Recently unearthed on YouTube, Greil Marcus reflects on Let it Bleed 20 years after its release. Cf. Greil’s December 1969 review of Let it Bleed in Rolling Stone.
Recently unearthed on YouTube, Greil Marcus reflects on Let it Bleed 20 years after its release. Cf. Greil’s December 1969 review of Let it Bleed in Rolling Stone.
GreilMarcus.net 
Astonishing. It’s haunting and rolling, your glorious voice, feeling, thoughts. Thank you,
Hearing him say this a full adolescence before 2016, realizing anyone can be naive about anything.
You know the old joke by people for my generation “If you say you remember The Sixties, you weren’t there.” I’ve never observed that culturally or personally, It’s the Seventies* we don’t remember, particularly if we allow that the change from “The Sixties” to “The Seventies” wasn’t an exact calendar page thing.
*Well, there’s some new imprinted memories after the middle of the decade if one was tuned in to or involved in what got labeled “punk” — but there’s still those missing years.
I wish I could go back to October 12, 1984, the last day on which I had never heard “Gimme Shelter” (or the rest of “Let it Bleed”, for that matter), just to re-experience that fear – and to hear Merry Clayton’s solo – for the first time. There are reasons I remember that date, none of them worth mentioning here, but I will say, “Let it Bleed” was the perfect accompaniment to the following day.