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".

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