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Credit: Bent Rej<\/p>\n
Sat 26 September 2026 11:05, UK <\/p>\n
It says a lot about The Rolling Stones<\/a>\u2019 1960s heyday that even their jokes were catapulted to number one during the period.\u00a0<\/p>\n They were so profusely creative, releasing in excess of 100 songs in their first seven years, that they could gild even pithy little studio gags into gleaming hits that, over half a century later, still prove to be among their most iconic works. They were the shake-up that made bands fear the British Invasion, and they were taking it all one laugh at a time.<\/p>\n \u2018Paint It Black\u2019 is a very dark song<\/a>. That darkness stretches beyond the fact that Mick Jagger yells about wanting everything cast into monochrome. Behind the literal surface is a song about shutting out the sun and wallowing in the darkness of loss. How such a song could be rooted in a joke seems unfathomable, but Keith Richards explained that the origin of the music was lighter than the heavy result.<\/p>\n \u201cMick wrote it,\u201d Keith Richards told Rolling Stone, \u201cI wrote the music, he did the words. Get a single together. What\u2019s amazing about that one for me is the sitar. Also, the fact that we cut it as a comedy track.\u201d That\u2019s some very dark comedy, indeed. But the guitarist isn\u2019t twisting the truth; tomfoolery truly was the crux of this 1966 classic.<\/p>\n Eric Easton was the band\u2019s manager at the time, and the iconic fast-paced organ playing on the tune was Bill Wyman\u2019s attempt to make a mockery of his manager\u2019s stylings. \u201cBill was playing an organ, doing a take-off of our first manager who started his career in show business as an organist in a cinema pit,\u201d Richards explained.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s often omitted from the lore of the Stones \u2013 perhaps because it doesn\u2019t fit their wayward image \u2013 but they were hugely hard-working. The ragtag group spent countless hours in studios, and with that comes a touch of play. <\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d been doing it with funky rhythms,\u201d Richards continues, \u201cAnd it hadn\u2019t worked.\u201d <\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n Exasperated by the efforts, Wyman decided to have a laugh, but while they were poking fun at their manager, something seemed to click. \u201cEverybody got behind it,\u201d Keef goes on. \u201cIt\u2019s a two-beat, very strange. Brian playing the sitar makes it a whole other thing.\u201d<\/p>\n The gathering pace of the song certainly adds a sense of drama to the track and colours the downbeat lyrics with a viscerally emotional edge. It\u2019s textbook teenage rage<\/a>. In the end, we are left with Jagger\u2019s spellbinding, frenzied incantation that the song swells into, reaching its inevitable ranting, raving end. It\u2019s like a man rhythmically screaming in the street.<\/p>\n If the organ playing had its origins in a theatre pit, then the resultant \u2018joke\u2019 is certainly cinematic. In fact, it could easily have soundtracked Rebel Without a Cause had it been released 11 years earlier.<\/p>\n This spoof, however, was not the only influence on the eventual sound of the song. Jagger also drew inspiration from the compositions of Jewish Wedding songs, most notably \u2018Hava Nagila\u2019. While the melody is certainly similar, the psychedelic edge that \u2018Paint It Black\u2019 exhibits is all down to the Stones and their desire to dip their toe in the spiralling zeitgeist.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his 2002 book, Rolling with the Stones, Bill Wyman explained that the Aftermath album, which sports \u2018Paint it Black\u2019 as its opening tune, was intended to be the soundtrack for the never-filmed movie Back, Behind, and In Front. Mick Jagger met with the proposed director, Nicholas Ray \u2013 the man, ironically enough, behind the iconic James Dean movie Rebel Without A Cause<\/a> \u2013 and he didn\u2019t like him, so the project was scrapped.\u00a0<\/p>\n This surely serves as another reminder of how easily opportunities were arising for the band at the time. Their debut album had only arrived two years earlier, and now they were turning down iconic directors and finding enough time to \u201cjoke\u201d their way to classics in the studio.<\/p>\n The song remains one of The Rolling Stones\u2019 best, and it is testimony to the band\u2019s talent that it all stemmed from casually mucking around. From churlish beginnings, the band achieved stellar results; if only all creative feats could be accomplished so simply.<\/p>\n Alas, the highest irony of all comes from the fact that the band Big Star would later write a song joking about how serious \u2018Paint it Black\u2019 is. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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