Gimme Shelter: 55 Years Later
Lately, I’ve been on a huge 1960’s through 1980’s rock music kick. Growing up, I was fortunate to be exposed to this music pretty early on. Car rides with Sirius XM Hair Nation blaring are some of my first music memories, with the likes of Guns ‘n’ Roses, AC/DC, and Aerosmith at the forefront.
All the credit goes to my parents for my love of music. If you know my mom, she has pretty much always been a part of a choir, she was in her high school and college marching bands, and she writes her own blog about her love for music! (check it out, linked here). As for my dad, he played in a band with his friends back in the day and was a hell of a guitar player. And if you ask mom, he’s a great singer when he decides to actually do it. I say all of this to say, I frequently revert back to this music to remind me of my great childhood.
This last week, we were sitting at our desks at work debating on the greatest eras of music. Without a doubt, we agreed some of the best rock music to date has to be from this time frame, the 60’s to the 80’s. While playing some of the hits on shuffle, one song played that I’ve always really enjoyed. Now that I’m a little older, and working in a field where the threat of war is somewhat looming, the song ‘Gimme Shelter’ by The Rolling Stones holds a lot more meaning.
With a little bit of research, I learned that this track was the first on their top charting album, Let It Bleed. At a time when our nation was in the heart of a highly disagreed upon Vietnam War, this song dropped as sort of an anthem against it. “War, children, it’s just a shot away,” is a pretty harrowing line to say the least. As a kid, I remember feeling the tone of this song without the slightest idea of what it was actually saying. The vocalists do an awesome job of conveying how dire the situation is, while the use of the harmonica and maracas set a mood unlike a lot of rock music of the time.
Aside from all of this, I couldn’t shake the fact that this was the first song on this album, in 1969. Now, I haven’t talked with my dad yet about this specifically, but he would’ve been 9 years old at this time. Unlike any experience I’ve ever had, he was a kid who was fearing his older brother, my Uncle Hot Rod, potentially being drafted to the war. Luckily this never ended up being the case. But when I try to put myself these shoes, before all of the information of the internet, before music streaming, before I could call my brother who was stationed on the other side of the world just a few years ago, it makes me realize how different life is nowadays. I imagine hearing this song on the radio, or even on a vinyl record. ‘Gimme Shelter’ being the opening track, with no internet posts to give me any idea of what to expect, would have been an insane experience.
