Taking Sides: "Gimme Shelter" VS. "When the Levee Breaks"

Also, WtLB wins if only for its sampleability that made many other tunes possible (Beasties, Bjork (?), etc.)

That said, Levee Breaks, for me. Today.

You're insane.

"RAAAAAAAAAAPE, MURDER!"

I'm a cold italian pizza!

yeah whatever.

Also, Zep's lyrics clearly win in the horribleness stakes.

Keef's reaction to Mick is often more entertaining than Mick's antics, tis true...

(and don't get me wrong, I love the Stones, but I really do have issues with a lot of Mick's crap and sometimes wish he could be excised altogether)

2. There's nothing in Levee so clever as the "Love is just a kiss away" part of Shelter. Hopeful contrast to war etc.? Sexiness of danger and confusion? Mocking equivalence to war etc.? Genius ambiguity, one of the best moments of Jagger's persona.

3. Shelter is faster, edgier; Levee a little, um, ponderous.

4. But Levee is great. All the good things people say about it are true. Glad I don't have to choose.

You know, this is a lot more sensible than most of the other silly "TS" debates. Good one, Alex.

You know, "Over There" by Yankee Doodle Cagney "meant something" back in its day as well. Guess that means that it's also better than "When the Levee Breaks".

I can think of precious few songs that arrive out of the speakers with such ominous grace as "Gimme Shelter", but "..Levee"'s glacier-cracking drum intro (like the fearsome sound of an incalculably giant robot striding forth to crush an entire town) comes damn close. Both of these tracks conjure such a forbidding atmosphere of encroaching cataclysm that I really can't say which I prefer, but I love them both dearly. Admittedly, it's virtually impossible to hear "Gimme Shelter" and not think of its significance to the era it was born out of. That certainly enhances its mystique, but I don't think it necessarily renders it a better song than "When the Levee Breaks".

Very tough to pick one. No straw man here. Weren't the drums for "Levee" recorded in the entrance hall of a castle? I will tell you that I went to a party long ago where some dudes were discussing their favorite Zep tracks. I mentioned "Levee," prompting the response, "That's one you smoke to! That's one you smoke to!" (I never did learn what activities where appropriate for the other tracks on that album) Such a response might have made me turn against a lesser track, but not this one.

Let us also not forget the mighty sample in "Rhyming and Stealing."
But I still ain't picking one.

I still recall pointing out to a friend of mine who particularly liked Chapterhouse that they stole that drum sound for their "Pearl" single. She didn't believe me til I played her the song and then she didn't know what to say! I do like Chapterhouse, though...

Haha, I recognized that from the start. She seriously couldn't say anything, like she was shocked or disgusted or something?

Now that I think about it there is another song that might have been a contender here: Hendrix doing "All Along the Watchtower." Something about the clatter of the drums and the way the guitars well up (or is that a harmonica?) on both "Shelter" and "Watchtower" remind me of somebody swooping down on the city, of horses riding in, and of other horses doing that thing horses do when they get scared (shying?) when they get a whiff of what's coming.

Gimme Shelter has some of the best lyrics and one of the most convincing vocal performances for a Stones song (Try and see a tape the Mick Jagger/Muddy Waters face-off for the another type of performance) Love the part about the fire burning "like a red cool carpet."

I'm siding with Zep.

Very OTM and nicely worded.

The lyrics:
If it keeps on rainin', levee's goin' to break, [X2]
When The Levee Breaks I'll have no place to stay.

Mean old levee taught me to weep and moan, [X2]
Got what it takes to make a mountain man leave his home,
Oh, well, oh, well, oh, well.

Don't it make you feel bad
When you're tryin' to find your way home,
You don't know which way to go?
If you're goin' down South
They go no work to do,
If you don't know about Chicago.

Cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
Now, cryin' won't help you, prayin' won't do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

All last night sat on the levee and moaned, [X2]
Thinkin' about me baby and my happy home.
Going, going to Chicago... Going to Chicago... Sorry but I can't take you...
Going down... going down now... going down....

Okay, so if the protoganist is weeping and moaning on the levee (which is designed to hold back the waters in a region that is below sea level), and concerned about it breaking....why would it be of any concern to a "mountain man"? Mountain men live way above sea level, and have no need for levees.

I wish more big acts would riff on their contemporaries.

Oh, and Gimme Shelter not by a hair but by a mile. Levee has a better groove, but who cares? Gimme Shelter is flat-out creepier. Some ominous, ominous shit, man.

Also it makes a far better mashup with "Let The Music Play."

