„I was born in a crossfire hurricane.
And I howled at my ma in the driving rain.
But it’s all right now, in fact it’s a gas.
But it’s all right – I’m Jumping Jack Flash, it’s a gas, gas, gas.
Die Rolling Stones beginnen in einer dreiwöchigen Arbeitsphase 17. März-3. April 1968 mit den Aufnahmen für ihr nächstes Album Beggars Banquet in den Olympic Studios in London. Insbesondere mit Jumpin’ Jack Flash, Street Fighting Man, Child of the Moon und Parachute Woman wird begonnen. Brian Jones fehlt bei vielen Sessions, spielt 
aber Gitarre bei Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Bill Wyman – keyb, Keith Richards – guitar (open E) & bass, Jimmy Miller (producer), Mick Jagger, Keith Richards – backing vocals.
„Jumpin’ Jack Flash was recorded at Olympic; we were doing it deliberately for a single“, so Charlie Watts, „Keith is playing my floor tom-tom on it to give the boom-da, boom-da sound. Now you’d just programme it and loop it or something daft like that. The sound on Jumpin’ Jack Flash is very close together, because we do sit close to each other in the studio, much to most engineers’ amazement nowadays. Nobody does that any more, really.“
Am 20. April 1968 beenden die Rolling Stones die Arbeit an Jumpin’ Jack Flash in den Olympic Sound Studios; am 27. und 28. April drehen sie einen Promo-Clip für Jumpin’ Jack Flash in London, und am 24. Mai wird der Song als Single in Großbritannien veröffentlicht (in den USA am 1. Juni). Sowohl in Großbritannien wie in Deutschland erreicht Jumpin’ Jack Flash Rang 1 der Charts, in den USA Rang 3. Der Song ist einer der populärsten und charakteristischsten der Rolling Stones, versehen mit einem Riff, das – so Keith Richards – „really is Satisfaction in reverse, except it’s played on chords instead of a Gibson Maestro Fuzztone“.
Urheberrechte auf dieses Riff erhebt mittlerweile Bassist Bill Wyman: „We got to the studio early once and… in fact I think it was a rehearsal studio, I don’t think it was a recording studio. And there was just myself, Brian and Charlie – the Stones never arrive at the same time, you know – and Mick and Keith hadn’t come. And I was just messing about and I just sat down at the piano and started doing this riff, da-daw, da-da-daw, da-da-daw… and then Brian played a bit of guitar and Charlie was doing a rhythm. We were just messing with it for 20 minutes, just filling in time, and Mick and Keith came in and we stopped and they said, Hey, that sounded really good, carry on, what is it? – Oh, that was just something we were messing with. – That sounds good. And then the next day all I can really remember … we recorded it and Mick wrote great lyrics to it and it turned out to be a really good single.“
Den Text haben Keith Richards und Mick Jagger gemeinsam formuliert, angeregt durch Keith’s Gärtner: „And suddenly this sound of these boots (laughs) went by the window, clump clump clump – really, I mean, you had to be there to hear it – and woke Mick up, What was that? And I said – I looked out the window and I thought, Oh, that’s Jack, that’s jumpin’ Jack. You know and then we started to play with those words … and then flash came and suddenly we were wide awake and we started to work, you know.“
Die Rolling Stones spielen Jumpin’ Jack Flash nahezu auf jeder Tournee, ja, es dürfte der Stones-Song sein, den die Band am meisten live dargeboten hat. Das Intro der Studioaufnahme entfällt live, und die Band beginnt sofort mit dem Riff, das den Song prägt. Im März 2005 wurde Jumpin’ Jack Flash im Q Magazin auf Platz 2 der Liste der „100 Greatest Guitar Tracks“ gewählt. Im Rolling Stone Magazin rangierte der Song auf Platz 124 der Liste „500 Greatest Songs of All Time“.
