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His Majesty

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Redhotcarpet

I thought so but then it's easier to just tune that third string to E when you play the riff.

Easy to not play it when overdubbing lots of guitars too. The normal open E tuned 3rd string is needed for other parts.

Yeah I know and it could be that the riff sounds so much fuller thanks to all the guitars. You riff sounds bigger if you change the third string but it's not needed for the rest of the song, the intro etc. It must be regular open E.

I find it plausible when I listen to JJF that it's overloaded acoustic guitars. And if it does include electric guitars, then they are too damn thin sounding. I love JJF, but I agree with Mick's quote, "It wasn't quite as in your face as it could have been." Because of those thin guitars, Bill's bass playing is more important than it otherwise would be. Yeah, Bill!

(You can love a song and still be critical. Someone here once called Mick's vocal on TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE as a "strangled cat" vocal. And I agree, and he should have toned that down. But I still love the song.)

(Incidentally, I can't help but think of when Keith said about the 40 Licks rehearsals, "Mick knows we're a bit disapproving about his knighthood. So he's working harder than usual." I posted that quote on Mick's website message board and some fan responded, "Mick has always worked hard. He's not working harder than usual!" Uh...Keith was there. I'll take his word for it before a distant fan. )

It's impossible for all of those guitars to be acoustic guitars recorded on Philips tape player. The process Keith describes means it can only be 1 or 2 recorded live at same time on the tape machine, then played back. The rest are electric guitars.

Acoustic guitar recorded on a Philips tape machine, then played back does not sound like electric guitar, the sound of that process is the distorted guitar on Street Fighting Man or the muffled, but driving guitar on Jumpin' Jack Flash which plays the lower part of the riff.

Keith played bass on Street Fighting Man and Jumpin' Jack Flash.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2011-12-11 19:40 by His Majesty.

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Title5Take1
I find it plausible when I listen to JJF that it's overloaded acoustic guitars. And if it does include electric guitars, then they are too damn thin sounding. I love JJF, but I agree with Mick's quote, "It wasn't quite as in your face as it could have been." Because of those thin guitars, Bill's bass playing is more important than it otherwise would be. Yeah, Bill!

(You can love a song and still be critical. Someone here once called Mick's vocal on TIME WAITS FOR NO ONE as a "strangled cat" vocal. And I agree, and he should have toned that down. But I still love the song.)

(Incidentally, I can't help but think of when Keith said about the 40 Licks rehearsals, "Mick knows we're a bit disapproving about his knighthood. So he's working harder than usual." I posted that quote on Mick's website message board and some fan responded, "Mick has always worked hard. He's not working harder than usual!" Uh...Keith was there. I'll take his word for it before a distant fan. )

There are, just as HM stated about a hundred times electric guitars on JJF.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-12-12 01:47 by Redhotcarpet.

Camille Paglia (whose personal idol is Keith Richards) thinks JUMPIN' JACK FLASH was lyrically inspired by William Blake's poem THE MENTAL TRAVELLER. It's possible. Aside from some similar lines and themes, Mick read Percy Bysshe Shelley's poem ADONAIS for Brian at Hyde Park, and Shelley and Blake were both contemporaries in the Romantic school of poetry. So Mick was definitely reading Romantic English poets at that time.

THE MENTAL TRAVELLER by William Blake
(circa 1803)

I travelled through a land of men,
A land of men and women too,
And heard and saw such dreadful things
As cold earth wanderers never knew.

For there the babe is born in joy
That was begotten in dire woe,
Just as we reap in joy the fruit
Which we in bitter tears did sow;

And if the babe is born a boy
He’s given to a woman old,
Who nails him down upon a rock,
Catches his shrieks in cups of gold.

She binds iron thorns around his head,
And pierces both his hands and feet,
And cuts his heart out of his side
To make it feel both cold & heat.

Her fingers number every nerve
Just as a miser counts his gold;
She lives upon his shrieks and cries—
And she grows young as he grows old,

Till he becomes a bleeding youth
And she becomes a virgin bright;
Then he rends up his manacles
And pins her down for his delight.

He plants himself in all her nerves
Just as a husbandman his mould,
And she bcomes his dwelling-place
And garden, frutiful seventyfold.

An aged shadow soon he fades,
Wandering round and earthly cot,
Full filled all with gems and gold
Which he by industry had got.

And these are the gems of the human soul:
The rubies and pearls of a lovesick eye,
The countless gold of an aching heart,
The martyr’s groan, and the lover’s sigh.

