“I Was Born in a Crossfire Hurricane, and I Howled at My Ma in the Driving Rain.”

“I was born in a crossfire hurricane, And I howled at my ma in the driving rain.”

This ferocious couplet starts off Jumping Jack Flash and in a way, though Mick couldn’t have known it at the time, my life. Sort of.

I probably wasn’t born in a crossfire hurricane but I was born just as this song came roaring out of the box in May 1968. Okay, so it didn’t hit Number 1 until June, but why spoil a good story with too much exactitude? I like to think this was number 1 when I was born and so, it is where our story begins.

One of the classic Stones riff based songs, it is generally acknowledged to mark a return to form for the group following their hippy-dippy, and busted, 1967 which saw the meandering, and slightly crap, ‘Satanic Majesty’s Request’ released. ‘Dandelion’, ‘We Love You’ and ‘She’s a Rainbow’ are fine, worthy songs but not really what the Stones were all about. Jumping Jack Flash dragged them away from this follow-the-crowd, love and beads nonsense and into their much-lauded Beggar’s Banquet-Sticky Fingers-Exile on Main Street pomp.

It sounds the archetypical Stones song, from the hook-heavy guitars to the snarling Jagger vocal. That maybe true, but that would be to overlook some of the stranger aspects to the song. If you read Bill Wyman’s autobiography Stone Alone, you would know that Old Bill reckons that he came up with the distinctive riff himself on an organ and, joined by Brian Jones and Charlie Watts, they messed about with it and licked it into shape. Cue Mick and Keith, stumbling in late, “Oi Bill, what’s that?” Apparently, by the next day, the Glimmer Twins had returned with a fully-fledged song based on said riff with lyrics inspired by Keith’s gardener, Jack. But no song writing credit for Bill (Je suis un rock star, indeed!). The final indignity to Wyman was that Richards played bass on the track.

I came to Jumping Jack Flash late. In fact, not until 1983 as it happens. The only Stones record in our house was High Tide and Green Grass – a greatest hits compilation that stopped in 1966 with the raga/sitar epic - Paint It, Black (daft comma courtesy of Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham). I was babysitting at the time and, like all teenage babysitters, once I snaffled the food and drink on offer, I looked around for something else to amuse me. Going through the household’s record collection, I found a Stones compilation that went further than 1966. Plugging in the Cyberman like headphones into the 70’s style hi-fi I put on the record. Loud.

Track 1 was Jumping Jack Flash. Oh my, oh gosh! Suddenly it all fit into place. What a revelation! This was how music was supposed to sound. Not like Duran Duran or Spandet Ballet or any of the other bollocks popular in that post New Romantic, pre Jesus and Mary Chain, hiatus. I played it and I played it again.

Some years later, and now at the University at Sussex, I became a DJ on the campus radio station. As I recorded my own show on the studio cassette recorder, I was at least guaranteed one listener. However, if you had tuned into my solipsistic ramblings and eclectic record choices (they were all records in those days), you would have known that I started my show with Jumping Jack Flash. However, by now I’d morphed into live LP attitude, and so my show always started with the immortal, and confusing, words of Sam Cutler:

“Ladies and gentlemen. Everything seems to be ready. We’re sorry for the delay. And now, the greatest rock n’ roll band in the world, The Rolling Stones. The Rolling Stones!”

And then the listeners of University Radio Falmer would hear the Stones rock Madison Square Garden through the medium of Get Your Ya Ya’s Out. Possibly I spoilt the affect of the song’s might and brilliance by leaving the studio mike on and singing along with the record, but hey, I was young and I had no listeners anyway!

Jumping Jack Flash keeps coming back into my playlists, into my consciousness, into my life. I’ve even played it – so, so badly – myself in various groups I’ve had the distinction of ‘leading’ down in Brighton. My favourite version is the slightly flat, but rootsy, version from Granada’s 1969 documentary The Stones in The Park, but, let’s pigeonhole this record in 1968.

1968: The year of revolutions. The year of assassinations. The year of my birth. The year of, well, Jumping Jack Flash.