Rolling Stones – "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (1968)

I was crowned

With a spike right through my head

If you wanted to explain to an extraterrestrial visitor why the Rolling Stones were all that, you could do a lot worse than play “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” for him, her, they, or it.  

Keith Richards was responsible for coming up with most of the classic Stones riffs – like the one in “Satisfaction” – but bassist Bill Wyman came up with this one while noodling around on an organ.   

The Rolling Stones in 1968

The Stones know a good thing when they hear it – they’ve included “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” on the setlist of every one of their many tours since it was released the week of my 16th birthday.

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Jagger biographer Philip Norman had this to say about Mick’s “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” lyrics:

[In “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” Jagger] hit on an answer to the problem of being a songwriter who chose to reveal nothing of himself in his lyrics.  This was to create a character he could assume like a role in a play, one that bore no resemblance to him . . . yet was a perfect distillation of his public self in all its manic energy, sexual ambiguity, and sneering cool.

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Keith Richards has said that the song’s title was inspired by something he once said about his gardener, Jack Dyer.  According to Keith, Dyer went clumping past the window of the guest bedroom of his country house early one morning and woke Mick Jagger, who was visiting.  When Jagger asked what the noice was, Richards replied, “Oh, that’s Jack – that’s jumpin’ Jack.”  

But someone who posted a comment about “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” to the Genius.com website a couple of years ago had a more sinister explanation: 

A “Jumpin' Jack Flash” is a heroin injection into the tear duct. Verse 3 is all about this: “Drowned/left for dead” is strung out; “feet bled” is bleeding from injections to veins in feet when arm veins are exhausted; “frowned at the crumbs” is the loss of appetite when strung out; and the “spike right through my head” refers to the injection into the tear duct.

That don’t sound right to me, but I’m no expert when it comes to heroin-related stuff.

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Does “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” belong in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME?  No doubt about it

Click here to listen to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” which was a #1 hit single in the UK and but peaked at #3 in the U.S.   

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: