How ‘Let It Bleed’ Used a Shifting Cast (Ry Cooder’s Mandolin) and a Slowed-Down Tape Trick on ‘Gimme Shelter’

The Let It Bleed sessions at Olympic Studios in London were a revolving door of guests. Ry Cooder showed up to play mandolin on “Love in Vain,” the Robert Johnson cover. Cooder wasn’t a Stones regular — he’d just been playing with Captain Beefheart and would later make Paradise and Lunch. His mandolin gives that track a dry, mournful Appalachian feel, a subtle counterpoint to Richards’ acoustic.

More famous is what engineer Jimmy Miller did with “Gimme Shelter.” He intentionally ran the tape at a slightly slower speed during recording, then played it back at normal speed. This pitched everything up a notch — Keith’s guitar got that tight, jittery attack, and Merry Clayton’s vocal leap on “rape, murder” gained that extra, almost painful strain. It’s a cheap studio trick that turned an already tense song into something genuinely unhinged.