For the month of January, I’m selecting some of the most memorable and influential songs of the 60’s. While they all hail from the same decade, these are some of my favorite songs of any era. They remind me that the 60’s were so much more than just Woodstock and psychedelic rock. It was a flourishing period for blues, folk, progressive and straight-ahead rock. #31DaysOf60sSongs
There are music fans that swear by the Rolling Stones, calling them the greatest band of all time. For reasons I don’t fully understand, there was always something preventing me from fully exploring their music. One thing that has certainly brought on this indifference is the prevalence of too much straight-ahead rock on their biggest hits. The songs were catchy, but too expected, and I quickly became too bored of them with no interest in going deeper into the band’s catalog. But there’s one song that was always an anomaly for me: “Paint It Black”.
It didn’t sound like anything else that I’ve heard before. It almost didn’t sound like rock were it not for Jagger’s vocals in the chorus. “Paint It Black” is a song with various influences, including Indian, Middle Eastern and Eastern European dispositions. Jagger and Richards wrote the song, but Brian Jones has the most significant impact on the track with his sitar riff. The song pulled the curtain wide open to musical expressions that were new to me. It left an impression that has stayed with me since the very first day I heard it, which was likely as part of some movie soundtrack.
“I have to turn my head until my darkness goes.”