They are his meat, they are his drink:
He feeds the beggar and the poor
And the wayfaring traveller;
For ever open is his door.

His grief is their eternal joy,
They make the roofs and walls to ring—
Till from the fire on the hearth
Alittle female babe does spring!

And she is all of solid fire
And gems and gold, that none his hand
Dares stretch to touch her baby form,
Or wrap her in his swaddling-band.

But she comes to the man she loves,
If young or old, or rich or poor;
They soon drive out the aged host,
A beggar at another’s door.

He wanders weeping far away
Until some other take him in;
Oft blind and age-bent, sore distressed,
Until he can a maiden win.

And to allay his freezing age
The poor man takes her in his arms:
The cottage fades before his sight,
The garden and its lovely charms;

The guests are scattered through the land
(For the eye altering, alters all);
The senses roll themselves in fear,
And the flat earth becomes a ball,

The stars, sun, moon, all shrink away—
A desert vast without a bound,
And nothing left to eat or drink
And a dark desert all around.

The honey of her infant lips,
The bread and wine of her sweet smile,
The wild game of her roving eye
Does him to infancy beguile.

For as he eats and drinks he grows
Younger and younger every day;
And on the desert wild they both
Wander in terror and dismay.

Like the wild stag she flees away;
Her fear plants many a thicket wild,
While he pursues her night and day,
By various arts of love beguiled.

By various arts of love and hate,
Till the wide desert planted o’er
With labyrinths of wayward love,
Where roams the lion, wolf and boar,

Till he becomes a wayward babe
And she a weeping woman old.
Then many a lover wanders here,
The sun and stars are nearer rolled,

The trees bring forth sweet ecstasy
To all who in the desert roam,
Till many a city there is built,
And many a pleasant shepherd’s home.

But when they find the frowning babe
Terror strikes through the region wide;
They cry, ‘The Babe! the Babe is born!’
And flee away on every side.

For who dare touch the frowning form
His arm is withered to its root,
Lions, boars, wolves, all howling flee
And every tree does shed its fruit;

And none can touch that frowning form,
Except it be a woman old;
She nails him down upon the rock,
And all is done as I have told.

Some of the 60's stuff inspired by english/irish poets is great (they had to get their ideas from somewhere).

I think Donovan lifted some things as well.

The Song of the Wandering Aengus

From The Mammoth Book of the Rolling Stones by Sean Egan

Yeah well, I'd agree.

The Gardner inspired the chorus title.

Blues verse and Pop chorus.

Struggling hard verse lyrics and everything is ok chorus lyrics to go along with the Blues verse and Pop chorus.

Pop often had psychedelic inspired things in it at that time and the JJF Pop chorus has some psychedelic like things about it as well.

If the chorus had been Blues based, then the song would lose the Pop chorus contrast.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 09:00 by howled.

There are electric guitars on JJF, there is only one clearly audible (Philips tape machine) acoustic and it is playing the riff in open E using lowest way possible of playing the riff in that tuning and playing basic open tuning chords during chorus etc.

At some point Keith got the recording process for SFM and JJF mixed up in his memories hence comments about it only featuring acoustic guitars.

<At some point Keith got the recording process for SFM and JJF mixed up in his memories hence comments about it only featuring acoustic guitars.>

Yep. That must be it.

I don't doubt it but I havn't gone into it in a big way.

What's Acoustic and what's Electric, I'm not 100% sure.

As far as I know there is also the Nashville tuned guitar that is most noticeable at the intro playing the high bits (first thing that's heard) and I think it's also in the chorus doing the high parts and in the main riff but playing higher and probably the instrumental break as well.

Seeing that the Nashville tuning's top 2 strings are the same as regular tuning, it's a bit hard to be sure because the high parts in the chorus are mostly played on the top 2 strings.

Nashville tuning is normal top B and E strings with the bottom four strings tuned up an octave so a B chord played on the 7th fret sounds more treble based than usual.

I might not be 100% on that but that's what I seemed to have worked out once.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 15:26 by howled.

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howled
I don't doubt it but I havn't gone into it in a big way.

As far as I know there is also the Nashville tuned Acoustic that is most noticeable at the intro playing the high bits (first thing that's heard) and I think it's also in the chorus doing the high parts and in the main riff but playing higher and probably the instrumental break as well.

Seeing that the Nashville tuning's top 2 strings are the same as regular tuning, it's a bit hard to be sure because the high parts in the chorus are mostly played on the top 2 strings.

