Gimme Shelter. The last Rock and Roll song ever.

There's a Bluestone Lane Cafe right by the Port Authority in New York City. I usually arrive before seven. I'm so regular, the baristas start ringing up my order as I walk up to the counter.  A double shot of a espresso with a Magic chaser. (A Magic is a Australian for a cortado, two shots with a little bit of steamed milk.) I even haul my own clanking ceramic cups with me, along with a warmed up blueberry scone from home.

You can play nearly anything over it. I sit there and watch the world go by on their way to work. Moms towing their kids by the arm, bundled like plush toys in their winter coats. Construction guys, consultants, finance bros, admins, account execs and CFOs. Young, old, middle-aged guys with only a candle-flick of light left in their eyes, dreaming of Aruba. Young women dressed for the city, beelining, consciousness superglued to their phones.  Some are downtrodden, others are upbeat, purposeful, hunched against the wind and maybe they got a little swagger. But no one lingers. And the busses rolling around the three stacked levels of the Port Authority, bringing more. 

I sit and watch. Me, the goldfish, safe in my bowl. We'll get to work, but for now, just a moment of welcome peace amidst the hustle.

                    *****

They play a lot of Shazam-able tracks in Bluestone Lane. The vibes are Austalian, and that goes for the music sensibility as well. Sometimes vintage soul, 00's pop or a Tame Impala song I'd forgotten about. This past Tuesday Gimme Shelter came on. The lead track from the Rolling Stones' 1969 Album Let It Bleed. (Which, contrary to what I assumed, was not a cheeky middle finger to the Beatles Let It Be - which came out the next year, in March of 1970.) 

As I sat there, the ghostly background vocals rushed in my ear and the rock and roll coursed through my veins, as it has for the last 50 years. The bassline descended. I deliberated. And I came to the conclusion that there was a time before Gimme Shelter, and there was a time after. It was the culmination of a certain tradition, and after that - it got louder, and/or fuzzier, and you could layer on more tracks, and more cowbell, you could turn it to 11, but rock-and-roll was done, really. Look, no one loves hard rock more than me. Loud guitars are the sonic pillow my soul reclines on. But after Gimme Shelter, nothing was the same. And it was all the same. 

Gimme Shelter is the greatest rock and roll song of all time. Not that anyone was asking, but I'm telling. 

It doesn't matter that Gimme Shelter has become cultural wallpaper. The sort of classic rock muzak you might hear at CVS or Kings Supermarket. Even that doesn't subtract (overly much) from its haunting power. 

Gimme Shelter is a moment in time, and yet a song for all times. The rock-n-roll alpha and omega, in C minor with open E tuning. Look - loud guitars I'll make my case. 

First of all, there's the riff. It's not the most intricate riff. Just move a couple frets down, and after that, do it again. One more and repeat. Leighton Beezer once said that Keith Richards' genius lies in the effortless cool of ripping it up while moving your fingers the least you possibly can. In this case, even open tuning your guitar. Before Gimme Shelter, there had been riffy-er descending riffs. Sunshine of your Love comes to mind. And of course there's Dazed and Confused, which Jimmy Page appropriated from The Yardbirds for his own twisted and violin-bowed ends. And then there's the best song ever about a cat, Pink Floyd/Sid Barrett's Lucifer Sam. But the descending lament bass riff of Gimme Shelter is something different. It is simultaneously definite and fantastically open to improvisation. I'm not a musical theorist, but it's somehow major and minor at the same time. You can play it 1,000 times and never phrase it quite the same way twice. 

And it is sad, so, so, so sad. It's a cry of pain. It is a sadness for the loss of innocence of a generation – or even a civilization. It's the blues, but it doesn't even have the energy for the change to the fourth, much less the turnaround fifth, it just drones down and down, catching it's breath at the root, before jumping off the cliff, like a suicidal Sisyphus, again and again. 

Gimme Shelter is the dawning realization that the free speech and peace movement were pointless. They could and would be dismissed and trivialized as hippie "style;" mere long-haired, drugged and bra-less excess.

Gimme Sheleter is the blues write large. Not simply an expression of personal anguish, but societal. We got the blues, louder and bigger and yet primitive and traditional in instrumentation. Guitars, drums, but also the bluesman's howlin' old friend, the harmonica. And to top it off, the best impromptu backing vocal of all time, Merry Clayton, the Gospel singer, bringing the power of spiritualism to a cry from a soul stuck in hell.  

Rape. Murder. It's just a shout away. 

Gimme Shelter is protest music by people that don't believe protest music works. Like Dylan on a bad day, Gimme Shelter confirms what we're beginning to suspect, deep down – songs don't change a thing. In the same way that Brown Sugar is a song about race relations, written in the most offensive first person way possible, it is deadpan fantasia of irony. Unquotable, weaponized sarcasm, separating those who get it from those that don't. 

Gimme Shelter is where we were in 1969 and where we inevitably return. It's the weary anger of watching innocent people beaten and killed in the name of freedom. The soul sickness of a culture at war and eternally at war with itself and it's own ideals. As if anyone wanted this. My flesh, my bones, my nerves, every cell of me is shouting, stop. But what can we do? The forces of history have all the momentum and we are powerless and routed, broken under the wheels of progress. 

And in later 1969, it plays out horrifically at Altamont. What was supposed to be Woodstock West, became the end of the dream, with freeze-frames of a knifing of a concert goer by a Hell's Angel, who were invited to do security by the Rolling Stones. 

Gimme Shelter - as a song and cultural event – is when we stopped believing that music could change things. We stopped believing that youthful idealism could illuminate a better feature. Rock surrendered the fight, and became mere corporate entertainment. A lifestyle. A party. An excuse to get stoned. At best, a weekend release. At worst, an expression of regretful decadence and ambivalence to any personal and collective future. Arena rock. 

And there would be worthy rebellions and re-inspirations and pop-cultural grave robbing. Like a vampire, Gimme Shelter sleepwalks with Goth. Check out The Sisters of Mercy version. And Gimme Shelter presages punk's empty rebellion as well as the "grunge" nihilism of the 1990s, Gen-X's lonely middle finger at everything that sucks. 

You can shout all you want. Help ain't coming. Oh well. Whatever. Never mind. 

************

And yet, and yet, and yet.

Anyone that watches The Rolling Stones play Gimme Shelter in Havana in March of 2016 - just ten years ago! – must believe in the power of music. Watch and listen not just to the the performance, but watch the faces in the crowd. It's a reminder. From our first dance around the firelight, in the prelight of humanity, music is the deepest expression of what connects us. It is joy that crosses borders, religions, languages. 

It's love. It's just kiss away.