Composers: Mick Jagger &
Keith Richards First release:
single, May 1968 Recording date:
April 1968 Recording
location: Olympic Sound Studios, London,
England Producer: Jimmy MillerEngineer:Glyn
Johns Performed
onstage: 1968-73, 1975-79, 1981-82, 1989-90,
1994-95, 1997-99, 2002-03, 2005-07, 2012-19, 2021-23
Probable line-up:
Drums:
Charlie Watts & Keith Richards Bass: Keith Richards Distorted acoustic guitars: Keith Richards Lead vocal: Mick Jagger Background vocals: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards
& Jimmy Miller Piano: Ian
Stewart Organ:Nicky
Hopkins Maracas: Mick Jagger
Watch
it
I was born in a crossfire hurricane
And
I howled at my ma in the driving rain
But it's all right now
In fact it's a gas
But
it's
all right
I'm
Jumping
Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas
I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag
I
was schooled with a strap right across my back
But it's all right now
In fact it's a gas
But
it's
all right
I'm
Jumping
Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas
Ooh I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead
I
fell down to my feet and I saw they bled
Yeah,
yeah,
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread
Yeah,
yeah,
yeah, I was crowned with a spike right through my head
Come
on,
yeah
But it's all right now
In fact it's a gas
But
it's
all right
I'm
Jumping
Jack Flash, it's a gas, gas, gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas Jumping Jack Flash, it's a gas TrackTalk
Mick and I were in my house (laughs) in England in the
country... and we'd been up all night and it was 6:30 in the
morning, a dismal day, you know, English, grey. And we were just
both crashing, Mick was on the couch and I was in an armchair
with a guitar and we were, like, on the verge. And suddenly this
sound of these boots (laughs) went by the window, clump
clump clump - really, I mean, you had to be there to hear
it - and woke Mick up, What was that? And I said - I
looked out the window and I thought, Oh, that's Jack, that's
jumpin' Jack. You know and then we started to play with
those words. But I mean, really, it was sort of virtually woke
up out of a stupor by this guy's boots, he was my gardener, he
was a great guy but he's another story. And but... I just said,
That's Jack. Well he's leaping about a bit. Yeah,
I said, it's jumpin' Jack and then flash came
and suddenly we were wide awake and we started to work, you
know. You never know when they're going to come.
- Keith Richards, 2003
Jumpin' Jack Flash comes from this guy Jack Dyer, who was
my gardener. He'd lived out in the country all his life. I'll
put it this way: Jack Dyer, an old English yokel. I once said, Have
you ever been to town? And town, to an Englishman, means
London, right? And he says, Oh Yeah, I was up there V.E.
Day, when the war finished. That cathedral is something. He
meant Chichester, the local big town, seven miles away... Mick
says, Flash. He'd just woken up. And suddenly we had
this wonderful alliterative phrase. So he woke up and we knocked
it together.
- Keith Richards, July
1997
And the only guitar in the house was tuned that way. It's really
Satisfaction in
reverse. Almost an interchangeable riff, except it's played on
chords instead of a Gibson Maestro Fuzztone.
- Keith Richards, July
1997
We got to the studio early once and... in fact I think it was a
rehearsal studio, I don't think it was a recording studio. And
there was just myself, Brian and Charlie - the Stones NEVER arrive
at the same time, you know - and Mick and Keith hadn't come. And I
was just messing about and I just sat down at the piano and
started doing this riff, da-daw, da-da-daw, da-da-daw...
and then Brian played a bit of guitar and Charlie was doing a
rhythm. We were just messing with it for 20 minutes, just filling
in time, and Mick and Keith came in and we stopped and they said,
Hey, that sounded really good, carry on, what is it?
- Oh,
that was just something we were messing with.
- That
sounds good.
And then
the next day all I can really remember... we recorded it and
Mick wrote great lyrics to it and it turned out to be a really
good single.
- Bill Wyman, 1982
There was nothing about love, peace and flowers in Jumpin' Jack
Flash.
- Mick Jagger
Jumpin' Jack Flash was recorded at Olympic; we were doing it
deliberately for a single. Keith is playing my floor tom-tom on it
to give the boom-da, boom-da sound. Now you'd just
program it and loop it or something daft like that. The sound on Jumpin'
Jack Flash is very close together, because we do sit close
to each other in the studio, much to most engineers' amazement
nowadays. Nobody does that any more, really.
- Charlie Watts, 2003
I want the Stones being the Stones and that's what we think Jumpin'
Jack Flash is. The Stones really sell sounds. You're in
the studios with them and everything seems to be drifting to no
purpose and then it all comes together quite suddenly.
- Jimmy Miller, May
1968
Jumpin' Jack Flash was in open E, and there's a certain ring
that you need there. And what's always fascinating about open
stringing is you can get these other notes ringing
sympathetically, almost like a sitar, in a way. Unexpected notes
ring out, and you say, Ah, there's a constant. That one can go
all the way through this thing.
- Keith Richards, 1992
(I used a) Gibson Hummingbird (acoustic) tuned to open D, six
string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals
- but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo
on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another
guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I
learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in
(1964)... (The high-strung guitar) was an acoustic, too. Both
acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam
the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension
speaker.
- Keith Richards, 2002
With Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street
Fighting Man I'd discovered a new sound I could
get out of an acoustic guitar. That grinding, dirty sound came
out of these crummy little motels where the only thing you had
to record with was this new invention called the cassette
recorder... Playing an acoustic, you'd overload the Philips
cassette player to the point of distortion so that when it
played back it was effectively an electric guitar...There are no
electric instruments on Street
Fighting Man at all... All acoustic guitars. Jumpin' Jack Flash the
same. I wish I could still do that, but they don't build
machines like that anymore.
- Keith Richards, Life (2010)
It's funny. Through the
years so many people have told me I put the Stones back where
they belonged. But I had nothing to do with the fact - they'd
already written Jumpin' Jack Flash. They were already
quite willing to go back there. I'm sure the chemistry worked.
Being a drummer, I was very rhythm-minded.
- Jimmy Miller, 1979
Jumpin' Jack Flash is the most basic thing we have done this
time, although that may or may not be in the album (Beggars
Banquet).
- Mick Jagger, June
1968
I shall be pleased if it is a hit, but that applies at any time.
I think it is a good record but I'm not going to turn round and
say people are out of their skulls if they don't buy it. It has
a nice catchy chorus line and it's a good performance number...
We've had some lousy records which have gone to Number One, and
some funny ones - I think this disc is better than those.
- Mick Jagger, May 1968
(T)he more I hear Jumping Jack the more I realize I was
wrong (to think Child of the Moon
was the more commercial side). It has that same appeal as Satisfaction
and now I'm really getting to love it - it really is a gas, gas,
gas!
- Brian Jones, May 1968
It's about having a hard time
and getting out. Just a metaphor for getting out of all the acid
things.
- Mick Jagger, 1995
I like a lot of Stones songs
- I like Jumpin' Jack Flash
and Street Fighting Man,
all for different reasons.
- Mick Taylor, 2012
I
love Satisfaction dearly
and
everything, but those chords are pretty much a de rigueur course
as far as songwriting goes. But Flash is particularly interesting. It's allllll right now.
It's almost Arabic or very old, archaic, classical, the chord
setups you could only hear in Gregorian chants or something like
that. And it's that weird mixture of your actual rock and roll
and at the same time this weird echo of very, very ancient music
that you don't even know. It's much older than I am, and that's
unbelievable! It's like a recall of something, and I don't know
where it came from.
