The Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black"

They almost sound ironic. I think so too. They're imitating the Rolling Stones. So Lexri, today we're talking about a defining song of the Vietnam era, and it comes from one of the most successful rock bands of all time. I mean, these guys are in their 80s, and they're still on tour. It's insane. And today we're taking it back to 1966, when these legacy rockers were still in their 20s. But this isn't some optimistic flower power moment. With its bleak lyrics, pounding rhythm, and spell-like riff, this song is one of the darkest songs to ever hit number one. In fact, this is basically a goth, raga, surf, rock, Spanish, ballet, Indian, and Middle Eastern song, all wrapped into one. All in one. That's right, we're talking one song, and that song is Painted Black by the Rolling Stones. I see a victor as I want it in true love No colors anymore, I won't think Hey, OneSong listeners, if you love our show, you should check out Trapital, the podcast where technology meets culture. Each episode, Trapital host and founder, Dan Runcie, digs into the strategy behind the media and technology that drives our attention. You'll hear Trapital explore topics like YouTube's growing influence in music and entertainment, the never-ending saga about TikTok's future, and how AI is shaping the future. Media is one of the first industries to get disrupted by new tech. It's Trapital's job to keep you ahead of the latest trends. You can listen to Trapital wherever you get your podcasts. That's Trapital, T-R-A-P-I-T-A-L. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diallo Riddle. And I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, and musicologist Luxury, aka the guy who whispers Interpolation. And this is One Song. The show where we break down the stems and stories behind iconic songs across genres and tell you why they deserve one more listen. You will hear these songs like you've never heard them before. And if you want to watch one song, you can do so on YouTube. While you're there, please like and subscribe. So Diallo, when was the first time you heard Painted Black? Honestly, my first memory of this song is hearing it as the opening theme to the CBS show Tour of Duty. It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black. It was a show about these soldiers in Vietnam and why at my age I was watching Tour of Duty, I'm not sure. Okay. But, you know, it's just like, you know, the TV was on. Right. The choices were like Donald Duck, whatever. It was probably, you know, Tour of Duty and Moonlighting. Maybe Moonlighting was a repeat that night. You were a Moonlighting fan? I was a huge Moonlighting fan. Come on, Al Jarreau. I love that show. Sunfly by night What is the theme song? Sunfly by day Moonlighting strangers Cause we met on the way Great song We're not here talking about Moonlighting by Al Jarreau We're here talking about Painted Black by the Rolling Stones And look, that show is about soldiers in Vietnam The song was also famously used by Stanley Kubrick and Full Metal Jacket For me, I've always just used this song as a shorthand for both the Vietnam War and just the baby boomer generation in general. You know, like they were having a full-on retro moment in the 80s. I admit, I'm not the biggest Stones fan. Like, I feel like the Stones, I appreciate the Stones the way I appreciate a night of hard drinking. Like, it seems like a great idea at 10.30 p.m. In theory? Yeah, no, at 10.30, you're like, oh, man, the Stones. I can't wait. But the next morning at 8 a.m., you're like, why did I listen to so much Rolling Stones last night? Interesting. there is something a little heavy about this band there's a heaviness to the musicality the songwriting and their story no that's true i can see that but i also think that as much as i like them i like there's there's always something and this is just i don't know if i can put my finger on it there's always something that feels a little bit like dirty maybe because like some of their their material is just so raunchy yeah you know like but it's just not the kind of music i can see waking up to and like you know really being about my day you know i wonder it's so interesting you're saying this because we grew up in an era where like the Beatles versus the Stones was just like yeah already kind of in the culture like unquestioned right and the Beatles are like my hope they're like they're like me on my best day like to a certain extent they represent hope whereas the Stones are just like ah man everything sucks man you know but there's some truth to that I'm not dismissing that but there's also a lot of cultural positioning we had like that they had the Beatles had their haircuts and the suits and the jokiness and the cuteness you can go to work looking like the Beatles. You show up at work looking like Keith Richards. Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. You're the first person downsized. Right. No, but there's, I think that there's some of that is maybe in the music, but some of it is just like how it was positioned to us growing up because that was always the rivalry we knew had existed decades earlier. And there's a reason for that. I mean, I think Andrew Lugald, who's famously the Stones' manager and ostensibly the producer of this record, but actually I don't think he touched a single knob or dial, but he was an impresario and sort of the true sense of the Brian Epstein, Malcolm McLaren, Colonel Parker school of managers who really shape the image of their bands, right? So I think he doubled down on let's be the opposite of the Beatles. I think there was a sense of like, you guys already have this grit and kind of scrappiness to you. Let's double down on that. So there's a little bit of that happening with our Beatles versus Stones. And the Stones are the scrappy, you know, dark ones. But there's also songs like this that demonstrate that there's a genuine darkness to who they were. That's a fair point. for you luxury what was the first time you heard this song i mean it certainly would have been my dad's record collection he would have had all of the beatles and stones records so i would have grown up listening to them side by side probably before having some awareness of this cultural thing we were just talking about so to me it was just like old music your dad listened to but obviously the songs are culturally such a big part of the culture like you hear not just give me shelter but also sympathy for the devil and satisfaction and paint it black and under my thumb these are all start me up for microsoft 95 that's what they were a little bit to my mind one of the first groups to just go full-on corporate and be like you know what we can charge a thousand bucks for box seats or whatever it is let's do it let's do the platinum booth right let's do a deal with microsoft to your point that made me think of it for millions of dollars to use our song and this was counter to like this earlier idea like the neil young not selling out bruce russstein or on a black rose episode where he was like we don't want bud wise right or all of punk rock there's this sort of idea that like you don't do that if you're a true artist or musician stones are like screw it makes like i went to london school of economics to like you know you forget about that he went to lse you know he's like he's a very savvy guy who almost seems like He's like, hey, what if we take all these wonderful blues