I gotta go with Gimme Shelter by a country mile. It's one of the few songs that send a chill down my back every goddamn time I hear it.

Wow. Can anyone post a link? I'd love to hear this.

And which is unfortunately not currently up on the gohomeproductions site...

blog with separate tracks of Gimme Shelter this is pretty fucking amazing

the mick/merry vocal track is INSANE acapella...

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/deconstructing_gimme_shelter_listen/

this is the greatest song

1. As Mick n Keef said, Shelter meant something, Levee not so much. Levee = a great track on a great corporate album, but hardly anyone paid attention to it for a long time. Shelter = perfect representation of the zeitgeist of a time when no one really knew if it wasn't all going to fall apart. Levee = another overwrought Zep blues track. Shelter = about what was happening right now.

^ this has to be one of the most laughable things I've ever read. Way to go.

dude check out the shit i just posted it's so dope

at their peak they were conjuring some serious bad mojo

ha you can hear mick (?) reacting to clayton's voice frying out. plus there's a third voice in there! amazing

yeah that little "WOO!" after she goes chipmunk for a sec is precious....

honestly though the construction of this song is so weird...like keith's parts sound half random, charlie just chugs along, wyman bounces between a few notes, and somehow it all holds together and becomes this huge sounding thing.

yeah that moment with mick reacting to clayton is wonderful -- can't imagine jagger was a guy who was easily impressed, but he is obviously like "holy shit!" there.

and yeah, part of what make "shelter" so amazing is that it IS strangely put together -- you hear live versions of the song from the 70s and it sort of seems like the band isn't even sure how to play it.

it's also kinda o_O to hear her just GOING IN on belting out RAAPE MUUUR-UR-UR-DEEER so hard

yeah you wonder how the stones presented the song to her -- not the usual backing vocalist role there.

yeah, caught that one yesterday. never realized there was so much reverb used on the vocals, btw. like, wow, man! dig it.

Mick's voice gets so deep, too; it brings out the depth of those groans.

re: reverb -- it's always surprising when i hear isolated vocal track things how much they use. totally cavernous sounding a lot of the time, with stuff like the beatles/beach boys. but it becomes more subliminal i guess when you have everything else going on around it.

really feeling the guiro on the percussion track

like in a major way

It would be good if these were all the same length so you could try to put e.g. the bass and drums together.

(suppose I could grab the audio and try to do that myself but cba)

'cause it's not just the isolated sound of a guitar string ringing out, probably. but then Stones productions were always so fuckin' dense, you really couldn't tell what was used where or how.

xps

Im going with Shelter based on that link above. Also because Levee is probably a rip job.

would also love to hear the separate tracks for "Levee," tho!

yeah is there anything out there like this for Zep tracks? probably, right?

re: reverb -- it's always surprising when i hear isolated vocal track things how much they use. totally cavernous sounding a lot of the time, with stuff like the beatles/beach boys. but it becomes more subliminal i guess when you have everything else going on around it.

also, back then i believe it was still common practice to print the reverb on the track -- i.e. to record the vocal with the reverb already on it -- whereas today (and for the past 35 or so years) you would record the vocal dry and add the reverb only when you're mixing.

here's some fun floyd isolated tracks: http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2007/03/doityourself_da.html

yeah is there anything out there like this for Zep tracks? probably, right?

There's a disc/mp3 collection of Bonham's drum outtakes from In Through The Out Door, but haven't run across anything earlier.

Also...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWI9bMe7gHE

I listened to them both on the drive home last night, back to back.

The intros are a dead fucking tie.

Main body of the songs - Gimme Shelter. As cool as Levee's shifts are, and as ridiculous as Page's slide guitar is, Gimme Shelter is just fucking relentless, and keeps building and building.

Outro - Gimme Shelter. Levee goes on a bit too long to sustain it.

But I would be remiss to not mention that Bonham's drums almost made this a first round knockout, winner Zep.

No contest for me - if I were doing my 20th century poll ballot again now, 'Gimme Shelter' would be clear at the top with a blank space at no.2 to reflect its superiority.

