lyric "who killed Kennedy" to "who killed the Kennedys" when news of Robert F. Kennedy's assassination reached the Beggars Banquet sessions in June 1968.) Originally written as a Dylan-esque folk song, it rolls forward like a storm front, driven by a menacing samba-funk groove from Watts and African percussionist Rocky Dijon and piano and bass (played by Richards), with a wicked guitar solo midway through. The unrepentant whoo-whoo backing vocals were sung by a crowd that included Watts, Jones (who would be dead in a year) and his ex-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg, who was keeping company with Richards. Mick Jagger made the role of the devil his own.

Here they are live at Zilker Park, Austin, Texas, 22nd October 2006.

Guns N' Roses recorded a cover in 1994 which reached #55 on the Billboard Hot 100; it was featured in the closing credits of Neil Jordan's film adaptation of Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.

My #1 song is You Can't Always Get What You Want. Although it was the closing track, it was the first song recorded for the album Let It Bleed (1969). So the opening track of the album is my #3 and the closing track is my #1. That's a good track record for an album, isn't it? The song was also named as the 100th greatest song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine.

It captivated me when I first heard it: the choral introduction got to me first, then the wonderful arrangement and production and finally the complex lyrics.

It was the shotgun lesson of that decade and the Stones delivered it with bittersweet flair: Everything was possible, and it all came at a price. They were at a new creative peak and preparing to return to the road. But Richards was using heroin; Jagger's girlfriend, Marianne Faithfull, had suffered a miscarriage; and Jones was all but gone. You Can't Always Get What You Want was "basically all Mick," Richards admitted. The singer turned that turmoil into a witty evocation of universal disillusionment countered by the practical hope in the chorus and a sumptuous R&B arrangement: the entrance of the London Bach Choir, arranged by Jack Nitzsche; guest pianist Al Kooper's regal contribution on French horn; and the pushing shuffle in the drums, played by producer Jimmy Miller. "It was," Richards crowed, "a beautiful juxtaposition" – just like the Sixties. If Gimme Shelter brought fear to your soul for what was to come, You Can't Always Get What You Want brought sadness for what was no more.

This is live at Twickenham Stadium, London, August 2003:

The song was also used very creatively in the funeral scene from The Big Chill (1983):

Blues musician Luther Allison covered the song for the 1997 tribute album Paint It Blue: Songs of the Rolling Stones.

Band from TV, a charity cover band whose members are all actors from American television series, covered it for the soundtrack of House.

Now, let's move on to this week's statistics. This week's was thematically different, as it was almost exclusively devoted to the Rolling Stones. It also had one of those rare days that went by without a new post, plus a day of old relatively obscure songs, which predictably didn't receive many visits. The Rolling Stones commanded a strong readership interest however.

As for our visitors' weekly Top 10, behind our usual suspects, the US and Greece, we find the UK which had another great week and comfortably sits at #3. France also had a good week and returns to #4. It was also a stellar week for the Netherlands, which occupy the 5th position. Russia continues to be on a downward spiral and is not even in the Top 10 this week. We do have a new entry, this time it's Sweden, also a re-entry, which belongs to Canada. A most hearty welcome!

The full Top 10 is as follows:

1. the United States

2. Greece

3. the United Kingdom

4. France

5. the Netherlands

6. Germany

7. Cyprus

8. Ukraine

9. Sweden

10. Canada

Here are the other countries that graced us with their presence this week (alphabetically): Afghanistan, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, China, Colombia, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Tunesia, the United Arab Emirates, and Zimbabwe. Happy to have you all!

Here's the all-time list.

1. the United States = 46.7%

2. Greece = 18.8%

3. Russia = 9.5%

4. Germany = 3.6%

5. France = 2.6%

6. the United Kingdom = 2.4%

7. Canada = 1.07%

8. Ireland = 1.02%

9. Cyprus = 0.89%

10. Italy = 0.61%

As a bonus, I went and found an interactive map, where all the countries that have visited the blog so far are in blue (as you can see, that's most of the map!). Here it is, for your discerning eyes:

That's all for today, folks. Till the next one!