The Story Behind 'Paint It Black' and Brian Jones' Sitar

Brian Jones was the one who pushed for the sitar on “Paint It Black.” He’d been fooling around with Indian music after meeting Harihar Rao, a disciple of Ravi Shankar, and brought the instrument into the studio. The rest of the band was skeptical at first, but once that droning, snake-charming riff locked in with Charlie Watts’ pounding drums, it turned a straightforward pop song into something darker and more hypnotic—a sound nobody else was making in 1966.

The lyrics came from a completely different place. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards wrote them as an exercise in grief: a narrator so consumed by loss that he wants the whole world painted black, from the sun to the flowers. The sitar didn’t just add an exotic flavor—it deepened that sense of dislocation and despair, making the song feel like a funeral march from another dimension. It’s a perfect match between a weird instrument and a weird emotional state, and it became one of the first genuinely psychedelic rock hits.