13 Gimme Shelter

The Stones channeled the emotional wreckage of the late Sixties on a song that Keith Richards wrote in 20 minutes. The intro, strummed on an electric-acoustic guitar modeled on a Chuck Berry favorite, conjures an unparalleled aura of dread, while singer Merry Clayton brings down Armageddon with a soul-wracked wail. The song surfaced days after Meredith Hunter’s murder at the Altamont music festival. “That’s a kind of end-of-the-world song, really,” Mick Jagger said in 1995. “It’s apocalypse.” Richards later said that his guitar fell apart on the last take, “as if by design.”