The Dream That Gave Rock Its Gnarliest Riff: 'Jumpin' Jack Flash'

Keith Richards woke up with the opening riff of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” already playing in his head. He scrambled for a tape recorder, played the riff on his acoustic, and then promptly fell back asleep—only to wake up and find the tape had run out. Luckily, the riff stuck. He later said it arrived fully formed, like a bolt from the blues-rock gods. The riff itself is a monster: a slashing, syncopated figure played in open G tuning (capo on the fourth fret, no sixth string), giving it that grinding, almost metallic snarl.

The song was a deliberate pivot. After 1967’s lush, psychedelic Their Satanic Majesties Request, the Stones were eager to strip things down. They’d been messing around in the studio with acoustic folk and country, but the riff demanded something tougher. They recorded “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” in a single day at Olympic Studios in London, with Bill Wyman’s bass doubling the riff and Charlie Watts’s drum fill hitting like a freight train. The result was a back-to-basics stomp that reset the band’s trajectory—and gave rock one of its most indelible openings.