“One Toke Over the Line” by the folk rock duo Brewer & Shipley was released in 1970 in an atmosphere of anti-war demonstrations and crackdowns on drug users. The song would become the biggest hit for Mike Brewer and Tom Shipley; so big that it caught the attention of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who called the song, along with the Byrds’ “Eight Miles High,” Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit,” and the Rolling Stones’ “Monkey Man,” “sassy girl culture.” drugs”. propaganda” that “threatens to undermine our national strength.
Agnew warned of FCC sanctions against radio stations that play songs that glorify or promote the use of illegal drugs.
While its reference to marijuana is no secret, Tom Shipley has said that Agnew misunderstood the meaning of the song. For the duo, exhausted from one too many nights on the road, it was hardly a promotion of drug use. Instead, it was a cry for moderation in their lives.
“One Toke Over the Line” was written backstage between sets at Kansas City’s Vanguard Coffee House. Extremely bored and extremely drugged, Shipley blurted out, “Man, I was way over the line tonight.”
The phrase clicked on some level because while playing together the next day, the duo recalled Shipley’s description of their cloudy state of mind and in about an hour they wrote “One Toke Over the Line”.
Brewer & Shipley did not recognize the song’s potential as a hit. It wasn’t even part of his concert list. The first public performance of the song was at New York’s Carnegie Hall when they opened for singer-songwriter Melanie.
The crowd gave them a warm reaction, but by their second encore, they had run out of songs. That’s when “One Toke Over the Line” debuted.
The reaction was immediate. Buddha Records president Neil Bogart came backstage and insisted that “One Toke” be included on tarky, their third album then in production. Still, the pair failed to recognize the tune’s potential as a hit single.
“One Toke” was produced by Electric Flag’s Nick Gravenites and recorded at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, where members of Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead used to drop by for sessions. The Gravenites formed a backing band of Chicago-area blues musicians such as guitarists Mike Bloomfield and Fred Burton, keyboardist Mark Naftalin, and Bob Jones on drums.
Combining urban blues musicians with folk rockers like Brewer & Shipley caused some friction, but Shipley said it produced a “hybrid sound” that broadened everyone’s creativity.
Despite some radio stations banning the record, “One Toke” became a top ten hit and the song most closely identified with the duo. But Brewer said the song was not characteristic of his music.
“It pretty much pigeonholed us and categorized us in a way that wasn’t really valid,” Brewer said. “Actually, Tom and I always thought that our ballads were our forte.”
