(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
Mon 6 April 2026 11:08, UK
Most of the best guitar riffs simply play themselves. There are only 12 notes in Western pop music, but every now and then, a new riff comes along that reminds you there are still endless combinations to be uncovered. Keith Richards is a master at coaxing them from their hiding spots.
The Rolling Stones man is a firm believer that the whole point behind songwriting is to reach that zone where it becomes a breeze putting a tune together, and for the best rock and roll guitar parts ever written, there comes a point where the guitar gods of the world look like they are playing almost by second nature.
He carries this attitude through to defining the role of playing in a band. “There’s something beautifully friendly and elevating about a bunch of guys playing music together,” he writes in his memoir, Life. “This wonderful little world that is unassailable. It’s really teamwork, one guy supporting the others, and it’s all for one purpose, and there’s no flies in the ointment, for a while. And nobody conducting, it’s all up to you.”
While Keith Richards is the embodiment of what the words ‘guitar riff’ humbly imply, even he knows that when it comes to some of his parts, he has captured that ‘no flies in the ointment’ spirit, and the beauty of that means they should be etched in stone forever.
Then again, Richards was never one to steal without telling everyone where he got it from. The whole point behind every great Rolling Stones song was to have a great backbeat behind it, and that always came from his blues heroes, whether that was Chuck Berry turning the genre into rock and roll or Muddy Waters laying down into the deepest grooves that anyone had ever heard of.
(Credits: Far Out / Alamy)
When the British invasion first started, though, Richards was interested in doing something a bit edgier than what The Beales had done. The Fab Four had become one of the biggest acts in the world for a reason, but Richards knew that there was a certain power that came with having only a few notes at his disposal, and by the time he hit on ‘Satisfaction’, he knew he had something no one else did.
Compared to every other rock band, ‘Satisfaction’ was the kind of tune that was unstoppable from the moment it came out, so much so that John Lennon’s ‘Day Tripper’ may as well have been an answer back to what Richards had done. That was a good starting point, but ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was where the real magic started to show up.
If their first major riff was a case of having all of the right notes there at the right time, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ had more to do with the blues tradition. Since it was the same pentatonic box that people usually solo over, half of the track sounds like a lead guitar part dressed up as a rhythm line. Even though Richards doesn’t play anything too flashy, the riff is perfect when matched up with Charlie Watts’s drumbeat, always pushing and pulling the band a little bit throughout the tune.
Although Richards would have many more licks to choose from when he eventually stumbled upon open G tuning, he knew that ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ was the kind of tune that should be here long after he’s gone, saying, “When you get a riff like ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ you get a great feeling of elation, a wicked glee. ‘Flash’ is basically ‘Satisfaction’ in reverse. Nearly all of these riffs are closely related. But if someone said ‘You can play only one of your riffs ever again,’ I’d say ‘OK, give me ‘Flash.’”
And for as much as the riff works in the context of the song, Mick Jagger’s lyrics don’t often get enough credit here. It’s hard to piece together what he’s trying to say, and some of it may come off as gibberish, but visual images like ‘crossfire hurricane’ are so phonetically right that it doesn’t even matter what the song’s about half the time.
But more than anything, ‘Jumpin’ Jack Flash’ has more to do with The Stones finding their sense of swagger at the beginning of their career. Their first hits may have seen them slowly slipping into their boots, but this was when they discovered that they could be the kings of their respective genre if they wanted to. They took the blues that inspired them and rendered something new, prompting Bob Dylan to swiftly say, “Everything that came after them, metal, rap, punk, new wave, pop-rock, you name it… you can trace it all back to the Rolling Stones. They were the first and the last and no one’s ever done it better.”
