https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOyM7l4NJso
Reportedly, Ramones frontman Joey Ramone chose to listen to this song on his deathbed.
When I was young, I used to listen to the radio with my parents. They would play standards and motown and golden oldies, 50s and 60s and 70s, and all the songs were love songs. All of them. Every Beatles song from A Hard Day's Night, and Help!, and Rubber Soul, and Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, with, like maybe seven exceptions are about girls, love, heartbreak, romance, longing. All of them. Beach Boys, Rolling Stones, all of them. I understood perfectly at the time.
I think the two might be connected: why, out of all the great swathes of music, a dying musician would choose to listen to a pop song about love, and why the radio plays love songs. It made sense when I was ten.
Showing posts with label the rolling stones. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the rolling stones. Show all posts
Saturday, March 23, 2013
Friday, March 15, 2013
Gimme Shelter — The Rolling Stones
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3rnxQBizoU
As ever with a famous band like The Rolling Stones, context — nearly 45 years later — is next to impossible. I understand the Vietnam War-era sentiments; I understand the constant use in Martin Scorsese films; I understand the international U.S./U.K. politics (or, rather, understand that I totally don't). These are not what I want to focus on.
Two things of note about this song: One, it is forever tied to a night last June when I drove back from High School graduation through TriBeCa as the sun set, furious at high school for being done when I wasn't done with it yet, and, Two, that the female vocalist, Merry Clayton, suffered a miscarriage from hitting the high note at 3:01 in the above video.
The Rolling Stones are before my time; they reflect a rebellious proto-punk spirit which I do not embody. They are foreign, literally and metaphorically. But I am an eighteen-year-old, and The Stones have become more-or-less a rite of passage for post-puberty and young adulthood. They are angry and horny and disillusioned; they are sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and best of all, they are free of context.
As ever with a famous band like The Rolling Stones, context — nearly 45 years later — is next to impossible. I understand the Vietnam War-era sentiments; I understand the constant use in Martin Scorsese films; I understand the international U.S./U.K. politics (or, rather, understand that I totally don't). These are not what I want to focus on.
Two things of note about this song: One, it is forever tied to a night last June when I drove back from High School graduation through TriBeCa as the sun set, furious at high school for being done when I wasn't done with it yet, and, Two, that the female vocalist, Merry Clayton, suffered a miscarriage from hitting the high note at 3:01 in the above video.
The Rolling Stones are before my time; they reflect a rebellious proto-punk spirit which I do not embody. They are foreign, literally and metaphorically. But I am an eighteen-year-old, and The Stones have become more-or-less a rite of passage for post-puberty and young adulthood. They are angry and horny and disillusioned; they are sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and best of all, they are free of context.
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