"Paint It Black" is a song by the English rock band the Rolling Stones. A product of the songwriting partnership of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, it is a raga rock song with Indian, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European influences and lyrics about grief and loss. London Records released the song as a single in May 1966 in the United States, and Decca Records in the United Kingdom. Two months later, London Records included it as the opening track on the American version of the band's 1966 studio album Aftermath, though it is not on the original UK release.
Originating from a series of improvisational melodies played by Brian Jones on the sitar, the song features all five members of the band contributing to the final arrangement although only Jagger and Richards were credited as songwriters. In contrast to previous Rolling Stones singles with straightforward rock arrangements, "Paint It Black" has unconventional instrumentation, including a prominent sitar, a Hammond organ, and castanets. This instrumental experimentation matches other songs on Aftermath. The song was influential to the burgeoning psychedelic genre as the first chart-topping single to feature the sitar, and widened the instrument's audience. Reviews of the song at the time were mixed, and some music critics believed its use of the sitar was an attempt to copy the Beatles, while others criticised its experimental style and doubted its commercial potential.
"Paint It Black" was a major chart success for the Rolling Stones, remaining 11 weeks (including two at number one) on the US Billboard Hot 100, and 10 weeks (including one atop the chart) on the Record Retailer chart in the UK. Upon a reissue in 2007, it reentered the UK Singles Chart for 11 weeks. It was the band's third number-one single in the US and sixth in the UK. The song also topped charts in Canada and the Netherlands. It received 2× platinum certification in the UK from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and platinum from Italy's Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (FIMI).
"Paint It Black" was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2018, and Rolling Stone magazine ranked the song number 213 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In 2011, the song was added to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's list of "The Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll". Many artists have covered "Paint It Black" since its initial release. It has been included on many of the band's compilation albums and several film soundtracks. It has been played on a number of Rolling Stones tours.
Background In 1965, popularity of the Rolling Stones increased markedly with a series of international hit singles written by lead singer Mick Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards.; . This success attracted the attention of Allen Klein, an American businessman who became their US representative in August while Andrew Loog Oldham, the group's manager, continued in the role of promoter and record producer.; ; . One of Klein's first actions on the band's behalf was to force Decca Records to grant a $1.2 million royalty advance to the group, bringing the members their first signs of financial wealth and allowing them to purchase country houses and new cars. Their October–December 1965 tour of North America was the group's fourth and largest tour there up to that point. According to the biographer Victor Bockris, through Klein's involvement, the concerts afforded the band "more publicity, more protection and higher fees than ever before."
By this time, the Rolling Stones had begun to respond to the increasingly sophisticated music of the Beatles, in comparison to whom they had long been promoted by Oldham as a rougher alternative.; ; . With the success of the JaggerRichards-penned singles "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (1965), "Get Off of My Cloud" (1965) and "19th Nervous Breakdown" (1966), the band increasingly rivalled the musical and cultural influence of the Beatles, and began to be identified as one of the major pillars of the British Invasion. The Stones' outspoken, surly attitude on songs like "Satisfaction" alienated the Establishment detractors of rock music, which music historian Colin King explains, "only made the group more appealing to those sons and daughters who found themselves estranged from the hypocrisies of the adult world – an element that would solidify into an increasingly militant and disenchanted counterculture as the decade wore on."
Development "Paint It Black" came at a pivotal period in the band's recording history. The JaggerRichards songwriting collaboration had begun producing more original material for the band over the past year, with the early model of Stones albums featuring only a few JaggerRichards compositions having been replaced by that of albums such as Out of Our Heads and December's Children (and Everybody's), each of which consisted of half original tracks and half cover songs. This trend culminated in the sessions for Aftermath (1966) where, for the first time, the duo penned every track on the album. Brian Jones, originally the band's founder and leader over the first few years of its existence, began feeling overshadowed by the prominence of Jagger and Richards' contributions to the group.
Despite having contributed to early songs by the Stones via the Nanker Phelge pseudonym, Jones had less and less influence over the group's direction as their popularity grew primarily as a result of original JaggerRichards singles. Jones grew bored attempting to write songs with conventional guitar melodies. To alleviate his boredom, he began exploring Eastern instruments, specifically the Indian sitar, with a goal to bolstering the musical texture and complexity of the band's sound. A multi-instrumentalist, Jones could develop a tune on the sitar in a short time; he had a background with the instrument largely from his studies under Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar.