songs and take that, but we merge it with sort of like London, swinging London youth culture. Absolutely. I think connecting it back to the song, I think there's a deep cynicism in Mick Jagger. He's kind of a cypher. He's kind of a mysterious figure. He gives interviews and such, but you don't really ever feel like you're getting something super deeply real about him. I think he's very calculated. He's obviously very smart. He's a great performer, a great songwriter. I'm a fan of the work he does. And I also think you're just not really getting a lot of revelatory stuff. I think his artist versus commerce brain. There's a tension there. There is and there isn't. I feel like it's more. He's actually resolved. It's more resolved than most. I think it's more resolved than most. It's not keeping him up. I think Kurt Cobain really wrestled with it. And I think Mick Jagger didn't wrestle with it as much. He's like, hey, little slap box. OK, we're cool. You know, it's so funny because I have my attention with the stones is that like I really do. the part of me that loves the british music of the the mid and late 60s loves songs like give me shelter and i actually really like their late 70s output yeah you know like the disco stuff is great they they they aged with their audience so by like the 70s like late 70s they're in new york new york is grimy and gritty you know they released one of the best albums of all time um some girls you know that's just a great album black and blue is another one right yeah yeah i I mean, they're releasing some of their biggest sisters in this period, like Miss You, the old disco classic. Love that one. There's another disco song out of that period that I love a lot, Emotional Rescue. Oh, my God. Such a great tune. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's straight up disco. That might be like one of the greater disco songs ever made. great song yeah yeah and i would say my absolute favorite uh song out of this period to me it really captures that gross gritty but super artistic and cool new york of the late 70s is this song and i know it's a favorite of yours let's hear a little snippet of the song shattered i can't not picture him in that like kind of like pink you know leotard there's like a bunch of songs from that era where it's like i think they must have shot them all on the same day because they're not on the same sound stage to me what i hear you know just because i worked in the 30 rock building and i know how close he was and is to like lauren and just saturday night live in general like to me i just i've been at those like post saturday night live the post post the after after party they're so fun and it's just you feel like you're at the algonquin round table you know there's just so many people from so many walks of life you know comedians musicians lauren just holding you know court so to speak and and and he was there when the cast was young and lauren was young uh it just it evokes a time you're right it's such a new york feeling it's so funny like the the rolling stones 70s output definitely makes me think of new york and one of the great new york bands of the time even though they're of course not from anywhere near new york they're not from new york but their music actually expresses the great and you know grime and glitter of that moment yeah let's go moment i would agree and also i feel like they're a band that's absorbing what's in new york at that time because like that song could have been in max's kansas city it could have been a blondie song yeah totally it captures a time yeah but i would be remiss if i didn't say that this is a band that i do have a love and hate relationship look they came out with a song that i think is abhorrent yeah catchy but abhorrent brown sugar yeah not a cool song i don't feel like playing it right now but you know like i think i read where the band felt like they were trying to do a song about the horrors of sexual assault and all this stuff during slavery it didn't come out that way yeah mick tries to distance himself from brown sugar as early as 1995 which is to his credit 31 years ago he says i don't know what i was on yeah when i came up with this song and i don't know if that's him trying to like walk it back or whatever but like i'm gonna try and give them the benefit of the doubt just so that it's not like a essentially an essay fantasy song but they were still performing it regularly for 50 years like they literally performed it from 1971 when it came out until october 2021 and it's like really guys and so to me there's always that side of the stones too that i i still grapple with a lot of catchy tunes obviously these guys were uh lovers of black music and black culture enough to play a major part in disseminating it across the globe. But they also lack, to a certain degree, some of the, I would say, polish and politics of the Beatles. When I hear the Beatles, I feel like they just come across differently. They come across as the kind of guys who are like, yeah, we really appreciate this music and it's cool to us. There is a little bit more of, I'm going to make up a word here, a little bit more of feel of exploitiness when it comes to the Stones that I don't get from the Beatles or a lot of other rock groups for that matter. So there is a little bit of a tension. I still get the sense that at the end of the day, Mick and Keith saw this as their 1960s party boy music in ways that I don't get from other bands. And so that's the tension that I feel. I can already hear you guys charging up your laptops to come at me in the comments, some of our listeners, but that's how I feel. You have such a valid opinion and take on this that everything you said is, is it has its own self-contained integrity. And I'm not going to counter any of it. The only thing I will say, just thinking about like, I think that there is a risk that artists take and sometimes the risk pays off. And sometimes it's just too layered and tangled of a topic to like accurately convey what you're trying to convey without lots of footnotes and like interview explanations. And maybe that's a moment where the song needs to be reassessed. Maybe the way you've done it is perfectly put. one last thing i'll say is like the added irony to your point that it is coming on not just the coattails of black music but like using like they're doing more r&b and blues than the beatles ever did paul the rock and roll calls them a blues cover band the rock they were originally a blues covers band up until this record so the idea of sort of blending this tradition which is not theirs with these lyrics which are very speculative but also super exoticized and one last point about the exoticization they are british so their understanding and absorption of like the story of slavery in american music is like one step removed it does not excuse them at all but they are coming at it with like many layers of sort of distance from what the story is like on the ground in america of of slavery and black music and there is perhaps some like naivete which he in later years as he grew up and understood what it meant to americans what and to black Americans may have changed his tune as a result of you might be giving him a little too much credit in the same article Keith is like I don't know why we're getting shit for this song well okay so you know he's not he's not quite walking back look I'll just say this I think when it comes to being the purveyors of a certain type