![]() ![]() That’s probably all the country could deal with from such a relentlessly nasty disc.īack when I first got into The Stones, with their Greatest Hits etc, ‘Paint It, Black’ (apparently the comma was just a record-company typo, though it does lend a nicely pretentious air) blended in amongst the hits. This was only top of the charts for a week. The bass grinds, the sitar dances, the band are humming with intent, and Jagger is crowing: I wanna see it painted, Painted black, Black as night, Black as coal…! He wants to see the sun blotted out… He wants to end it all… The record slowly fades to a frenzied close. Which makes even less sense…)īy the end, our hilltop ceremony is reaching its climax. In many ways it’s a weird song – not helped by the fact that, for years, I thought one of its lines went: No more will my green seagull turn a deeper blue… (It is, of course, ‘my green sea go’. It’s a song that you have to be in the right mood to deal with. It’s not a song to put on in the background. I see people turn their heads and quickly look away… or I look inside myself and see my heart is black… And then there’s the serial killer line: I see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes, I have to turn my head until my darkness goes… What is it about? Depression? Drug-induced psychosis? A funeral (as the line about a line of black cars suggests)? Whatever it is, it’s a bleak, bleak record. I see a red door, And I want it painted black, No colours any more, I want them to turn black… Jagger’s voice melts into the insistent, pounding rhythm – sometimes soft and coaxing, sometimes aggressive and half-crazed. Not when The Stones get their hands on one… Brain Jones is playing a sitar, and sitars, to me, usually sound blissed-out, and spiritual – the background soundtrack to massages and yoga sessions. From the opening riff, it’s as if an evil spirit is taking up residence in your ears. Catchy, dull, quirky, God-awful… ‘Paint It, Black’, though, is the first I’ve had to consider calling ‘evil’… It’s a hulking, threatening, malignant brute of a #1 single. I’ve used many words to describe the chart-toppers we’ve covered so far. Paint It, Black, by The Rolling Stones (their 6 th of eight #1s) They look familiar… Why, it’s The Rolling Stones! Conducting a full-blown Satanic ritual! Pagans? Hippies? Look a little closer, though. Picture a mid-summer’s evening: a soft, dusty light, some people gathered around an ancient stone circle, having a sing-song.
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