Gimme Shelter

Ooh, a storm is threatening my very life today
If I don't get some shelter, yeah, I'm gonna fade away.
War, children, its just a shot away, it's just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

Ooh, see the fire is sweeping, our very streets today
Burns like a red coal carpet, mad bull lost its way.
War, children, its just a shot away, it's just a shot away
War, children, its just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away
Rape, murder, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.

Mmmm, the flood is threatening, my very life today
Gimme, gimme shelter or I'm gonna fade away.
War, children, it's just a shot away, it's just a shot away.
It's just a shot, away, a shot away, a shot away.

I tell ya, love, sister, it's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away
It's just a kiss away, it's just a kiss away, kiss away, kiss away.



- Released December 9, 1969

- The song first appeared as the opening track on the band's 1969 album Let It Bleed. Although the first word was spelt "Gimmie" on that album, subsequent recordings by the band and other musicians have made "Gimme" the customary spelling.

- On the recording of the album, Let it Bleed, Jagger said in a 1995 interview with Rolling Stone, "Well, it's a very rough, very violent era. The Vietnam War. Violence on the screens, pillage and burning. And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense..." On the song itself, he concluded, "That's a kind of end-of-the-world song, really. It's apocalypse; the whole record's like that."

- A much higher-pitched second vocal track is sung by guest vocalist Merry Clayton. Of her inclusion, Jagger said in the 2003 book According to... The Rolling Stones: "The use of the female voice was the producer's idea. It would be one of those moments along the lines of 'I hear a girl on this track - get one on the phone.' " Clayton gives her solo performance, and one of the song's most famous pieces, after a solo performed by Richards, repeatedly singing "Rape, murder; It's just a shot away, It's just a shot away," and finally screaming the final stanza. She and Jagger finish the song with the line, "Love, sister, it's just a kiss away." To date it remains one of the most prominent contributions to a Rolling Stones track by a female vocalist.

- Merry Clayton's name is misspelled on the album, appearing as 'Mary.'

- Merry Clayton's version of "Gimme Shelter"



- Although popular, "Gimme Shelter" was never released as a single. It placed #38 on the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004.

- Academy Award-winning director Martin Scorsese has used this song in 3 of his films: Goodfellas, Casino and The Departed.