of toxic masculinity their whole catalog from I can't get no satisfaction through brown sugar yeah through so much stuff like they're being honest about how they feel i think just you know now that we have a few more voices at the table we understand that not all this stuff is cool No that that perfectly put I think one of the ironies about this band ostensibly being rebellious rock and rollers is they don represent rebellion in the truest sense They are centered white males with money. Like totally like you can claim this is so rebellious. But at the end of the day, like you're kind of the one group that gets away with a lot of stuff. when the most powerful like you know kind of you know group of individuals are saying that they have grievance and like it sounds like another category in this day and age it's like really i'm not here to criminalize how how angsty teen boys feel because i was one once yeah but i also know that some of that stuff that i felt as a male because that is the group of i have male privilege yeah some of that stuff wasn't okay and i and i can see that now looking back several decades later So the Stones are one of those huge groups. They're like blowing up huge in the 60s. But by the time they get to recording Painted Black, there were internal tensions in the group brewing between Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. Brian, who had founded the group and was kind of the de facto leader of the group in the early years, found, you know, he was becoming kind of the odd man out as Mick and Keith start basically joining forces and becoming a songwriting duo. That's right. Brian Jones, legendarily kind of the heart and soul of the band. And that includes the love of the blues and R&B. Like he was already dissatisfied with the direction the band was going with the song Satisfaction, which he famously, unfortunately, there's no footage of this. If anyone has some out there, I did a deep dive, but he would play during Satisfaction Live, he would play the melody to Popeye the Sailor Man as just a prank. He said he hated the song. He hated the poppiness. He hated the kind of reaching. Yeah, so there's a lot of tension that was brewing already within the dissent coming from Brian specifically, I should say, about the success of the band that was starting to happen. And he wasn't a songwriter, so he didn't have a lot of power. Andrew Luke Olden, the manager of the band, the impresario, famously goes to at a party, I believe, went to Mick and Keith and said, if you start writing songs, you'll make more money. because that was sort of new information. Like publishing was not something to this day, it's still complicated. But when they realized that that was an avenue to make even more money and Mick and Keith, by the way, should be said, were already childhood friends. They already had this bond going back a decade and a half longer. So the two of them are already a tightly knit duo, became even more strengthened by their songwriting prowess and success. And Brian, frankly, was not doing well in terms of his mental health. He was drinking, he was drugging, and there was a lot of tension brewing between the two and brian didn't have nearly the power that the duo the glimmer twins of mick and keith were starting to have yeah so he became even increasingly sidelined which made him spin sort of flywheel into more sped up his his own demons and it should be said that anita pallenberg another sort of unsung hero perhaps of this episode was a huge influence kind of like casey nicoli with perry farrell and jane's addiction romantic relationship he was in a lot of credit should go to anita palenberg for a lot of what makes brian jones cool she introduced him to a lot of sophisticated like people and art and you know places so brian and the two of them became this sort of like cohesive entity that didn't help his case within the band so by the time this song rolls around we'll be talking about once we get into the stems but his contributions apparently include the main melody line that he played on sitar oh wow but once we get to the stems we'll find out how that was treated in terms of fairness and financial recompense yeah it always comes down to the splits yeah yeah i didn't know that much about brian jones coming into this episode you have taught me a lot i know that uh i know that quest love is actually a big brian jones fan just because what he brought to the group and this guy he plays so many instruments he plays the marimba he plays the sitar the saxophone the mellotron one of the songs he plays the marimba on is under my thumb let's hear a little bit of under my thumb he's the melody guy he is he's the roy ayers of under my thumb exactly uh vibes and marimba yeah it's a hundred percent kind of similar space yeah that is one of the sounds that makes that song and when you hear that you know what you're listening to brian had an interest in how can we make this r&b a little bit sound a little bit different a little bit unique but not too different like satisfaction because that's just too poppy so he had this lane that was very interesting he had a very he's very he's an influencer he's a tastemaker there's a sort of sense of because it should also be said that mick and keith famously at the time were not very sophisticated they were not very worldly in this moment they became extremely sophisticated and worldly later. But in this moment, Brian is kind of the cool guy in the band. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to go inside the song Painted Black and we're going to discover was this song influenced by one Turkish song, one surf rock song or one Supreme song? We'll make that decision when we get back. All right, welcome back to One Song. Let's get into the stems. So just a little caveat in this episode, this record was recorded on a four track. So there's a lot of blend in the stems. There were a lot of bounces. There isn't anything that exists canonically, which is like just all of the isolated parts. There's about a dozen instrument layers, possibly more, but they've been blended by bouncing over time. But those are pretty exciting to listen to. We're going to be hearing a lot of that. And then I'll do occasionally a little AI breakdown, a little DIY, doing my best with EQ and panning to kind of get it a little bit closer. But that's what you'll be hearing on today's episode. Still super exciting way to hear things. And there's a lot that I discovered that I'd never noticed before. Let's just jump into it. Here are the drums, percussion, and some vocals mixed together. Let's listen. So that's Charlie Watts on drums, obviously. We're going to be talking more about that interesting organ part, because that was one of the discoveries. I mean, now that I listen to it, it's like, oh, it's right there. But there's a really cool story behind that. And of course, Mick Jagger on vocals. I didn't hear an organ on there. Yeah, we're going to talk about the organ. Was there an organ on there? It's almost subliminal, right? It's because it's so rhythmic and it's so repetitive that it kind of, this ostinato is like, just seems built into the song. But it's a key part of the song's story. We're going to talk about it in just a moment. Here's a little bit of isolation on the drums. As I mentioned before, this was baked into the mix, so I tried to extract it the best I could to just hear Charlie Watts. And it should be noted that he's playing not just the snare