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Rolling Stones songs: Paint It Black
No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue/ I could not foresee this thing happening to you…
Mick Jagger: vocals, percussion Keith Richards: acoustic guitar, lead guitar, backing vocals Brian Jones: acoustic guitar, sitar Bill Wyman: bass, organ pedals Charlie Watts: drums Guest musicians: Jack Nitzsche (piano)
Before the sitar stunned radio playlists and the darkness unsettled pop’s bright optimism, Paint It Blackarrived like a cold gust through 1966. In just over three minutes, The Rolling Stones traded swagger for shadow, color for mourning, and chart-friendly comfort for something far more unsettling. This wasn’t protest music, and it wasn’t psychedelic escapism—it was grief, obsession, and unease set to an unstoppable rhythm. Audiences didn’t just hear the song; they felt it closing in. Paint It Black didn’t politely reflect the decade’s cracks—it widened them, announcing that the Stones were no longer content to soundtrack youth culture’s highs. They were ready to explore its darker, more uncomfortable truths.
More about Paint It Black by The Rolling Stones
*By Marcelo Sonaglioni
Myth, Meaning, and the Darkness Behind Paint It Black
Paint It Blackhas inspired numerous interpretations and commentaries, some of which are quite speculative. Despite various claims, the song isn’t actually about the Vietnam War, Mick Jagger’s split with Chrissie Shrimpton, or his developing romance with Marianne Faithfull. However, it can be viewed as a reflection of a negative experience under the influence of hallucinogens, especially considering the song’s use of red/black and light/dark imagery, or else from the perspective of someone in a state of deep depression, wishing for everything to turn black to reflect their somber mood. There wasn’t a particular source of inspiration for the lyrics. When Mick Jagger was asked why he chose to write a song about death, he responded: “I don’t know. It’s been done before. It’s not an original idea by any means. It all comes down to how you approach it.”
Mourning, Guilt, and the Color of Loss
It’s more likely that the song serves as a metaphor for death. The opening line of the first verse evokes an image of a grieving lover at his girlfriend’s funeral. The red door symbolizes his bleeding heart, which he wishes to paint black. This lover feels guilty (“I could not foresee this thing happening to you”) and resigned to a lonely future (“I see people turn their heads and quickly look away”). The funeral procession is also depicted with “a line of cars and they’re all painted black”.
Seen this way Paint It Black becomes a study in emotional withdrawal rather than shock or protest. The narrator doesn’t fight grief; he absorbs it, allowing it to drain color, hope, and connection from the world around him. Additionally it might express a sense of disillusionment—the end of dreams and ideals associated with the countercultural movements, even though it’s still 1966. The song captures a moment when optimism begins to crack, and darkness quietly takes its place.
Mick Jagger: “That was the time of lots of acid. It has sitars on it. It’s like the beginnings of miserable psychedelia. That’s what the Rolling Stones started – maybe we should have a revival of that.”
From Soul Ballad to Dark Eastern Pulse
The Stones initially composed the song as a slower, traditional soul track. During the recording session, Bill Wyman began experimenting on the organ, mimicking the sound of music typically played at Jewish weddings. Co-manager Eric Easton, himself a former organist, and drummer Charlie Watts joined in, building an improvised double-time rhythm that echoed Indian/Eastern European dance music. That sudden shift transformed the song’s entire character. The faster, hypnotic pulse injected urgency and tension, deliberately clashing with the bleak tone of the lyrics. Instead of softening the darkness, the rhythm sharpened it, pushing the song into unfamiliar territory for a pop single in 1966.
In fact Paint It Black played a key role in shaping early psychedelic music and introduced the instrument to a much wider audience. Critical reaction at the time was divided: some reviewers dismissed the sitar as a Beatles-inspired imitation, while others took issue with the song’s bold, unconventional sound, questioning whether such an experimental track could truly succeed commercially. As for the song’s very melody, it was created by Keith Richards, who at the time noted that the tune arrived almost instinctively—less composed than discovered—perfectly matching the track’s uneasy, obsessive mood.
Keith Richards: “It was a different style to everything I’d done before. Maybe it was the Jew in me. It’s more to me like ‘Hava Nagila’ or some Gypsy lick. Maybe I picked it up from my granddad.”
