No. 695 – Gimme Shelter

Performer: The Rolling Stones

Songwriters: Mike Jagger, Keith Richards

Original Release: Let It Bleed

Year: 1969

Definitive Version: The studio version

When I was making the transition from Herald City to Flint at the end of 1989 was really the only time my interest in the Rolling Stones went beyond a mere a dabbling.

I found my apartment in Grand Blanc the previous weekend, and my move was going to be something of a whirlwind. I had learned from my previous two moves—to New Buffalo and Mount Prospect—that a roundtrip rental of a U-Haul truck was less expensive than a one-way trip.

At the time, that was useful information, because $50 was $50, and I was more willing to invest the time than the money back then. Of course, there was a practicality to my decision: I had to get my car there, too, and I didn’t want to spend an additional $50 to tow it behind the truck.

The Saturday just before Halloween was going to be a long one. I got up early to get the truck and loaded it up with the help of Doug, who had another tenant lined up to take over my bedroom, which let me off the hook for owing my last month’s rent on the lease I had signed a year before.

My plan was to drive to Grand Blanc, unload the truck, drive back and spend the night on the couch, before driving my car back the next day. Fortunately, I didn’t have a lot of stuff to take with me, so I didn’t need a big truck. Unfortunately, the truck I got was a real tank. If I got it much past 55, it started to shake. In other words, I COULDN’T get it past 55. So that made a long drive—particularly in the rain, which it did most of the time in Michigan—that much longer.

It was mid-afternoon by the time I finally arrived in Grand Blanc, and it was a rainy, gray sky—exactly the weather you want when you move, right? My new landlord, Jerry, turned over the key to the apartment in exchange for my first month’s rent, and I was tickled that the key was a skeleton key. I might as well just lock the door with string and some gum. But I was seemingly out in the middle of the country, so I wasn’t too worried about being robbed. Besides, I didn’t have much of value anyway.

Jerry gave me a hand with the move at that end, and all I did was unload everything that would go into the apartment and move the furniture that I wouldn’t need—my bed—into the garage, which cost extra to rent for your car but which Jerry let me use for storage for free. I didn’t want to waste a lot of time in Michigan, because I had to get back on the road for the 6-hour (at 55 mph) return trip. I’d do my unpacking on Sunday.

I don’t remember much of the rest of the evening. In fact, I don’t remember when I took the truck back and got my car, whether it was that night (which I think it was) or the next morning. But I remember the next morning. I woke up early on the couch, took my leave of Doug, who wasn’t such a bad roommate after all and headed off on a bright, blue, crisp fall day, undoubtedly with this song playing on the car stereo.

It was a brand-new day.