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The Stones had been touring in the States listening to the radio all day long, Lee Hazlewood lived in the States.
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Less than a month later he drowned in his swimming pool at age 27. By June 1969, he was a liability, and the Stones fired him. He was still going strong when this song was released in 1966, but fell off a year later when his drug use caught up to him and his girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, left him for Richards. Jones was a founding member of the Stones and key to their early success.
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Jones did the arrangements for "Paint It Black" and many other songs around this time, but according to Keith Richards, he never presented a finished song to the group, which kept him off the credits. Brian Jones had a lot of input into this song, but was left off the songwriting credits (Mick Jagger and Keith Richards are the credited writers).
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