THE STORY OF A SONG: Rolling Stones - "Jumpin’ Jack Flash" (1968)

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash bore down on the world in May 1968 like an emergency bulletin while Paris burned and America writhed in agony,” writes Stephen Davis in his Rolling Stones history. “Acoustic guitars, a zooming bass, and the trademark Jimmy Miller [the Stones’ new producer] tonal drop in the main riff began the song. Then Mick introduced his new persona, Jack Flash, in the lingo of Delta mysticism and hoodoo. Jack was demonic, born in a cross-fire hurricane, supernatural. . . Halfway through, as the song hurtled even faster, maracas kicked in.” And it all concluded with “a stone groove of a coda, thirty-five seconds of riffing guitar, droning organ, buzzing Eastern sounds [Brian Jones playing a tambura], and Charlie Watts making great time.” The record “served as the transistor anthem at the riots during the summer’s political conventions in Chicago and Miami. It was played constantly in Paris”, where a coalition of rebellious students and striking factory workers almost toppled the de Gaulle government. “France was as close as any of the 1968 protests came to an actual revolution, and Jumpin’ Jack Flash seemed to preside over this youthquake like Che Guevara with a band.”

The song was born while Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were jamming at six in the morning after being up all night at Richards’ home in Redlands in early March 1968. Outside it was pouring rain, and Jagger heard someone walking by the window in big rubber boots. It was Richards’ gardener, and when Jagger asked, Keith said, “Oh, that’s Jack. That’s Jumpin’ Jack”. Richards started to fool around on his guitar in open E tuning, singing “Jumpin’ Jack” and Mick interjected, “Flash!” They put the song together in a short time. “It’s really Satisfaction in reverse, except it’s played on chords instead of a fuzztone,” explained Richards. He created the unique sound, after playing it on acoustic guitar, by compressing and distorting it through one of the earliest models of the Philips tape recorder. The group recorded it in mid-March at London’s Olympic studio; after recording Richards’ guitar part and drummer Charlie Watts, they put the tape on a multitrack to create its distinctive effect. The song’s central riff—one of the great musical phrases in all of rock & roll—was inspired by a bass line Bill Wyman created while warming up.

Odd as it seems today, Jack Flash was regarded as something of a comeback record for the Stones after the derision that had greeted their psychedelic album Their Satanic Majesties Request upon its December 1967 release. It was the first song they recorded with Jimmy Miller, who would go on to produce some of their greatest albums in the next few years. Here, writes Thomas Ryan, “they enacted an amazing return to form with a song that defined the very essence of rock and roll. With lyrics that convey a nightmarish parody of poverty and evil, Jagger wrote a fable of Dickensian proportions that restored and further fueled the band’s demonic image while portraying himself as a mythic character extracted from a particularly gruesome Grimm’s fairy tale. During the verses, he teasingly invokes surreal images of horror and destitution, only to cockily rise above their squalor in the sardonic chorus.

Chart debut: Billboard June 8, 1968 (#3 peak) - #1 for two weeks in U.K.