Nashville tuning is normal top B and E strings with the bottom four strings tuned up an octave so a B chord played on the 7th fret sounds more treble based than usual.

I might not be 100% on that but that's what I seemed to have worked out once.

There's no Nashville tuning on the acoustic guitars on JJF. Are you mixing up with WH?

No.

It's why the opening JJF chords (before anything else joins in) have hardly any bottom end on the chords, because the bottom 4 strings are tuned up an octave.

It's a very distinctive sound and Keith uses it in a great way.

There are also other guitars in the intro probably in open E, underneath the Nashville guitar.

It might explain why Keith and the Stones don't bother trying to do the intro live, because Keith might think it's best to leave the Nashville tuning out because it makes it too complicated for live playing.

The guitar mix and colours Keith gets in JJF is a real studio job with multi layers going on.

Keith Richards: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals - but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 15:41 by howled.

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howled
No.

It's why the opening JJF chords (before anything else joins in) have hardly any bottom end on the chords, because the bottom 4 strings are tuned up an octave.

It's a very distinctive sound and Keith uses it in a great way.

There are also other guitars in the intro probably in open E underneath the Nashville guitar.

It might explain why Keith and the Stones don't bother trying to do the intro live, because Keith might think it's best to leave the Nashville tuning out because it makes it too complicated for live playing.

Keith Richards: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals - but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."

It's very easy to spot a Nashville-tuned guitar. I doubt there is one on JJF, no matter what Keith is saying. 10 years earlier he said this:

"Jumpin' Jack Flash was in open E, and there's a certain ring that you need there. And what's always fascinating about open stringing is you can get these other notes ringing sympathetically, almost like a sitar, in a way. Unexpected notes ring out, and you say, Ah, there's a constant. That one can go all the way through this thing."

How would the open-tuned guitars "ring like sitars" with conflicting 12 string-sounding guitars, lots of bass in the mix and keyboards, not to mention electric guitars added?

You say "before anything else joins in". But the guitars we hear there clearly have bottom, although they have a weird top-sound. The latter might be because of their open tuning (combined with standard tuning) rather than a Nasville tuning, imo. It would have been more top in the bass strings that way - and there aren't THAT many guitars in the intro.

Here's a comparison with what we know is Nashville tuning, and JJF:







Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 16:05 by DandelionPowderman.

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DandelionPowderman

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howled
No.

It's why the opening JJF chords (before anything else joins in) have hardly any bottom end on the chords, because the bottom 4 strings are tuned up an octave.

It's a very distinctive sound and Keith uses it in a great way.

There are also other guitars in the intro probably in open E underneath the Nashville guitar.

It might explain why Keith and the Stones don't bother trying to do the intro live, because Keith might think it's best to leave the Nashville tuning out because it makes it too complicated for live playing.

Keith Richards: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals - but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."

It's very easy to spot a Nashville-tuned guitar. I doubt there is one on JJF, no matter what Keith is saying. 10 years earlier he said this:

"Jumpin' Jack Flash was in open E, and there's a certain ring that you need there. And what's always fascinating about open stringing is you can get these other notes ringing sympathetically, almost like a sitar, in a way. Unexpected notes ring out, and you say, Ah, there's a constant. That one can go all the way through this thing."

How would the open-tuned guitars "ring like sitars" with conflicting 12 string-sounding guitars, lots of bass in the mix and keyboards, not to mention electric guitars added?

You say "before anything else joins in". But the guitars we hear there clearly have bottom, although they have a weird top-sound. The latter might be because of their open tuning (combined with standard tuning) rather than a Nasville tuning, imo. It would have been more top in the bass strings that way - and there aren't THAT many guitars in the intro.

Here's a comparison with what we know is Nashville tuning, and JJF:

There is more than one guitar in the intro.

The Nashville tuned one has no bottom end and is all top end and played at the 7th fret making it sound even higher.

The other guitar is covering the low end and is probably in open E.

It can sound like one guitar to some, but it's 2 guitars in different tunings layered together and because of that there is a unique combining and separation and that's what Keith seems to have done.

I've seen a guitar mag transcription and they came to the same sort of conclusion.

It's basically as Keith says about the Nashville and Open E guitars, but there is probably even more guitar layers as the song progresses, ie doubling to fatten things up etc etc.

I think Keith said once that there are 6 guitar tracks or something like that.

