It's a pop-culture reference which has become an idiom the characters in "Elementary" are assumed to know the song and understand its meaning. It sounds, however, like something the "bad guy" would say.) A military commander in a war zone might get away with it. (I haven't watched the episode yet, so don't know who was giving that order - if it was, for example, a police/SWAT commander, use of a command like that would likely result in suspension from duty, since the police are supposed to be preventing funerals rather than causing them. Using "Paint it black" as the fire-at-will signal is sardonic, and makes excellent television - but is probably not in common usage. It's only after the song became iconic that "paint it black" became an idiomatic expression.Īll of the imagery in the Stones song is to death and its accompanying sadness black is the color of funerals in England, and at least one verse (" I see a line of cars and they're all painted black / With flowers and my love both never to come back") is an explicit reference to a funeral cortege. It would appear that you underestimate the cultural significance of the Rolling Stones!Ī quick search for the phrase's history (via Google nGrams) shows that it was not an idiomatic phrase before the song was released in 1966: except for a Southerner opposed to civil rights in the 1920s (" We will paint this State red before we paint it black") and a reference to national colors (" It would be just the same if Ireland began to paint the map green or Montenegro were to paint it black"), (almost) all the pre-1966 instances I find are literal references to actually putting real black paint onto things. This entry was posted in Greyhound and tagged Charlie Watts, Greyhound, music, paint it black. Image: Try as we might, we could not find a photograph of Charlie Watts with his dogs, but we thought the next best thing might be a black Greyhound, this one a stock photo. Watts has twenty-nine of them, all retired racing Greyhounds. Charlie helps his wife with the horses, and although he doesn’t ride, he takes the Greyhounds for their walks. We thought you’d find it interesting that this original member of arguably the quintessential 60’s rock group has been married to the same woman, Shirley Ann Shepherd, since 1964, and together they own 250 Arabian horses living on their 600-acre award-winning Arabian horse stud farm in rural Devonshire that attracts breeders from around the world.ĭogs. It’s hard to believe that any member of the Rolling Stones could age, but Charlie Watts is now 77 years old. It became the group’s third number one hit single in the US, and was the first number one hit featuring a sitar, particularly in the UK.Ĭredit Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts, who had to combine western-style rock music drumming with Middle Eastern sub-beats while navigating through a song that had so many moving parts as to lose count of them. When it was released, “Paint It, Black” sounded nothing like anything else that had been played on the radio, and for its time, it was revolutionary. It’s a huge part of the song, and for the “meat behind the beat” (aka the drummer), it’s an “arms-all-over-the-place” effort: It’s the song in the You Tube video below, and as you listen to it, pay special attention to the drumming. Younger readers will know the song from the movie, Full Metal Jacket and The Devil’s Advocate, and an even younger generation will have heard it in trailers for The Mummy, or from multiple episodes of the TV series, Westworld. Don’t click on any of the following links just yet, but if you’re a certain age, you were in your teens when Paint It Black was released in 1966.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |