The song is about an experience Morrison had when he was 12 years old. After a day of fishing outside a village named Ballystockart in his native Ireland, Morrison and his friends stopped in one of the village's houses, where they saw an old man sitting inside. In Steven Turner's Van Morrison: Too Late to Stop Now, Morrison describes him as "dark weather-beaten." Morrison and his friends asked the man for water, and he gave them some he'd gotten from a nearby stream. As Morrison drank the stream water he slipped into mystical experience. "Time stood still," he says in Too Late to Stop Now. "For five minutes everything was really quiet and I was in this other dimension. "That's what the song is about."
"And It Stoned Me" is the first track on Van Morrison's third album, Moondance. He recorded the song at Warner Publishing Studio in New York City in the summer of 1969.
In the chorus, Morrison sings, "stoned me just like Jelly Roll," most likely referring to jazz legend Jelly Roll Morton. Morrison listened to Morton with his father while growing up. "Jelly roll" was also once common African American slang for a women's genitalia, which is what Morton's name covertly referenced.
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