drum, but there's also castanets and maracas in there. So we're starting to get some of the exotic instrumentation. Yeah, it definitely has some texture in there. Yeah, it's more than just a snare. Right. And it evokes, it's starting to also evoke, just in this drum layer, some of the exoticness that I alluded to in my long, you know, descriptive sentence about what kind of song this was. some of the Middle Eastern perhaps the Liberian Peninsula influence of the Maracas when we were talking about it earlier we were talking about the fact that I felt like there should be belly dancing going on and it's just in the percussion layer we're already getting that wait until we get to the other layers so this is another moment where you'll hear Mick singing but listen to the drums in the background I never noticed it, that sounds like I think it's a tambourine being shaken really quickly I could not foresee this thing happening to you If I look hard enough into the... It's really interesting to point out, this is indicative, like this is a relic of an era, because in 1966 it was normal that you would be bouncing tracks. And just a reminder, go back to our Jimi Hendrix episode, which was recorded in 1967. Not our episode about Jimi Hendrix, but his recordings were. Yeah, we did a two-part, and it's another example of how part of the artifact of the stems is reminding us that in an earlier era, when we didn't have Pro Tools and digital and infinite track counts for that matter, to say nothing of the 16 tracks and 24 tracks plus that were to come. You had to do some creative mixing techniques. You had to like record on the four tracks and then bounce three of the tracks onto one to free up the other three, which meant that they were baked in forever and you couldn't change them. And the sound quality got reduced the more you did it. What we're hearing is an example of that. This is an old way of recording that just doesn't exist anymore unless you're doing analog recording, which some people still do. So it's interesting to hear it and be reminded, oh, yeah, we didn't used to have infinite track count. It's the opposite of Steely Dan. I think it's safe to say, like every time you hear this song, it always sounds sort of cavernous and grainy like an old recording because it is. It's an old recording. Exactly. Or go back to our Britney Spears episode where there's literally 100 tracks of vocals. That was one of the hardest episodes for me to prepare for because I couldn't go through all of them. I had to be selective. But in modern recording, you can have 100 tracks of vocals because it's available and it's free. Yeah. Just one more thing to point out about the song as we go through the stems. It's an unusual structure in that it's not really kind of your traditional intro verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, chorus, outro kind of thing. It's really just two sections, A and B, that go back and forth six times. So there's like eight bars of what we're going to call on this show, the verse, but it actually has the title in it. Something thing painted black yeah or the word black is at the end totally the lyrics change all six times it's a little more akin to a song like little waynes of millie where the chorus is sort of laced throughout instead of stopping the verse and going to a chorus that's right so you could call it a we're going to call it the verse for the sake for the purposes of the song that's that i see a red door yeah but then we switch to a second section another a different eight bars musically which we'll call the chorus i'm going to just call attention to one more thing we've talking about the exotic layers of the song and the conscious effort to kind of bring in things beyond the blues to break out of this like just r&b blues tradition they'd started with yeah and another sort of illusion i think this is something i hear is i hear an allusion to ravel to bolero in this section in particular so listen for something similar to that rhythmic motif that happens towards the end of the song here's just a moment this is ravel's bolero from 1928 which is just 38 years before this song. So it's not like an old classical tune. It's something that might have been familiar recently to them. That's one of those songs that I feel like everybody's heard, but you don't always know who created it and what the name of it is. Exactly. So now that you've heard Ravel, 1938, Bolero, I think that Charlie Watts and company are doing a bit of an allusion to that when we get to this section towards the end. I think they're just having fun with that, throwing it in there. So I read that bassist Bill Wyman did something really experimental on this. He gets down on the floor and he starts beating the Hammond organ pedals with his fists. I mean, like, I don't know what causes the person to do that maybe he's being creative maybe he was high maybe maybe he's a combination of both but luxury can we hear the organ i don't give that to you in context right that's fun i kind of want to like slow that down michael jackson quincy jones style and see if there's like a fun song there and i'll play it in context because again this was the number one thing i hadn't noticed until we got into until i got into studying the stems will you humor me is there a way to play that just that isolated organ slow like can you change the bpm on it sure is there a way to slow it down to like 120 That's straight up rock steady now Yeah, I can totally see rock steady too There's something fun there Don't do it, you might get a letter from Alan Klein Look up the verb Real quick, I also want to say that I find that isolated organ interesting Because this song is talking about a guy who's feeling down Like he's sad And yet the tempo is furiously fast. Right. So that part had them rollicking with laughter because it evoked to all of them sort of a like bar mitzvah kind of vibe. As Mick Jagger put it, if you'd been at the session, it was like one big joke. We put Bill on piano and he plays this funny B-Jing, B-Jing, B-Jing, B-Jing, B-Jing. So to them, it was really funny. And they were like, wait a second. It's funny, but it actually kind of works, too. So he tries to play that on the organ with his feet because it's the foot pedals that you're hearing. It's the base of the organ, but the pedals were sticking. So he had to get down on the ground on his stomach and actually play them by pounding his fists on the foot pedals to get that sound. And that's what we're hearing. That's Bill Wyman, the bass player, playing the organ with his fists on the ground. And the same part is also played on the piano, we think, by Jack Nietzsche. And you'll hear the actual part really clearly here, the very bar mitzvah-y sounding thing. It's almost like a polka. It does sound like Hava Nagila. It sounds like Hava Nagila or polka, or maybe it's even like Scott. It's another kind of Jamaican kind of thing. That weird connection. Exactly. The guitars, to me, make this song. And, you know, I'm such a big bass guy, but I barely even heard those bass parts before today. So can you let us know what the guitars are doing on this song? You're about to hear five or six instruments played by Keith Richards and Brian Jones. Definitely an electric guitar, acoustic guitar, and you'll even hear a sitar in there. There's a sitar in there. There's a sitar in there. I had questions that there was a sitar in here. Let's hear it. I've got something to say. It's so