Over 1965, the sitar had become a more and more prominent instrument in the landscape of British rock. The Yardbirds had attempted to record "Heart Full of Soul" with the sitar as part of the arrangement in April; however, they had run into problems getting the instrument to "cut through" the mix, and the session musician responsible for playing the instrument had trouble staying within the time signature of the song. Ultimately, the final version of "Heart Full of Soul" featured a fuzz guitar in place of the sitar, although the song's distinctively Indian timbre remained. Following similar Indian-influenced experimentation by the Kinks on "See My Friends" that nonetheless still used guitar as the primary instrument, the first British band to release a recording featuring the sitar was the Beatles, with "Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)" released that December on the album Rubber Soul. Following a discussion with the Beatles' lead guitarist George Harrison, who had recently played the sitar on the sessions for "Norwegian Wood" in October 1965, Jones began devoting more time to the sitar, and began arranging basic melodies with the instrument. One of these melodies morphed over time into the tune featured in "Paint It Black".
Writing and recording Jagger and Richards wrote the lyrics and much of the chord progression of "Paint It Black" the previous December during the first sessions for the then untitled album Aftermath, and while on the 1966 Australian tour. Initially, the first group of sessions were to be released as an album by themselves, then titled Could You Walk on the Water?; . In mid-January 1966, the British press announced that a new Rolling Stones LP carrying that title would be released on 10 March. In Rolling with the Stones, Wyman refers to the announcement as "audacity" on Oldham's part. A Decca spokesman said the company would not issue an album with such a title "at any price"; Oldham's idea upset executives at the company's American distributor, London Records, who feared the allusion to Jesus walking on water would provoke a negative response from Christians.; ; .
The title controversy embroiled the Stones in a conflict with Decca, delaying the Stones' next studio album's release from March to April 1966.; . The delay, however, gave the Stones more time to record new material for the upcoming album, which had now been retitled Aftermath. Upon their return from Australasia, it was one of the new songs worked on for the revised new album. "Paint It Black" was recorded as the Stones had begun to take more time recording their material. Referring to the atmosphere of the Stones' sessions at the time, Richards told Beat Instrumental magazine in February 1966: "Our previous sessions have always been rush jobs. This time we were able to relax a little, take our time." Sound engineer Dave Hassinger recorded the song on 6 and 9 March 1966 at RCA Studios in Los Angeles. Andrew Loog Oldham produced the track, as with all of the Stones' recordings until 1967. Both the single's US and UK B-sides were also recorded on these dates, as were a majority of album tracks for Aftermath.
"Paint It Black" follows a simple verse form that lacks a refrain. It starts with five consecutive 16-bar verses before relaxing into a chanted section and finishing in a frantic coda. The song was written originally as a standard pop arrangement in a minor key similar to "The House of the Rising Sun", which Jagger humorously compared to "songs for Jewish weddings". The Stones were dissatisfied with this version and considered scrapping the song altogether. During a session break, Bill Wyman twiddled with a Hammond organ in search of a heavier bass sound; Wyman's playing inspired the uptempo and Eastern melody. The sitar was brought into the mix when Harihar Rao walked into the studio with one in hand. With the sitar, Jones combined his recent melodic improvisations with the chord progression and lyrics provided by Jagger and Richards. Soon after the recording session, Richards felt that the track's conclusion was over-recorded and that it could have been improved.
This song may have the first recorded example of a fretless bass guitar. Wyman had removed the frets from a bass intending to replace them, but became enamoured with the fretless sound. This can be most easily heard near the end of each vocal line, when Wyman plays high on the bass's neck, using the upper register.Bill Wyman
Wyman was later critical of Oldham listing Jagger and Richards as songwriters to the exclusion of the rest of the Stones. He felt that "Paint It Black" should have been credited to the band's pseudonym, Nanker Phelge, rather than Jagger–Richards, since the song's final arrangement originated from a studio improvisation by Jones, Watts and himself, and Jones was responsible for providing the melody line on the sitar. In the view of pop historian Andrew Grant Jackson, "Paint It Black" bears a strong resemblance to the Supremes' 1965 hit "My World Is Empty Without You", which used "a foreboding minor key with harpsichord and organ".
Music and lyrics