How Merry Clayton’s Scream on ‘Gimme Shelter’ Cost Her a Pregnancy

Merry Clayton was asleep at her Los Angeles home when producer Jack Nitzsche called around midnight and begged her to come to the studio. The Rolling Stones had been trying all night to get a female vocalist to match the intensity of the song, but nobody could hit it. Clayton showed up in her pajamas, pregnant, and gave them exactly what they needed — that high, desperate wail on “Rape, murder, it’s just a shot away.” She sang it once, the whole band went silent, and then she headed back home.

When she got home, she started bleeding. Clayton miscarried shortly after the session. She has said she never made the connection until years later — that pushing her voice that hard, that late in her pregnancy, might have caused the loss. The take she left behind became one of the most chilling moments in rock history, and the Stones didn’t even give her a credit on the original single. She found out later from friends that her voice was on the record.