STONED
Nanker Phelge / 2:09
SINGLE
I Wanna Be Your Man / Stoned
RELEASE DATE
United Kingdom: November 1, 1963
Label: Decca
RECORD NUMBER: F 11764
Musicians
Mick Jagger: vocals
Keith Richards: lead guitar
Brian Jones: harmonica
Bill Wyman: bass
Charlie Watts: drums
Ian Stewart: piano
Recorded
De Lane Lea Music Recording Studios (Kingsway Sound Studios), Kingsway, London: October 7, 1963
Technical Team
Producers: Andrew Oldham, Eric Easton
Sound Engineer: (?)
Genesis
“Stoned” occupies a special place in the career of the Rolling Stones, which was still in its infancy. It is neither a cover nor, properly speaking, an original composition, but more of an improvisation on “Green Onions” by Booker T. & The M.G.’s, “an inversion,”1 as Bill Wyman puts it, which reached number 3 on the Billboard pop chart in September 1962.
The track is credited to Nanker Phelge, a pseudonym used for those songs “written” or developed collaboratively by the various members of the group between 1963 and 1965. Nanker was the name of one of Brian Jones and Keith Richards’s favorite “funny faces” (fingers in the nostrils, drooping eyelids…), while Phelge refers to their roommate at Edith Grove, James Phelge.
James describes his surprise when he saw his name on the Stones’ second single: “I took my eyes from the record and saw the three of them standing there watching me intently, their faces lit with broad smiles.… ‘I hope you don’t mind us using your name?’ Brian asked. ‘We wanted to put it on the records.’ ‘No, that’s great,’ I said and read the label one more time. ‘What is Stoned anyway?’ ‘Just something we made up in the studio,’ said Keith, ‘an instrumental.’”3
The recording of “Stoned” would provide an opportunity for the revelation of another facet of Eric Easton’s character. With the session barely over, Oldham flew off in haste to Paris in order to deal with the early symptoms of manic depression that were beginning to affect him, a condition he would struggle with for the next thirty years of his life. In his absence, Easton, his associate, took it upon himself to explain to the Stones that their number was an original composition and that it was time to find a publisher in order to collect the future royalties. He told them about Southern Music, a company he recommended wholeheartedly, neglecting to inform them that he was co-publisher with that enterprise, specifically through South-Eastern Music. Upon Oldham’s return from Paris, he neglected to notify the manager of this “minor” detail. It was only at the beginning of 1964, after attempts were made to find the Stones a publisher for other songs that the deception came to light. From that point on, relations became more and more strained until they reached the breaking point in 1965, when Easton would be replaced by a certain Allen Klein…
Production
“Stoned” is an instrumental that was made in barely thirty minutes; Mick Jagger does no more than repeat the phrases stoned and outta my mind from time to time, with plenty of reverb on the voice as well as on the harmonica, played, it is presumed, by Brian Jones. This time Ian Stewart, playing for the first time on a release by the group, is given pride of place with a very prominent boogie-woogie piano part. The sixth Stone gives the impression of giving vent to his frustrations; one senses that he is pounding the keyboard in rage.
This number is obviously derived from “Green Onions”: the riff resembles the original, there is the same ride cymbal from Charlie, Keith’s—highly effective—solo is in a similar vein to the original, and Mick’s interventions are not without some resemblance to those of Booker T. Jones himself. In his memoirs, Oldham describes “Stoned” as a “constructive plagiarism.”5 Nevertheless, the Stones had just recorded their first self-penned number, the highly promising first in a long succession. And Beat Monthly described the number as a “groovy instrumental.”1 An encouraging start.