paint it black

The Stones painted the charts black with this depressive raga. According to Bill Wyman, the song was a collective effort of the group, and should have been credited Nanker/Phelge, the band's pseudonym for compositions credited to the entire group. It started out as a slow soul song that took on a middle-eastern double-time after some studio improvisation with Bill Wyman, co-manager Eric Easton, and Charlie Watts. Brian Jones played the sitar on the song, inspired by the new rhythm. Keith Richards recalls, "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." Mick Jagger considers "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." Allen Klein owns the rights to the song, having tricked the band into signing over their publishing rights of all of the songs they had written before 1969 to him. 'Paint It Black' topped the charts in Canada, the Netherlands, the UK, and the US. It was the leadoff single for the American version of 'Aftermath'; but was not included on any of their British albums. According to Keith, the comma that sometimes appears in the title was a printing error. Jagger borrowed the line "I turn my head until my darkness goes" from James Joyce's 'Ulysses'.











http://www.rollingstones.com/

I see a red door and I want it painted black

No colors any more, I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

I see a line of cars and they're all painted black

With flowers and my love both never to come back

I see people turn their heads and quickly look away

Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day

I look inside myself and see my heart is black

I see my red door I must have it painted black

Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts

It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black

No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue

I could not foresee this thing happening to you

If I look hard enough into the setting sun

My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

I see a red door and I want it painted black

No colors any more, I want them to turn black

I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes

I have to turn my head until my darkness goes

Hmm, hmm, hmm, ..

I wanna see it painted, painted black

Black as night, black as coal

I wanna see the sun blotted out from the sky

I wanna see it painted, painted, painted, painted black

Yeah!