interesting. You know, I never heard those sitars before. It felt like a song that needed sitars Okay It had a sitar appeal but I don think that I actually heard the sitars playing I mainly heard the guitars Well let see if we can hear it even more explicitly Again I trying to break down within this baked track So it'll be a little bit washy sounding. Sure. But here's a little bit of my DIY guitar, and then I'll add the sitar in. You can definitely hear the acoustic in there. And I'll add the sitar now. it's that most trebly thing on top yeah now i hear it now you hear it now yeah absolutely now now i do feel like we're on that you know that jaunt over to uh india with george harrison and yeah the guys i'm glad you brought up george harrison let's talk a little bit about this sitar part the sitar has an instrument just briefly it's 18 to 21 strings only six or seven of which played the melody like a guitar would but the rest are just sympathetic strings that add to that droney quality that you hear that gives it sort of an ethereal to our ears at least in the west mystic yeah yeah it has a lot of associations with mysticness of course because of it's visuality yeah there's nothing wrong with that because of ravi shankar and all the reasons we would have been hearing that instrument in the west to begin with so brian jones who is an unsung hero of this episode very much discussing uh apparently heard to it by his own telling he was a big Beatles fan and he definitely heard it in this song from the Beatles in 1965 and it made a big impression on him. This is Norwegian Wood from Rubber Soul. I love Norwegian Wood. It's such a wonderful, cool Beatles song off of Rubber Soul. And can I just also say that I'm realizing now to a certain extent the the sitar sounds like it sounds like an indian ukulele like it's got like it's got like that pluckiness and it just feels very trebly yeah yeah yes it's the the register that it can reach is way up there it has a sustained quality to it so those notes really they ring out because you're hearing the sympathetic strings ringing throughout the whole thing yeah so that's part of the quality that they bring to it that is unique or at least certainly wasn't in rock and roll at the time until george harrison brings it into rock and role with Norwegian wood. And now we sort of take for granted adding influences outside of like pop music and rock sounds. This was kind of a new idea at the time. And Brian Jones caught into it tremendously. He loved it. Can I just admit, I just love instruments with texture. I think that's why I like the Hammonds. That's why I like the 808 bass sound that hip hop uses. Like I like it when something can, when a note can sustain, but then also feel like it's like got a texture to it. That's probably the best way I could put it. It's very important just to point out that this in this moment 1965 into 1966 that is the texture changes are being added to this rock and roll into this r&b based music both by the beatles and the stones but also the kinks are doing it you know the yardbirds there's other bands that are just have new interesting sounds and of course hendrix is about to start doing it too one more thing i want to point out is that initial strum i'll play it for you and then i'll tell you some of my thoughts about where it might have come from so those strums yeah one and two and three and four one is on the end of four i think into the next uh note those strums to me are very evocative of some surf rock stuff i could totally see that i was gonna say like old western movies yeah it has it's weird that it's got eastern influences and old western slash surf movie in it as well absolutely and there is a spaghetti western into the surf rock connection as well. Dick Dale. We'll be talking about him in just a moment. But that chord strum in particular reminds me of this song. This is Pipeline by the Shantes from 1963, which was a hit in the UK. Surf rock from the OC. Holy smokes. The whole song, though. Hold on. Think about this. This tempo. Yeah. That bass line. That's what Bill Wyman is doing something very similar. Yes. Yes. No, this I think this. I totally agree. I never thought of this song, which I've heard before. Can I just say surf rock is maddening? Because you'll go up to the record store and you'll be like, hey, do you have that song that goes? Like, no lyrics. That instrumental, that instrumental compilation. They're all instrumentals. All the ventures, all those bands. Exactly. That one commercial for the instrumental compilation saved my life because I was like, oh, these are all the songs that don't have words. Now I can finally know who sings what. I love surf rock. Yeah. What's the surf rock song again? And that's Pipeline by the Shantes. The Ventures did it famously a few years later. But this version was actually a pretty big hit in the UK. And it sounds way more like Painted Black. Look, we're not saying anybody copied anybody. But that sounds way more like Painted Black that I would have ever connected if you hadn't played them back to back. They feel like very likely influences. Yes. Along with Norwegian Wood, along with Bolero. And by the way, this song has moments and little bits and pieces of some of the bits and pieces of those songs. But it sounds nothing like it holistically as a song, obviously. No, that's really cool. Great connection. nice one we were talking earlier about the structure of the song and i think the structure of the song is really interesting because it's one of those weird songs where it's sort of like you've got this one part and you've got another part it just kind of goes back and forth the whole song that's right and i'm going to point out the first song that comes to mind that's sort of like that for me is uh music sounds better with you by stardust it kind of does one thing and then it goes to another thing and then it goes back and forth and back and forth this is another song that just goes back and forth between two things that's right let's talk about that other thing that it does which is when it kind of goes correct me if i'm wrong does it kind of go major like i feel like after introducing us to the east as these western listeners that it kind of goes to more of a traditional yeah the chord changes in this other section go one seven three seven and then it changes one seven three seven four five yeah i didn't quite sing it right but the chord changes in this section give us a nice contrast to loop us back to that a section yeah and it's satisfying every time and correct me if i'm wrong it is less eastern sounding and it is more just traditional sort of like drivey rock music it connects more to the blues by those chord changes i would say because we get that four five the sub dominant back to the dominant back to the one can we hear a little bit of it let's do it here it is in the guitar part this time is a little different one seven three seven four five now we gotta go back to the one and then we're back into the tension it's like the tension in the race and the tension in the release yeah love it it's great songwriting and these guys are learning how to write songs in this moment this is the first record where it's all original compositions and not a hodgepodge of covers a handful of originals this is all original on aftermath but jones is bringing what he brings to the song he's bringing what he brings to the song and uh is he in the songwriting credits we'll find out we'll talk