Keith Richards: "I used a Gibson Hummingbird acoustic tuned to open D, six string. Open D or open E, which is the same thing - same intervals - but it would be slackened down some for D. Then there was a capo on it, to get that really tight sound. And there was another guitar over the top of that, but tuned to Nashville tuning. I learned that from somebody in George Jones' band in San Antonio in 1964. The high-strung guitar was an acoustic, too. Both acoustics were put through a Phillips cassette recorder. Just jam the mic right in the guitar and play it back through an extension speaker."



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 16:27 by howled.

I know what you're saying, and there are indeed three guitars in the intro.

One guitar starts the intro in the left speaker, another supports is almost right away in the same speaker (and maybe on the very same channel as well). The third guitar comes in on the half beat in the right speaker.

I'm still not convinced about the first guitar being Nasville-tuned, though. A Nashville tuned guitar is so thin and sharp on the frequencies that is distinguished itself even from a 12 string with the effect. This one doesn't do that, although it is sharp and very trebled.

My guess is that what we're hearing is the light strings on an open tuned guitar, ringing together with a standard tuned guitar in the left speaker - but it's hard to tell, and I don't trust Keith's tales about how he recorded the guitars on JJF. Too many mistakes in what he already has told.

Below is a 2003 Guitar World Acoustic article on how JJS was done. It says there was a Nashville strung guitar.

The intro to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” featuring the same overdriven acoustic guitar sound as “Street Fighting Man,” has been a musical mystery for decades. While Richards has recalled using a Nashville-tuned acoustic on the original recording, even he is uncertain of exactly how many guitar tracks were in the mix, and whether he played the song’s main parts in open E tuning or in open D with a capo at the second fret. We’ve opted for open E. Once again, though, you’ll need to tune all your strings slightly flat to match the pitch of the recording.

FIGURE 3a depicts our best reckoning of how Richards, with the aid of a multitrack tape recorder, performed the song’s explosive intro. After much deliberation, we concluded that what we hear are three overdriven acoustic guitars in open E tuning, one of which, represented here as Guitar 1, is Nashville-strung. (This would explain the high B notes.) Note that Guitar 3 enters at the beginning of the second bar, on the E5 chord, and plays the B5 chord in the first position while Guitar 2 plays the same basic chord in the seventh position and Guitar 1 plays strummed octaves.

For those who wish to play the intro on one guitar, FIGURE 3b illustrates three chord shapes that when strummed on a conventionally strung acoustic in open E tuning successfully replicate the overall sound of the chord voicings produced by the three guitar parts in FIGURE 3a. The key to making each of these composite voicings sound authentic is to mute the idle second and third strings by lightly touching them with one of the fingers of your fretting hand as you strum all six strings. For the B5 and A5 chords, mute the strings with the side of your middle finger (the same finger that’s barring the bottom three strings); for the E5 chord use the side of your index finger.

FIGURE 3c is our rendering of the guitar parts that comprise the song’s classic verse riff. Here, Guitar 3 takes the lead with a first-position riff while Guitar 2 plays a supportive role in the seventh position. The solo player can do fine by playing the Guitar 3 part.

As in “Street Fighting Man,” Richards’s armada of layered guitars goes crazy in the chorus of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” FIGURE 3d is a composite arrangement of this section on just two guitars designed to let you play the main melodic and supportive parts. Again, remember that all the notes on the bottom four strings in the Nashville-strung Guitar 1 part sound an octave higher than they would on a conventionally strung acoustic in open E tuning. (The soloist can play this part on a standard six-string.)

Yeah, I've been interested in this intro ever since I started playing the guitar, so I have read all these articles.

The effect, and the use of, the guitar on JJF is a masterpiece - maybe even more than SFM is, imo.

However, I don't hear a double B octave in the intro, I hear an octave with a distorted sound - that may lead listener to belive it is higher pitched that it is.

I guess we'll never know truly how this one really was recorded.

It's hard to try and decompile the guitars in a 100% way after they have been layered and mixed together.

The way JJF was done and arranged is one of the reasons why the original studio recording single is so great IMO.

The live versions are very different.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-15 17:38 by howled.

I agree totally

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howled
Maybe some possible things that might have influenced Jumpin Jack Flash

The Stones offsider Jack Nitzsche had something to do with Buffalo Springfield and I think the Stones would have heard Mr Soul in 1967.

Mr Soul has a Satisfaction/Jumpin Jack Flash combo sort of riff and a similar temp to Jumpin Jack Flash.

Sometimes Keith plays the JJF riff in a more Mr Soul way like in the Rock and Roll Circus.

