"Let It Bleed" is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones are an English rock band, formed in London in April 1962 by Brian Jones , Ian Stewart , Mick Jagger , and Keith Richards . Bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Charlie Watts completed the early line-up...

. It was written by Mick Jagger

Mick Jagger

Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....

 and Keith Richards

Keith Richards

Keith Richards is an English musician, songwriter, and founding member of the Rolling Stones. Rolling Stone magazine said Richards had created "rock's greatest single body of riffs", and placed him as the "10th greatest guitarist of all time." Fourteen songs written by Richards and songwriting...

 and features on the 1969 album of the same name

Let It Bleed

Let It Bleed is the eighth British and tenth American album by English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in December 1969 by Decca Records in the United Kingdom and London Records in the United States...

.

"Sixth Stone" Ian Stewart

Ian Stewart (musician)

Ian Andrew Robert Stewart was a Scottish keyboardist, co-founder of The Rolling Stones and inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame...

 plays piano on this track (his only appearance on the album) while Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman

Bill Wyman is an English musician best known as the bass guitarist for the English rock and roll band the Rolling Stones from 1962 until 1992. Since 1997, he has recorded and toured with his own band, Bill Wyman's Rhythm Kings...

 plays autoharp. Many  believe that this song was a take on the Beatles'

The Beatles

The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...

 song/album Let It Be. The titles are very similar, and there was a running history of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles tweaking each other. The Rolling Stone's "Let It Bleed" was released months before "Let It Be", but the songs from Let It Be had been recorded earlier than most of the songs in Let It Bleed.

The song opens with a slide piece and quickly moves into a solo acoustic guitar

Acoustic guitar

An acoustic guitar is a guitar that uses only an acoustic sound board. The air in this cavity resonates with the vibrational modes of the string and at low frequencies, which depend on the size of the box, the chamber acts like a Helmholtz resonator, increasing or decreasing the volume of the sound...

 strumming C

C major

C major is a musical major scale based on C, with pitches C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. Its key signature has no flats/sharps.Its relative minor is A minor, and its parallel minor is C minor....

, F

F major

F major is a musical major scale based on F, consisting of the pitches F, G, A, B, C, D, and E. Its key signature has one flat . It is by far the oldest key signature with an accidental, predating the others by hundreds of years...

, and G

G major

G major is a major scale based on G, with the pitches G, A, B, C, D, E, and F. Its key signature has one sharp, F; in treble-clef key signatures, the sharp-symbol for F is usually placed on the first line from the top, though in some Baroque music it is placed on the first space from the bottom...

chords before bass, drums, and piano join in respectively.