Still torn on this one.

me otm in this thread

Neat how both tracks won their respective polls years after this thread

And both by an absolute mile too

me otm in this thread
― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, November 21, 2013 3:50 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

those Gimme Shelter backing vocals are atrocious
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, November 12, 2004 2:51 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark

uhh lmao

twenty feet from suggest ban

it's just a click away

Whatever. GS is like a major sacred cow w you guys but I'm not feelin it.

shelter always seems so sloowwwwwwwwwwww

i wonder if maybe it is sped up in some of its film uses to make it more thrilling

btw all but the vocal trax are gone from youtube in the link above : (

whereas everything about WTLB is more interesting to me - the monster drum track, the creative engineering, Plant's backwards harmonica solo, the wordless breaks. the track sounds and feels like a storm. GS sounds like a bunch of British schoolboys playing at being tough and oh look they hired a black woman to sing backup how exciting

"This is like our generations national anthem."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3i22Y8pEQQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7M7d8u40I4

much as i love Gimme Shelter, Levee's bitchin drums cannot be fucked with.

But neither can Shelter's chills-inducing intro.

I can't/won't choose. Neither band could've done what the other did on these songs.

Scorsese has ruined Shelter for me, the twat

Levee for the drums and the fact its been sampled in so much good stuff

escape goat otm

gimme shelter for merry clayton alone, fuck a drummer

(shoutout to five years back, i guess)

i feel like when the levee breaks is better

i was never such a zeppelin fan but this song is just so BIG

'When the Levee Breaks' has the superior engineering/production, but even with that in mind this is obviously 'Gimme Shelter' for me, which I feel is the superior song. I don't even consider 'When the Levee Breaks' to be one of their Top 20 best tracks; anyway!

those Gimme Shelter backing vocals are atrocious - everything on When the Levee Breaks is perfect. Zep wins again.
― Shakey Mo Collier, Friday, November 12, 2004 2:51 PM (twelve years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Is this the wrongest thing Shakey has ever said?

i was never such a zeppelin fan but this song is just so BIG

― Treeship, Wednesday, April 5, 2017 9:18 AM (thirty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

still many orders of magnitude smaller than "Gimme Shelter," a thunderclap that reaches across the universe

Why at night does ilm get all zepped up

gimme shelter has the better lick, levee has the riff

me otm in this thread

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier), Thursday, November 21, 2013 12:50 PM (three years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

When The Levee Breaks - it was also sampled in Beastie Boys, St. Etienne, Enigma and Sophie B Hawkins

so seems to have an ever enduring drum break

gimme shelter is maybe the single greatest stones performance -- something so scary and uncanny about that very quiet opening, all the stranger when you realize keith is just playing a slowed-down old chuck berry riff. a lot of stones tracks from the beggars banquet/let it bleed era feel very spooky to me, actually.

OTM! Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main St. and Goats Head Soup have a similar spooky feel, I think.

Totally. Grim hedonism at the end of the world.

Idk if I'll ever get what some people see in the Stones.

I really like a lot of their mid-60s songs, though.

gimme shelter is maybe the single greatest stones performance

To me, this title actually belongs to "Casino Boogie" from Exile, but I've never liked the Stones in epic mode. Grand Funk Railroad's version of "Gimme Shelter" is better, because they capture its lunkheadedness (because, you know, they were lunkheads).

Oh man, I love the Stones in epic mode! Stuff like 'Midnight Rambler' and 'Can't You Hear Me Knocking?' ... although they haven't always got it right ... 'Goin' Home' really doesn't need to be 11 minutes long or whatever.

I'm listening to it now and I'm not entirely opposed to your view! xp

Oh man, "Goin' Home" totally kills Aftermath for me.

I'm listening to it now and I'm not entirely opposed to your view! xp

reading thru the thread & went looking for the Gimme Shelter / Let the Music Play mash-up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hVrb143bh0

both songs are classics but the slide riff wins this for Levee for me

that's not my post i still drop that on people occasionally. it's a good mash-up! i miss the mash-up era lol.

whereas everything about WTLB is more interesting to me - the monster drum track, the creative engineering, Plant's backwards harmonica solo, the wordless breaks. the track sounds and feels like a storm. GS sounds like a bunch of British schoolboys playing at being tough and oh look they hired a black woman to sing backup how exciting

― Ayn Rand Akbar (Shakey Mo Collier)

come on.

that's the whole thing with the rolling stones -- on paper they are the corniest, least defensible band of all time. but their best songs -- which are also the ones that shouldn't work -- are impossible to resist.

GS wouldn't even be in my Stones top 10 tbh

the STONES are the biggest cornballs "on paper"? in what universe?

xp I'm beginning to think you don't like that song

I like it fine I just don't think it's amazing. WTLB is legit amazing.

Shakey prefers the Goo Goo Dolls version

the STONES are the biggest cornballs "on paper"? in what universe?

― Neanderthal

delta blues mixed with baudelairean hedonism pulled off by middle class british kids

I will have you know I have never heard a Goo Goo Dolls song

xp how does that differ from LZ?

