![]() “If there was instrument around, he had to be able to get something out of it, just because it was there.”īrian had floundered in the power struggle that pitted him against his songwriting colleagues. “Brian had pretty much given up on the guitar by then,” stated Keith Richards. In pursuing this curious musical detour, guitarist Brian Jones was set to add extra color – but not with his usual six strings. “I’d heard the sound and movement we needed, the whimsy that spelt ‘radio.’” The finishing touch “That’s it!” thought an exhilarated Oldham. By inadvertently stirring in evocative, Turkish flavors, Wyman had sent the song careering into territory far more exotic than the Stones had hitherto adventured. The effect immediately fattened the song’s bottom end, as Wyman had intended, but more importantly, it suddenly eschewed its perceived direction. ![]() “I lay on the floor under the organ and played a second bass riff on the pedals, with my fists, at double-time.” “I suggested Hammond organ pedals,” the bassist said. Then, after listening to the last playback, Bill Wyman had an unusual idea. “‘Paint It Black’ was just going to be like a beat group number,” Jagger said. Yet, here they were with an arrangement for “Paint It Black” that neither matched the intensity of its forebears, nor the oppressive themes which its lyrics suggested. “Cynical, nasty, skeptical, rude… The lyrics and the mood of the songs fitted with the kids’ disenchantment with the grown-up world of America, and for a while we seemed to be the only provider, the soundtrack for the rumbling of rebellion, touching on those social nerves.” A game-changing suggestion ![]() “Our songs were taking on some kind of edge in the lyrics…” Jagger once explained. However, this current contender was lacking the driving insistency and scowling attitude that had fuelled earlier hits like “ (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and “ 19th Nervous Breakdown,” and now seemed so synonymous with The Rolling Stones. The Stones had been chart-toppers since the summer of 1964, but it was only a year ago – when “The Last Time” was released in February 1965 – that they’d begun to score with original Jagger/Richards material.Ī string of Number Ones followed, and it was a winning streak they did not want to break. There was a sense of urgency in the studio, but the real pressure was on delivering a new hit single. Short on time, they were close to giving up on it completely. “I wrote the melody,” stated Keith, “he wrote the lyrics.” But in exploring the sonic possibilities of the new, minor key number, the Stones had stalled before fully unlocking its magic. So it was, to my mind, a real marker.Among the songs they were preparing to record was “Paint It Black,” which had been composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards while the group were on tour in Australia the previous month. It had a lot of different styles, and it was very well recorded. “ has a very wide spectrum of music styles: “Paint It, Black” was this kind of Turkish song and there were also very bluesy things like “Goin’ Home” and I remember some sort of ballads on there,” added Jagger. charts in 1966 and has remained a staple on the Stones set to this day. Though the song was written by Richards and Jagger with most of the musical arrangements set by Jones, a slanted publishing deal in 1965 led to the band signing over the rights to the track, and all the songs they wrote through 1969 to the band’s former manager Allen Klein. “It’s the first time we wrote the whole record and finally laid to rest the ghost of having to do these very nice and interesting, no doubt, but still cover versions of old R&B songs, which we didn’t really feel we were doing justice, to be perfectly honest, particularly because we didn’t have the maturity. “That was a big landmark record for me,” said Mick Jagger of Aftermath. We tried a guitar but you can’t bend it enough.” To get the right sound on ‘Paint It Black’ we found the sitar fitted perfectly. “We had the sitars, we thought we’d try them out in the studio. “They make sitars and all sorts of Indian stuff,” said Richards. The sitar was most likely a discovery during the band’s break in the South Pacific around a tour in Australia. Adding to their musical experiments, guitarist Brian Jones first introduces the sitar into the mix-and marked the first time the Stones featured the instrument in their music-and would often play the wooden instrument, sat cross-legged, during television appearances. Inspired by more Indian and Mid-Eastern sounds, the song was written while the band was in Fiji for three days.
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