about the splits so this song has a very mystic old world feel to it make himself described Painted Black as a Turkish influenced song, but some people have gone so far as to say it was influenced by one specific Turkish song by Erkin Kure from 1966. Check this out. Let that ride. Let that ride. What the fuck? I don't know, man. Let's break this down. I wish I had some tea. This is one song and you got Diallo and Luxury. So we're going to talk about this. We're going to break it down and we're going to talk about whether it's an interpolation or if it's an evocation combination. OK, because in my humble opinion, I think it might be the latter. But let's talk about it. Who is Erkin Kore? His name sounds like an anagram. It sounds like somebody who's like. This is Turkish Anatolian rock from, we think, 1966. Now, here's the thing. on Discogs, this record shows up as being first released in 1966, which is the same year as Painted Black. So it might be fair to say that we can never know for certain which record was released first and might have heard the other one first. I will say, it reminds me of Rod Stewart and that song that he might have picked up in South America. The laws were a lot different back then. I feel like these British rockers, they were traveling. No one's ever going to hear this song on the air. Yeah, you're never going to – there's never going to be a website, whatever the fuck that is, that's going to compile all these things and people are going to be able to play them and be like, oh, shit. Fair point. But let me point something out to you. Okay, first of all, we're going to break this down. Like why does it sound familiar? Well, some of the instrumentation, some of the tempo, some of the rhythm. And then what about those notes? Those notes. I'm going to play on my very not sitar sounding VST plug-in of a sitar. What does the sitar sound like on there? Stop. sounds like we got a sitar in the room hey man burn that incense brother I'm high off the knock chamba alright sounds just like a sitar it's a sitar Ravi, Ravi, Robin It's like, what do they call like rhino, Republican and name only? It's Sino. Citar and name only. A Sino. There are actually only four notes that are the same, which is four notes that are the same. You're going to find millions of times across music. It's not the same rhythm. And importantly, it's not the same key. Now, let's talk for a second about the key, because that's a big part of what gives Painted Black. It's Eastern flair. It's character, right. This is in diatonic scales. This is minor or aeolian. Twisted scale. Painted black, however, is a little different. There are two notes that are different. There is a flatted sixth and a raised or sharp seven. I'll play it for you. And you'll hear the difference, I think, right away at the top of the scale. So far the same. so far the same this note's a little different so the big change happens because we actually have a minor third at the end of that scale usually our diatonic scales are all half steps and whole steps yeah this one skips three half steps at the end i'll play it again you can't it makes your face move why does that make your face it's like it's like eating a lemon but it feels so good it feels so good it's harmonic minor it's called harmonic minor because once you get to that seventh you really want to get back to the one it's begging you to go to the one usually in the blues and in regular you know regular minor seventh it's a flat seventh which sounds like and the song we just played the turkish rock song yeah is using that flat seventh and that's a big deal because Painted Black is that's the note that we're like oh this is slightly outside of the canon of yes this is outside of the canon of blues and r&b this really makes me want to go find irken corey which uh he might have some other he might have some other hits man i mean like that was that was some good stuff but listen i will say this here's the song that i think is a little more similar from 1965. So this one definitely came before Painted Black. This is the Supremes My World is Empty Without You Babe. Let's compare that just because our ears have forgotten about it to Painted Black potentially. Have they? Have we? And I'll just make the comparison explicit again. Bring out that sitar, my man. Bring out that sitar. Guys, I'm not really sitting here holding a sitar. I know it sounds like it. Again, a key part of that is that major seventh. That makes it harmonic minor. But anyway, here is My World is Empty Without You, Babe. Again, same first four notes from 1965. My world is empty without you, babe. How many notes are the same? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. I need a red door and I want to. My world is empty without. That's seven notes, isn't it? Okay, so this one has seven notes that are the same. This one starts off like the Stones, but it doesn't continue along that path quite like my man, Urkin Correct. It doesn't have the similarities of tempo and instrumentation. And even the fact of the vocal line being sung to the instrument part doubling it isn't happening in the Supremes. But the notes are actually kind of more similar. I agree. It's almost like it's almost like a postmodern mashup of like everything that Keith and Mick were probably into at the time, which you can imagine where the Supremes, this random song they heard from a Turkish artist. Like it's a lot of things all at once. Now we come to the vocals, and I want to talk to you about the lyrics, because to me, I'd always associated this song with the Vietnam War. That was pretty much my interpretation. I was like, this is a song that's about guys on helicopters flying over jungles. Right. And now that I hear it and I've looked at the lyrics, it seems to be quite clearly about a guy who's attending the funeral of the woman that he loved. I didn't know that the Anglican church painted their doors red. and uh so he wants he sees that door and he wants to paint it black and he sees you know girls in the street but he has no sex drive today because he wants to paint their summer dresses black i i think that's interesting because it reminds me of the doors song people are strange where it's like people are strange when you're strangers you know streets are uneven when you're alone you know like it's just this idea that like you can just be in this mood and in this funk and it just paints everything yeah you know this really dark color and i feel like and in pop music like you know although there's r&b and blues influences to say the least that's understating it in rolling stones music and those are traditions that have darkness in their lyrics pop music and the beetle the beatles weren singing about this stuff the kinks were starting to the beatles were a little bit later would get into it but in 65 66 that like some happy time yeah i mean there a lot of happy songs at that time but the stones were angst ridden they were like an early this is sort of a goth moment for them and there's like a darkness to them there's part of why the beetle stones divide which is a little bit you know overly maybe stated as like us versus them like sure they had more similarities than differences all this to say there is more darkness in their music and this is maybe the prime example of how this sort of personal expression of angst is newly in pop music at the time let's hear a little bit of mixed isolated vocals i see a line of cars and they're all painted