I suppose if Buffalo Springfield could take some things from Satisfaction then it's ok if the Stones were to take some things from Buffalo Springfield for a bit of inspiration.

The lyrics of Mr Soul contain

I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her

[thrasherswheat.org]





The old nursery rhyme has a jumping jack

[en.wikipedia.org]

Keith's gardener's nickname "Jumping Jack" could have come from the nursery rhyme.
Maybe the gardener wasn't very nimble, hence the joke nickname.

While I love "Mr. Soul", it is a straight copy of the "Satisfaction" lick.

you'd think the guy that wrote, played and recorded this song would be able to accurately de-mystify it for us..

..but you'd be wrong

its as if he's doing it on purpose..

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howled
No.

It's why the opening JJF chords (before anything else joins in) have hardly any bottom end on the chords, because the bottom 4 strings are tuned up an octave.

Due to compression, sounds and mixing.

The opening chords feature usual open E tuning, or to put it another way the pitches found in open E tuning are there.

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Elmo Lewis

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howled
Maybe some possible things that might have influenced Jumpin Jack Flash

The Stones offsider Jack Nitzsche had something to do with Buffalo Springfield and I think the Stones would have heard Mr Soul in 1967.

Mr Soul has a Satisfaction/Jumpin Jack Flash combo sort of riff and a similar temp to Jumpin Jack Flash.

Sometimes Keith plays the JJF riff in a more Mr Soul way like in the Rock and Roll Circus.

I suppose if Buffalo Springfield could take some things from Satisfaction then it's ok if the Stones were to take some things from Buffalo Springfield for a bit of inspiration.

The lyrics of Mr Soul contain

I was down on a frown when the messenger brought me a letter
I was raised by the praise of a fan who said I upset her

[thrasherswheat.org]





The old nursery rhyme has a jumping jack

[en.wikipedia.org]

Keith's gardener's nickname "Jumping Jack" could have come from the nursery rhyme.
Maybe the gardener wasn't very nimble, hence the joke nickname.

While I love "Mr. Soul", it is a straight copy of the "Satisfaction" lick.

he admitted as much

..the title of the song escapes me but the lyric is '..this song..
that I stole from the Rolling Stones.."

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howled
It's hard to try and decompile the guitars in a 100%.

Not really, getting the same sound of the Philips tape machine acoustic is hard, but not the notes of all of the guitars or the sounds of the electric guitars. Those sounds come easily from Vox Supreme and Triumph Silicon 100 amps which were in heavy use during that time. I know because I have owned both.

One of the reasons the high B is in the intro is due to Keith adding his pinky when barring the lowest 3 notes of B chord with his 2nd and 3rd fingers. Keith does this often in One Plus One when he's sitting on the floor tuned to open E and also on the acoustic guitars on Jigsaw Puzzle and Salt of the Earth.

Keith's memories might relate to experiments they carried out, but for what ever reason didn't make it to the finished recording in any clearly audible way.

All the guitar parts on the record can be played using open E tuned guitar. All with direct musical similarities and fingering etc to other open E/D Keith guitar parts on other songs.

If the Nashville tuning was used, it wasn't used in a way that made it absolutely essential for any of parts to be played. Open E is essential for playing/re-creating most of the guitar parts on the studio recording. A few parts can be done using standard though.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-16 00:23 by His Majesty.

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duke richardson
you'd think the guy that wrote, played and recorded this song would be able to accurately de-mystify it for us..

..but you'd be wrong

its as if he's doing it on purpose..

I think he simply doesn't remember it all that clearly, time has lost some memories, merged his memories with others, but left some unscathed.

He's talked before of layered guitars on Gimme Shelter for example, but there are only two on the track.

His memories will be a mish mash of the above, but also of the whole recording process including the many takes it took to get to the final versions.

Stuff got left out of the released takes, but not left out of his memories.

Sometimes he doesn't know which tracks that ended up on the master tape...

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howled
Below is a 2003 Guitar World Acoustic article on how JJS was done.

Unfortunately, they started on a false premise and based everything on that.

So:


The soul song Nowhere to run has the Satisfaction riff which Keith took (and transefered brilliantly to guitar, to rock n roll).
Mr Soul uses that riff and has JJFs lyrics and a structure that is a bit similar to JJF.
JJF has a riff by Wyman and the riff is based on Satisfaction.

Finally a guy who gets it - one of the parts. I love playing it like this and it actually has a part that is similar to Born in the USA (at least it feels like that).






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2013-10-16 00:44 by Redhotcarpet.