Jumpin' Jack Flash

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
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I hate to add a serious note to Cecil’s lighthearted words about Jumpin’Jack Flash, but since his columns amount to a publication of record of contemporary culture, and no doubt will be read by historians forever, I’ve got to clear the facts.

The song begins with the birth of Mick Jagger and goes on through his early life.

Mick Jagger was born in London during a World War II German Blitz attack on that city. This and the firestorms accompanying the blitzes are precisely the “crossfire hurricane” that the song relates to.

The final stanza of the song alludes pretty directly and unflatteringly to the Christian sacraments of baptism and eucharist. It is probably this verse that leads some to think that the song has a satanic tone and that Jumpin’ Jack Flash is just another name for the Devil.

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xxxxlaw Welcome to the boards.

If your are referring to one of Cecil’s columns, you should provide a link to it, such as http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a960816.html

That way, everyone else can judge your comments.

By the way, where did you get your info from? Any on-line links we can read? Not saying anything about whether you are correct or not. I have no opinions or knowledge on the subject.

3

Mick Jagger wasn’t even born in London. He was born in Dartford, Kent, which is far enough out of London I doubt it would be affected by a Blitz attack. In any case, he was born July 26, 1943. Could someone look up if there was a Blitz raid that day?

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Sorry that it took me a couple of days to go back to the sources I read years ago on this topic. I remembered the story a bit more literally than is exactly accurate.

The night of Jagger’s birth may or may not have been the night of an attack, but the crossfire hurricane in which he was born surely was the fury of war in his neighborhood and in the skies overhead.

Jagger was born in Dartford on July 26, 1943. During the two years before his birth over eleven thousand homes were damaged by bombs and at least 150 killed there. The town’s schoolchildren had largely been evacuated west. The day prior to his birth, the RAF had dropped two thousand tons of bombs on Essen. In June 1944 the V-1 attacks began. The Chronicle’s headlines for that month and July convey the terror of the times: “Flying Bombs Night and Day”; “Parents, Daughter, and Cook Killed”; “Child Killed Running for Shelter”. On August 26, fourteen were killed and eleven injured in Carrington Road less than a mile from the Jaggers. Source: Mick Jagger: Primitive Cool, Christopher Sandford, St. Martin’s Press, 1993, 18-19.

The narrow swatch between the southeastern coast of Kent and London was pummelled mercilessly by German forces, and most of the casualties were either residents of London or of one or another of the small industrial towns unfortunate to be in the flight path. None of the cities in this path was hit as hard as Danford where Jagger spent his childhood. Exploding bombs, the thunder of antiaircraft guns, dogfights between the Luftwaffe and RAF in the skies overhead, showers of shrapnel and the house next door that vanished with all of its inhabitants in a blinding flash were all part of Jagger’s earliest memories. Source: Jagger, Christopher Anderson, Dell, 1993, 19-21.

Jagger himself added the lyrics “I was born in a crossfire hurricane” to Wyman’s song. Sanford, 123.

Within an hour, Jagger wrote the lyrics of Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Anderson, 209. The second chapter of Anderson’s book, dealing with Jagger’s childhood and youth, begins with a text heading, “I was born in a crossfire hurricane.”

The imagery of being washed up and being left for dead, immediately followed by frowning at a crust of bread seem pretty likely to be sacramental allusisions, especially because they come in a stanza where the speaker also alludes to looking down at his bleeding feet and being crowned with a spike. No source here, that’s my own analysis of the stanza.

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O.K., and what do these lines in the second verse:

“I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag.
I was schooled with a strap right across my back.”

mean then? You claimed that this song is the story of Jagger’s life. How does this relate?

It seems to me that you’re being pretty arbitrary here. You weren’t correct on most of your claims in the OP. Jagger wasn’t born in London, but out in the suburbs a fair bit. He wasn’t born during a blitz attack. You’ve gone from saying that the “crossfire hurricane” was the blitz and the subsequent firestorm to just saying that it was “the fury of war,” which seems pretty vague to me. In any case, Jagger can’t have any conscious memory of World War II, which ended around the time he turned 2.

At one point you claim that Jagger added the line about the “crossfire hurricane” to Wyman’s song. Bill Wyman didn’t have anything to do with writing the song (according to sources I’ve checked). It was Jagger and Keith Richards who wrote it.

If the last verse of the song is full of religious allusions (possible, I suppose, but hardly certain), how does that fit with your theory that the song is about Jagger’s early life?

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Hey Wendell Wagner, don’t be too hard on xxxxlaw. He may be new, but at least he isn’t doing a moon hoax post. :wink:

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Uh, Wendell, xxxxlaw cited the books where he got his information. Now he might still be wrong, but it’s not like he pulled it out of his… Apollo moon landing pictures.

Not knowing details of Jagger’s life, it would be easy to speculate that the second verse referred to being raised by his grandmother or perhaps an older mother who was stern and perhaps abusive, but that is certainly speculating. Perhaps xxxxlaw can give reference to if that is explained in either of the books?

As for the unflattering references to Christian sacraments, just say it is a poetic description of someone rejecting the church. Drowned, washed up and left for dead being some type of reference to baptism. Falling to feet and seeing them bleed - um, the blood of the Eucharist? Crusts of bread is easy enough to read as the cracker or wafer that is the flesh of the Eucharist, and the frowning at them a metaphor for refusing. The spike through the head could perhaps be interpreted (if one were trying to make it fit) as a reference to church dogma vs. questioning and free thought. The bloody feet is a little esoteric to me, and certainly it takes a very poetic style to interpret it that way, but I’ve seen worse in song lyrics.

(And because of this thread, I looked up the lyrics. Wow, never knew what they actually were till now.)

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Yeah, but he’s still speculating. We don’t know that the second verse refers to Jagger’ss mother or grandmother. He says that Jagger wrote the line about the “crossfire hurricane,” but we don’t know that it refers to World War II. (And in any case, it’s a pretty vague reference.) xxxxlaw first said that this was about a specific blitz attack, but then he pulled back from that. We don’t know that Jagger’s family was religious and he rejected their faith. Sure, some of xxxxlaw’s speculations could be correct, but he doesn’t back them up with any references that connect the song to Jagger’s life story. Anybody could come up with some clever meanings for the lines in the song. Here on the SDMB we’re supposed to be fighting ignorance, not making up interesting but totally unsupported theories.