black with flowers and my love both never to come back you can almost imagine you know a 20 year old, you know, singing these lyrics into a microphone, which is what I always try to do. We always try to like take away like the professional shine of it and just hear what is essentially one or two people just saying something. Yeah. The vulnerability of actually stepping up to the microphone and being a human singing the song, which we do on this podcast, every episode. So vulnerable. One day people will isolate our vocals. I'll be like, not bad. I think they've heard enough of us, frankly, let's face it. And again, just to point out that that melody line, same as the sitar with the raised seventh right the sharp seven that just that one single half step in the scale is really why we're evoking not just the middle eastern the turkish but it's also like the arabic the flamenco it also connects to like neoclassical metal like when you hear like ingue malmstein or even randy rhodes like some of the stuff they were doing was just their scale selection often included that one single note you know from song to song it varies but that's what makes it sound that's what makes some metal sound eastern or classical or just exotic in general so it's interesting just to really call attention to that one half step difference in the scale that's being used can evoke so much globally and historically can you play uh you know that that that part where he talks about the girls going by summer clothes i see the girls walk by dressed in their summer clothes i have to turn my head until my darkness goes who's harmonizing with him there so the credits have keith richard as being a harmony vocal i don't think it's there that sounds like mick to me but it might be you think it's double mix i think it's a double track but i can't be sure to my ear that sounds like mick doing the harmony but it might be keith we definitely know for that the sake of why his name is listed in the liner notes as a harmony vocal towards the end all the humming yeah feels like maybe you know that's i think that's certainly going to involve other members of the band who um are maybe more note challenged with which keith famously has a wonderful singing voice but he's not he's no mick let's put it that way in terms of hitting the notes melodically speaking you mentioned the hums let's hear the hums because there's a lot going on there that's right so in the sixth repeat we were playing same melody but now it's just repeat replaced with humming for the last minute of the song right and it kind of echoes what the guitar was doing it can it's the same melody line exactly right they almost sound ironic they almost sound like they're imitating the rolling stones I think so too. I hear them imitating the sitar because the shape of the notes on the sitar, it's a little bit more, we're getting in between the notes. It's a little more microtonal, which is part of why it sounds so unique and exciting sounding. And they're doing it too, that they're kind of wobbling around the notes, giving it a little space. It's not directly hitting each pitch, you know, specifically and going to the next pitch. They're going in between the notes. But I hear a little bit of a smirk too, a little bit of, if it's not quite sarcasm, it's that same humorous mindset of the beat. This whole session is joyful and a little bit funny. And it's got that kind of polka vibe and it's double time. It's kind of like Hava Nagila, right? There's a little bit of that going on with this. Yeah, there's a playfulness. All right, Luxury, now that we've heard the song, tell us how the splits break down. All right, well, according to the public records, this song is 50-50, The Glimmer Twins. That's right. 50% Mick, 50% Keith, 0% anybody else. And part of why this is important is because in this moment, And Bill Wyman played two different instruments. 100%. And as we alluded to earlier in the episode, this is a moment of shifting of power within the group, right? But it's not just Mick and Keith versus Brian. It's a little bit Mick and Keith versus everybody. Because prior to this moment on earlier records, they would either be doing covers, or you may notice, fans of the band know this, that sometimes you'll see Nanker Felge as the songwriting credit, which was a pseudonym for the entire band, basically. for them to avoid having to track down either for public domain stuff or for stuff that was questionably of origin. It was a way of hiding a little bit. It was a little bit their way of hiding that they were sort of taking credit for somebody else's work or for public domain work that had no known authorship. But that Nanker Felge entity was a way that everyone got a little bit of the publishing royalty. So Bill Wyman, the bass player, famously says that, look, Paint it Black was a collective effort and it should have been credited to Nanker Felge, but they stopped using that and they started going, you know what? it's just the two of us and because they had their manager andrew luke oldham on their side they were able to get away with basically taking credit not unlike the lennon mccartney situation i was gonna say it's a little bit like macklin right when you would see that in uh some credits but uh oh man i feel bad for the other guys in the group yeah it probably would have been more fair to cut in definitely bill wyman based on the stories we were totally it seems as though the sitar melody may have come from brian james himself yeah not just the sitar choice but also the melody itself and the other band members were used to kind of being more collective but in this moment the collective is starting to become a duo there you go all right so diallo what do you think the legacy of paint it black and the rolling stones is for me there's something to be said about just the stones is longevity this is one of those songs that has managed to stay around you know i don't know that our kids will necessarily you know be as exposed to it as much as the boomers start to to exit but i definitely think that this is one of those songs that you know whether you love the band or hate the band, you can appreciate why the song is so catchy and why it's managed to stick around. I've said for a while, if you go to see the Rolling Stones tonight, because I'm sure they're playing somewhere tonight, you are kind of going to see the songs, but also you're kind of going to see Mick. I mean, like, can I also just say some kind words about Mick? I think that to a certain extent, he is still the definition of a rock star. They had a song come out just 10 years ago, Moves Like Jagger. You know, like, I think it's understood that, He doesn't play instruments, but he gets out there and he does the rooster and he points at people. He's got the moves. And he's managed to stay kind of looking like a cool version, older version of his old self. To me, the Stones in this song, they speak to creating something that has legs. It speaks to longevity and sort of what we expect from our rock musicians and performers. Absolutely. And to a certain degree, it doesn't make a heck of a lot of sense that these guys are still alive. I know. Knowing all the debauchery that they've been through. I think it's just genetics. I think that some people can do everything right and unfortunately die in their 60s and then some people like, I get the sense he's going to be around for a very long time. And unfortunately Brian Jones didn't make it that