No Tolkien

the rolling stones had already established the template by the time led zeppelin came along. audiences had a sense that it was cool to sing in a weird american patois while twirling around onstage in glittery pants

Zap fans being clueless about the Stones happens in the wild all the time but how the fuck is it so often on ilm?

People would view the Stones differently if they'd fallen apart in a haze of drugs and debauchery in 1974, or split up after Tattoo You in the early '80s.

I never thought Plant sounded American? His "o"s are p obvious in e.g. "Little drops of rain/Whisper of the pain/Tears of love lost in the days gone by".

I am a fan of both bands if that wasn't clear

xxp

I am the biggest Stones stan and I still can't put GS over WTLB. It's like a muscle car vs a T-34 tank. WTLB is a beast. Beast wins

first time i heard gimme shelter was as a music cue when Elizabeth Shue and the kids are heading into scary Chicago with the tow truck driver in Adventures in Babysitting. spooky vibes.

to my knowledge, there is really no stones song that sounds like "gimme shelter"

plenty of better led zeppelin songs that are more or less similar to "when the levee breaks"

come to think of it, there is really no song on earth that sounds like quite like "gimme shelter"

it's a rare moment when the stones transcend themselves, take full advantage of the studio, dust themselves off and refuse to content themselves with raggedy half-assed production and sloppy performances (not meant to be derogatory). "when the levee breaks" is just another notch on the belt for led zeppelin, however good as it is (and it's very good). "gimme shelter" is magic, though. it is greater than the sum of its parts and after hundreds of listens i still sometimes wonder exactly what's going on.

Gimme Shelter is the easiest song for me to conjure in my mind. Without trying to I've absorbed every instrumental part, when and how the dynamics work. all of it. I can pretty much listen to it in my head if I want and this is true of very few other songs.

WTLB for Bonzo alone. The intro of course, but the ability to pull off a roll-fill like the one at 5:12...

I mean maybe this remembered version is wrong in some places idk but it is weirdly complete.

i remember C is for Cookie very well

Who could forget Cookie Monster's backmasked harmonica part?

that's crazy to me. there is so much texture in that song, i can't hold it in my brain. i feel that way about "levee," though. the production is so crisp that there's no real mystery to the song; you can hear exactly who is doing what at all times. that's one of the reasons i prefer "gimme shelter." another is that it kicks off a totally sloppy, sleazy record with this anthemic exuberance that wouldn't lead you to believe that the rest of the record is ... well, what "let it bleed" is. just sort of sloppy and decidedly not epic, excepting the first track (and, to a certain extent, the last one).

What about Monkey Man!

And yeah there's a lot of texture bur it's kind of seared in my brain.

The bridge in that song is so gorgeous, but then it's cut off by Mick shrieking "I'm a Monkey!" It's like the entire 60s summarized in 40 seconds.

i don't know if i'd call "monkey man" epic, but yeah that track kills. "let it bleed" kills. in terms of HUGE songs, though, the stones aren't really that kind of band, not in my estimation. "beggar's banquet" is maybe my favorite, precisely because it has no pretensions of studio mastery.

listening to early BBC sessions of the stones you can totally hear what made them great as a live band, everything groovy and brian's maracas super crisp.

i'd take "the lemon song" over "gimme shelter" but i think WTLB is sort of indulgent, it drags on. plus it's a cover! if you're going to wax poetic about bonham's drumming, my feeling is like, well, that's kind of EVERY zeppelin track. WTLB is not special in this regard.

no idea if this is true, but wikipedia says:

"When the Levee Breaks" was recorded at a different tempo, then slowed down, explaining the "sludgy" sound, particularly on the harmonica and guitar solos. Because this song was heavily produced in the studio, it was difficult to recreate live; the band only played it a few times in the early stages of their 1975 U.S. Tour, before dropping it for good.

On the new expanded Coda there's what they call a 'rough mix' of Levee that really sounds like an undoctored basic track, the band live in the studio, really showing the work that went into it.

I never thought Plant sounded American?
I'm not sure exactly what he's doing on the studio version of Bring it on Home, but it's weird

I would definitely say that 'Monkey Man' is an epic, and I think with the exception of a couple of tracks on side one, Let It Bleed is very well produced. Side two is flawless, IMO.

On the new expanded Coda there's what they call a 'rough mix' of Levee that really sounds like an undoctored basic track, the band live in the studio, really showing the work that went into it.