More from Keith: “We were in Fiji for about three days. They make sitars and all sorts of Indian stuff. Sitars are made out of watermelons or pumpkins or something smashed so they go hard. They’re very brittle and you have to be careful how you handle them. We had the sitars, we thought we’d try them out in the studio. To get the right sound on ‘Paint It Black’ we found the sitar fitted perfectly. We tried a guitar but you can’t bend it enough.”
Brian Jones, the Sitar, and a Not-So-Subtle Rebuttal
On this track, guitarist Brian Jones played the sitar, an instrument introduced to pop music by The Beatles in their 1965 song Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown). Brian made a memorable impression on television by playing the sitar while balancing it on his lap during performances. He responded sharply to these comparisons in Beat Instrumental magazine, saying, “What utter rubbish. You might as well say that we copy all the other groups by playing guitar. Also, everyone asks if it’s going to be the new trend. Well, personally, I wouldn’t like it to be. You don’t have to get that weird Indian sound from a sitar.” But he immediately added: “Take Norwegian Wood. Atmospherically, it’s my favorite track by the Beatles. George made simple use of the sitar and it was very effective.”
Keith Richards (2003): “I must say in retrospect that actually what made Paint It Black was Bill Wyman on the organ, because it didn’t sound anything like the finished record, until Bill said, ‘You go like this'”
Chart Domination, Commas, and Misread Meanings
Paint It Black was released as a single in the U.S. on May 7, 1966, backed with Stupid Girl, and followed on May 13 in the U.K. with Long Long While as the flip side. The response was immediate and overwhelming. It raced to number one on both sides of the Atlantic, confirming that the Stones had struck a nerve. In Britain alone, roughly 200,000 copies were preordered, and critics quickly began drawing comparisons with the Beatles—particularly pointing to the sitar as evidence that the Stones were tapping into the same Eastern influences shaping contemporary pop.
One small detail, however, caused outsized debate. On the single, a comma appears before “black”, rendering the title as Paint It, Black. That tiny punctuation shift subtly alters the phrase, suggesting someone named “Black” is being addressed. Some listeners interpreted this as a deliberate statement on race relations, reading political intent into the title. Yet it’s far more likely the comma was nothing more than a clerical error—hardly unusual in the mid-1960s—proving that even a minor printing quirk can take on a life of its own once a song becomes iconic.
Bill Wyman: “The organ-playing story is complete fiction, actually. What really happened was that I had put a bass track and then aThe organ-playing story is complete fiction, actually. What really happened was that I had put a bass track and then another bass on top of that, but the sound still wasn’t fat enough, it needed something on the bottom end. I wanted to play organ very loud on it to fill the sound. I tried playing the organ pedals with my feet but the pedals kept sticking so I got down on the floor and hit them with my fists. I actually never touched the keyboard. If anything it was a bit of an in-joke because Eric Easton was a keyboard player and I was just playing the pedals.”
Charlie Watts (2003): “On Paint It Black the drum pattern might have been suggested by Mick and I’d try it that way, or we’d be listening to a certain record at the time – it could have been anything like Going to a Go-Go. Engineers never like recording ride cymbals in those days. We all used to have the kind that Art Blakey used, with the inch-long or so rivets, so the cymbals would cover everything, and the engineers would go mad.”
Mick Jagger (1966): “Paint It Black was just going to be like a beat group number. If you’d been at the session it was like one big joke. We put Bill on piano and Bill plays in this funny style. He goes bi-jing, bi-jing, bi-jing, and all that sort of stuff and we went running about going bi-jing, bi-jing, bi-jing and that’s how it all started. It was just one big joke. It was in Los Angeles. And we just stuck the sitar on because some geezer came in. He was in a jazz group playing sitar in his pyjamas. And we said ‘Oh, that’ll sound good because it’s got this thing that goes g-doing, doing, doing, etc.'”
Keith Richards (1966): “It’s over-recorded at the end. The electric guitar doesn’t sound quite right to me, the one I play. I should have used a different guitar; at least, a different sound. And I think it sounds rushed. I think it sounds as if we’ve said – as we actually did – That’s great. If we do anymore we’ll lose the feel of it. Because that’s what we said, and that’s why, I think, if we’d done a few more takes of it, to my mind it would have been a slightly better record. But that’s very technical; probably what I would have liked to have heard on it wouldn’t have sounded different to thousands of other people.”
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