long. He passed away just two years after the song came out. It's still an unsolved crime. He was found dead in his swimming pool. We don't really know what happened to Brian Jones. He just walked in and he was in the pool. Well, he was found dead in his pool. There have been lots of investigations and documentaries, there's some theory that the bricklayer may have killed him because he didn't pay him, like at his home. And who knows? An autopsy would say if the bricklayer killed him though, right? Why would an autopsy know that? I mean, you're presuming that a brick was found? I assume you hit him with a brick. If there was a brick in the autopsy, that may be a clue, which maybe no one's thought to look into. It's still this moment. I just cracked the case, guys. This has officially become a true crime podcast. And of course, it's an absolute tragedy. Brian Jones, if not the creative genius behind the entirety of the band's even existing, certainly a huge creative force through this era in this song. And just his personal demons got to him and it didn't help that he was iced out of the band. Yeah. That spiral that was created may have contributed to, unfortunately, his demise. That said, I will say it was a little funny on, you know, the British legal system is so weird. They said that he death by misadventure. Such a British sounding death. It's like a Monty Python death. It's like the misadventures of Sheriff Lobo. Misadventure, right. It's like a whitewashing of murder. Misadventure. Somehow they found a way to find some comedy. But Brian Jones didn't make it. And he's also, in fact, the first member of the quote unquote 27 Club, which would later in the next two years, Hendrix would go. Jim Morrison would go. Yeah. Janis Joplin. And then later on, Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse, all at 27, way too young. But the rest of the band is still kicking, alive and kicking and on tour. And to me, when I think about that as a musician myself, it's like there's a version of your goals as a musician. There's a version of yourself that's like, gosh, I hope I'm still making music as long as the Rolling Stones are. Because that seems like the best case scenario, right? That you're still making music and touring and doing well into your 80s. But the flip side of that, as we talk about this song, Paint It Black, and we think about the legacy of this band. I'm struck by how it's kind of a deal with the devil to be playing the same song for 60 years. There's something about that that I can't really fathom. In my own version of like performing and playing music, I've played dozens and dozens of shows, like maybe 100 performances. And I'm tired of my own songs, right? You get a little bit. It's hard to find something in it that you every night are looking forward to like re-examining or reliving. So I don't know how they do it. That feels like, though, the flip side of this fame and fortune is like, well, you're up there on stage. Are you going through the motions or can you really get back to that emotion that led you to write the song? I'll say I've seen the Stones perform live maybe around like 2001. And even that and that's 25 years ago. I remember that the the arrangements were very watered down. Like that's sort of like furious pace. Like you went for like a painted black. It's like it was a lot slower. It was a lot slower. It felt a little more like smooth jazzy. Not hitting all the high notes. It felt like smooth jazz version of Painted Black. I remember that specifically. So it's hard to give people the rowdy, raunchy show that you might have done. When you're 80, yeah. At the Hippodrome in London a couple of decades ago. More like the hip replacement drum, am I right? These poor guys, I don't have a lot of empathy for the conundrum. Because obviously the flip side of it is fame and fortune and everything. But that's why I say deal with the devil. because on paper, fame and fortune isn't everything in life. There's also like what you spend your time doing. Look, I mean, this is the smallest violin in the world playing for the Rolling Stones, having to perform Paint It Black for 60 years. But I just find that to be really intriguing. Like what do you do with your rate? We had Sean Sockman on the show a few weeks ago. And he was talking about how sometimes they're singing End of the Road and he's thinking about the hamburger he's going to get from room service when he gets back after the show. So there's a little bit of that, I think, going on here. You're probably right. Okay, Luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gem with you, the One Song Nation, and with each other. Luxury, why don't you go first? All right, y'all. So my one more song, one of my favorite bands of all time. We did allude to this singer on another episode. We hopefully someday will do an episode on them. But this is Liz Frazier from Cocteau Twins. It's Lorelei from the Treasure album, one of my favorite albums in their catalog. I get chills with every syllable, every phoneme from this woman's, from her voice, from her heart, from her chest. An ethereal quality. And this record is particularly interesting because they use, I think it's a different drum machine than the other one. So it's got a little more of an industrial sound to it. So Treasure is like their most industrial sounding record. But that's just in the drum machine. The rest of it is ethereal vocals from heaven. We are big. The voice of God. Absolutely. We're big Cocktail Twins fans here. Absolutely. What about you, Diallo? What is your one more song this week? My one more song, in keeping with talking about the Stones and Shattered and Grimy New York. And Shadooby. Here's another one that I really like a lot. This is, I always want to call them the conk, but they're actually just conk. And this is a song called Love Attack. I look at you. And I know you're mine. And I run my finger through you. You know, it's got that really drivey bass line. Perfect bass line. You can just sort of, you're like, you're in the back of a cab. You're south of Soho. You don't know what's going to happen tonight, but like the night is young. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok and DM us. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, D-I-A-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo Riddle. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at LuxuryXX. And you can follow our podcast on Instagram and TikTok at OneSongPodcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of OneSong on YouTube. Just search for OneSongPodcast. We'd love it if you'd like it. Subscribe. Also, be sure to check out the OneSong Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you've made it this far, welcome. You're officially part of the OneSong Nation. Oh, say can you see? Show us some love Give us five stars And leave us a review And also send this episode To a fellow music fan It really helps keep this show thriving Let's really help me in this episode I'm producer, DJ, songwriter, musicologist And KCRW DJ Every Friday night From 10pm till midnight Luxury And I'm actor, writer, director And sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle And this is one song We'll see you next time Oh say can you see this episode was produced by Melissa Duanias our video editor is Casey Simonson mixing by Michael Hartman and engineering by Eric the Man Hicks this show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley and Eric Weil