Mick Jagger was still a little paranoid about the arrest in the country house of Keith Richards, in Redlands, in February 1967. A blitz much amplified by the newspapers and which obviously left some sequel in the psyche of the Rolling Stones singer.
One morning in Redlands in March 1968, Jagger awoke in a panic hearing “plop plop plop” in the park, footsteps that reminded him of that premature arrival of the police. But he was kindly reassured by Richards: “he IS my gardener in wellington boots splashing around the garden”.
Quick with the pen, Jagger began writing some of rock’s most powerful lyrics that day. Yes Satisfaction (I can’t get no) spoke of youthful frustration and Paint it black of an adolescent pessimism, Jumpin’ Jack Flash showed a new maturity in terms of lyrics, while dabbling in the supernatural with a tone leaning towards dark protection. Who was this evil being called Jack Flash the Leaping Man?
Not a psychedelic band
The Stones came from the blues and Rhythm & Blues quarry, and except for Brian Jones, a truly musically open-minded band, the band drank into the sound of black Chicago music.
The psychedelic hour of the mid-1960s caught them off guard. Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Bandof the Beatlesmaterial from Pink Floyd, The Byrds, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, among others, were in a direction the Stones did not feel.
Hence his laborious album Their Satanic Majesty Requested (The request of their satanic majesties), composed and recorded between too many days lost for drug use and a trial of Jagger and Richards for possession and authorization to consume in their home, did not go as well as they would have liked.
For one thing, this sixth record released by the band was produced by the band following the sacking of their manager Andrew Loog Oldham and the only surviving song from that album, released on December 8, 1967, was She is a rainbowa theme enriched by the instrumentation of the creative Jones.
Jagger and Richards understood their lesson and hired well-known young producer Jimmy Miller (up to that point he had worked with the Spencer Davis Group and Traffic, among others) who was completely honest with the group when he told them, “I I’m not here to impress you with any of my musical ideas, I just want his talent to come out and let the Stones be the Stones again. Enough of the psychedelia.”
The Stones set out to simplify their sound and return to the roots of the blues, but their experience as artists allowed them to rediscover that music from a different emotional world, richer, more personal and above all more fun, according to Richards himself.
Breaking away from that progressivism, the band felt free and the best example of this change was the album The beggar’s banqueta jewel of the stone repertoire.
In a sense, they embraced early on that change that occurred in the late 1960s as the peace movement gave way to a darker political climate. The murders of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, the French May and the bloody Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia greatly affected the mood of youth and music.
Jumping Jack Flash
One night in February 1968, the Stones gathered to rehearse at RG Jones Studios in Morden, Surrey. Only Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts arrived on time and to kill the wait they started playing. Wyman sat down at the piano and played a riff which Jones and Watts started following.
“Keep playing,” Richards enthused as he and Jagger entered the studio. “Don’t forget this reason, Bill,” he asked Wyman. The rehearsals passed, but the riff remained in the guitarist’s head.
Days later, one morning in Redlands, Jagger woke up startled by the noises in the park: “What is it? What is it?” he asked. “It’s my gardener Jack Dyer jumping through puddles in his boots.”
Jagger found in that episode the protagonist of a new theme and started writing.
According to Richards, they started working on the chorus. “Jagger was singing Jumping Jack, but there was an intermission, kind of awkward, until suddenly he added Flash and that was the perfect line within the beat and it sounded good for harmony. That afternoon we got to work until it was almost done,” said the guitarist.
On 20th April 1968, the band assembled at Olympic Sound studios, Barnes, for the recording which featured some peculiar data.
Richards recorded the acoustic guitar on a small tape machine and played it on a small powered system with a microphone plugged into the speaker and recorded on the studio console, resulting in a dirty, distorted sound.
“The whole band thought I was crazy, but they humored me and it ended up being okay. The only one who noticed it from the beginning was Jimmy Miller,” said Richards, who ghe played two guitars, twice the bass to give it body and helped out by playing the tom-tom standing up to give a wider sound to the rhythmic base.
Brian Jones played rhythm guitar; Bill Wyman, Hammond organ and “Stu” Stewart piano (the sixth stone).
The song was completed that day and was released on May 24 as a single with Child of the Moon on side b
The creation of the riff generated an argument that, although not serious, created discomfort between Wyman and the Jagger-Richards duo, since the bassist claimed it as his own, according to his autobiography. Lonely stone (the same title as his second solo album). “We played it for about 20 minutes until Keith and Mick came up and told us to go ahead and we did,” Wyman said.
A letter about the devil
The lyrics of this song show a new facet of that artist who portrayed so well the frustration and pessimistic disappointment of youth from his lyrics. Now that cynical tone to the biting Jack Flash reveals a demonic Jagger.
“I was born through a hurricane of fire/ And I howled at my mother in the pouring rain/ But now it’s all right/ It’s really cool/ But it’s all right/ I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash/ This is awesome, awesome, awesome.. .
“I was raised by a toothless bearded witch/ I was raised on a leash on my back/ But it’s all right now/ It’s really cool/ But it’s all right/ I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash/ This is awesome, awesome, awesome…
“I drowned, they washed me and left me for dead/ I fell to my feet and saw they bled/ I frowned at the crusts of a loaf of bread/ I was crowned with a nail right through my head/ But now it’s all over Well / That’s actually great / But it’s okay / I’m Jumpin’ Jack Flash / This is great, great, great.”
Three paragraphs intoned with a provocative tone confirmed the Stones’ Satanic affiliationwhich would have for epitome Sympathy for the deviltheme with which they will open The beggar’s banquettheir next album released in December 1968.
This time there was nothing about love, peace and flowers, Jagger explained at the time that the lyrics referred to “someone who after going through a tough time trying to get out of it. It’s someone who’s had a tough experience but he gets away with it.”
That is, they wanted to relativize all that satanic material that they were foisting on the subject, even if in the end they didn’t succeed.
The video that accompanied Jumpin’ Jack Flash with the musicians made up in an atmosphere of gloomy satanic mass, supported the idea of the evil spirit of “Jumping Jack”.
Richards, always direct, pointed out much later and casually that the lyrics referred to the experience they had when they were hounded by the police for drug use. He talked about the resilience of the band.
Brian Jones’ last concert
Twelve days before the single’s release jumpin jack flashon 12 May, they performed at the Empire Pool, Wembley, London after winning the poll of the New musical express (NME) for Best R&B Band. The group hadn’t played live since April 1967, when they closed their tour in Athens.
By the way, that would be Brian Jones’ last live concert with the band; although his last appearance with the group was at the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus, in December 1968.
The feeling that existed at that moment was that the band was fading.
A few days before this NME party show, the Daily News ran an editorial saying that since 1966, with Paint it blackthe band didn’t have a number one single due to that move away from R&B with albums like Between the buttons, Flowers AND Satanic Request of Their Majesties. The article ended with a condemnation: “They have lost their initial momentum.”
The chronicles tell that the Stones rose to devour the public with two furious songs; they opened with Satisfaction (I can’t get no) and ended with the premiere of Jumpin’ Jack Flash which had the crowd screaming.
Nick Logan, editor of NME He said: “You could feel the Empire Pool shaking from its foundations as the roar increased. It was just like the old days, in fact, it was better than the old days.
“As soon as I played that riff something happened in my stomach. It is one of the most beautiful sensations in the world. You jump on the riff and it hits you, it dominates you. An explosion would be the best way to describe it. It’s what I would go to if I wanted to get anywhere near the state of Nirvana,” Richards said of this concert, you couldn’t be more of a rocker.
Source: Clarin
