Rock Spot – Jumping Jack Flash
By WTJU Rock
In 1967 the police raided the Redlands home of Keith Richards during a party where, shockingly to the establishment, drugs were being used. The persecution of the Stones was criticized by the editor of The Times newspaper in a famous article entitled, ‘Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel?
In 1968 the Rolling Stones released Jumping Jack Flash. Christopher Pickles took a long hard look at the video and determined that something had changed.
“I see the video now as a statement of transition. The wait was over. The Stones were announcing that they had a new place to go to: a darkly cold, wet and violent place into which they had been accepted and within which they were relatively safe.
This band was now large and forceful. Those who called them the Stones were acknowledging a greater, awe-inspiring whole. These ‘Stones’ were not going to retreat in the face of the old men and their petty morals. They had established a bastion, a vanguard, where their music had a dark, rolling power.
We were not invited there. We were not being urged to join or support them. This was no place for the uninitiated. The Stones were not above us this time, they had gone below.
Jagger can grin with nervous bravado, but Brian and Keith are playing for new hosts, constantly checking left and right, shaded and confident but … what is out there? What are they looking at? They are not looking back at us, in our world, they are looking off stage, into the wings. Keith, lips pursed, auditioning for those who gave him sanctuary. “This is what we do”.
Don’t try to go there, unless you were born with the strap right across your back. The Stones are there because together they have courage and total abandon… and they qualified. Washed up and left for dead. Jumping Jack Flash is cocky enough to click hooves with the dancing goat god and Brian with his greasepaint and joker shades, he isn’t coming back.
Only when you have achieved a hard detachment can you go to new places and find new powers; abandoning rules enables new realities. What a monumental feat to set aside the prevailing truth, to create a gap and travel through, casting back these fleeting glances, sending us a rumbling rock track, talking about Jack the Lad dancing on the violent storm of his bloody past.
Up on the surface, the Stones had pierced the veil of the establishment and seen hypocrisies and edifices that were bewildering. The system had depleted them and threatened their very lives today. Soon they would move to the south of France and set loose a redefinition of rock ‘n roll to mark their era, liberated from everything society held precious. The Jumping Jack Flash video, that glance of a momentary meeting, was their announcement that they were ready … and unafraid.”
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