Question: what does the song gimme shelter mean

title: Gimme Shelter
text: Well , it 's a very rough , very violent era . The Vietnam War . Violence on the screens , pillage and burning . And Vietnam was not war as we knew it in the conventional sense . The thing about Vietnam was that it was n't like World War II , and it was n't like Korea , and it was n't like the Gulf War . It was a real nasty war , and people did n't like it . People objected , and people did n't want to fight it ... That 's a kind of end - of - the - world song , really . It 's apocalypse ; the whole record 's like that .