You Are Reading the First 6 FREE Chapters (470 pages)
“Gimme Shelter": How the Chord Progression Works
In the chord map below, melody trumps harmony (see Chapter 9). That is, the tonic chord is on the left side—the minor key side—because melodically, the song is clearly minor. Yet the tonic chord shown is the variant C♯ major instead of C♯ minor because that’s the chord they’re actually playing. In fact, this is a minor-key song that has no minor chords at all!
As the song moves into the chorus, the chords move slowly by powerful second progressions. At the end of each four-bar phrase, the second progressions repeat.
FIGURE 113: Chord Map of “Gimme Shelter” (Words and Music by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, 1969)
The only third progression appears at the end of each phrase to take the harmony to the beginning of the next repetition of the second progressions.
Like “All Along the Watchtower,” with which it shares a certain chord progression similarity, “Gimme Shelter” has no fifth progressions, up or down. No conventional cadences, either.
Both “All Along the Watchtower” and “Gimme Shelter” demonstrate the raw harmonic forcefulness that a songwriter can generate using second progressions and only three well-chosen chords.