“Paint It, Black” (1966) – The Rolling Stones * Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richard * Produced by Andrew Loog Oldham * 45: “Paint It, Black” / “Stupid Girl” * LP: Aftermath (US)
The Rolling Stones’ tendency to latch on to Beatle trends was a figment of no one’s imagination, but they would absolve themselves with their own abundance of originality. Guitarist Brian Jones, standing front and center on the picture sleeve of “Paint It, Black,” played sitar on the 1966 single, answering the Beatles’ (mostly) major-key “Norwegian Wood” in an angry, minor-key manner that commandeered it up to the #1 spot in both the US and UK. (“Stupid Girl” on side B upped the whole product’s mean-spirit meter.) Along with the sitar, another unusual component to the song was the ungrammatical comma in the title. This gave it an even more menacing, unschooled garage-band edge, or implied that they were, in this first of their overtly Satan-friendly songs, addressing someone or something, possibly the ominous dog Led Zeppelin and Nick Drake would later sing about. The US Aftermath album included the comma on the label, but not on the back-cover track list. The song became a punk cover staple, and never sounded ironic.