I'm not sure exactly what he's doing on the studio version of Bring it on Home, but it's weird

So what other studio tracks were intentionally slowed down prior to Levee? Not just by LZ but by anyone

"Rain" by The Beatles is the first one that springs to mind. They played it in A and slowed it down to G.

So what other studio tracks were intentionally slowed down prior to Levee? Not just by LZ but by anyone

Not slowed down but"Caroline No" by The Beach Boys was sped up to make Brian's voice sound younger – believe this was Murray's suggestion.

Also, Plant's vox on "The Song Remains the Same" are 100% absolutely sped up – it almost doesn't even sound like the same guy singing on the live versions. Have seen a lot of complaining about the "pinched" register he was using on that song and in the years to come but it had a lot less to do with Plant and more to do with choices Page was making at the mixing desk.

It's my least favourite Plant vocal on a LZ track.

SAYYYM SAYYYM SAYYYYM SAYYYYM SAYYYYM... ooooOooooOOOOOoo! Yeah, shut up already!

It's a shame, because I love 'The Song Remains The Same' as a piece of music, but that sped-up vocal, on the days I can't tune it out, ruins the track for me.

Recordings getting sped up or slowed down is a v old technique (although it wasn't always done in the studio, and it wasn't always for artistic reasons)

when the levee breaks is great

but yeah gimme shelter is more otherworldly to me, that intro just conjures up so much dread also merry clayton screaming into the abyss > robert plant screaming into the abyss

^^^ exactly my feeling on this

yea i prefer gimme shelter. both are great songs.

GS sounds like a bunch of British schoolboys playing at being tough and oh look they hired a black woman to sing backup how exciting

both of these bands are arguably blueshammer

gimme shelter is murky, unpredictable, chaotic, sloppy, it doesn't get old for me. when the levee breaks is fantastic but i can see where it goes a mile away, there are no surprises in it

how is zeppelin "blueshammer" they had a lot of blues but battle of evermore or immigrant song or carouselambra or achilles last stand or down by the seaside or etc etc etc etc

blueshammer can play a little folk ditty here and there and still be blueshammer

folkhammer

smdh

smdhammer :/

The guitar (and maybe drums) on Song Remains sounds a bit pitched too. And some of those runs are awfully fast

Blueshammer of the Gods

WTLB went way up for me when I heard the Memphis Minnie tune, I think I had always assumed it was another homage.

It is sort of an homage.

They're both transcendent but Marcos OTM.

This convo is reminding me of something I read years ago, by an 80's editor of Circus, talking about how his Hard Rock/Heavy Metal audience didn't care about the Stones at all, and when he put them on the cover, it was the lowest selling issue. In the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal continuum, Stones are as far away from the middle as you can get and still call it "hard", Zep somewhere close to the center. Stones may have set up the blues-Baudelairean blend, and pioneered satanic overtones and dreadful atmosphere with spangled trousers, but they didn't end up defining it in any way. In the context of HR/HM, there's something avuncular about their excess. Keith Richards' has dropped a lot of contempt for rock that goes harder than the Stones, even from peers like The Who and Led Zep. It makes sense that once metal became more of a freestanding genre, the fans could sense that dividing line that Richards didn't want to cross. The dabbling in disco and the long-term commitment to r'n'b didn't help. I'd imagine you could have grabbed one of those 1986 heshers out of the Heavy Metal parking lot, and they'd have rated future-indie-darlings The Kinks higher than the Stones, what with "Destroyer" and "Low Budget" and such.

Was "Gimme Shelter" the first rock song with "gimme" in the title? It's a funny word when you think about it, there's a kind of greedy consumerism to it. Gimme gimme gimme. Seems more appropriate for the guy in the glass booth with all those dollar bills flying around.

I wonder how much of Keef's contempt for LZ stems from competition

xpost Spencer Davis Group would say "no"

Was "Gimme Shelter" the first rock song with "gimme" in the title?

Extremely unlikely.

(xp) There you go!

I'm not even sure THAT'S the first one tho, just 3 years earlier.

tryin' to find the best way to Google it cos "gimme song" just leads me to Spotify

britney's gimme more > gimme shelter?

gtfo

Break My Stride > When the Levee Breaks?

"Gimmie Blues" – Clarence Williams Washboard Band (ca. 1926-1929)
"Gimme Gimmie Blues" – Louis Jordan & His Tympany 5 (sometime between 1938-1954)

makes sense that it would have taken root in classic blues tunes

britney's gimme more > gimme shelter?

― marcos, Sunday, April 9, 2017 7:20 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm genuinely having a hard time answering this question