Apocalypse Rock and the Auteur Mélomane: The Stones’ “Gimme Shelter,” Martin Scorsese’s Musical Signature, in Context

Abstract

The Rolling Stones’ song “Gimme Shelter” speaks musically and lyrically to apocalyptic beliefs underpinning countercultural representations of the 1960s, accruing additional layers of meaning via its various screen roles. This discussion focuses on its use in Martin Scorsese’s GoodFellas (1990), Casino (1995), and The Departed (2006). Portending narrative disaster while replaying Scorsese’s formative relationship with the Stones’ music, in these soundtrack roles “Gimme Shelter” anchors the director’s identity as a New Hollywood “mélomane”—music-loving auteur—to rock musical aesthetics and those structures of thought and feeling that inform popular understanding and emotional periodization of the 1960s.