James Phelge leans against the bar at Sterch’s with a hand in his pocket, surrounded by obsessively devoted Rolling Stones fans. They’re bobbing their heads to a bootleg of “Happy,” and Phelge is surveying the scene with an indulgent smile. He’s probably the only person in the Lincoln Avenue bar who didn’t go to last night’s concert at the United Center.
What Phelge didn’t know was that he was famous. Legions of fans had puzzled over his existence for decades, based on numerous but cryptic mentions in the vast library of Stones literature. Richards has often repeated tales of the crazy roommate at 102 Edith Grove, “the most disgusting person ever,” who stood naked at the top of the stairs with his underwear on his head urinating on the band as they returned home from a gig in the wee hours of the morning. The band named their first publishing company “Nanker-Phelge,” a combination of his name and the contorted face and wheedling voice they all used to mock the blue-collar sods that hung out at the local pub. Some Glimmers believe that Jagger even cryptically referred to Phelge years after they lost touch in 1969’s “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”: “I went down to the Chelsea drugstore / To get your prescription filled. / I was standing in line with Mr. Jimmy, / And man did he look pretty ill.” Phelge isn’t too sure about that one, but he hints at the possibility by mentioning that he and Jagger once took a trip to the chemist for some throat spray.
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Their downstairs neighbor–a straitlaced journalist they called Triffid–seemed to bear much of the brunt of their wickedness. They hung frying pans out the window and swung them against his window when he was sleeping. They blasted Bo Diddley from Richards’s guitar amp into the hallway at 3 AM. Once Phelge and Richards broke into Triffid’s apartment and guzzled a beer they found on the kitchen table. Phelge put the bottle back after peeing in it and replacing the cap. Triffid finally moved out after the terminally housekey-less Richards shoved his guitar neck through the front window trying to get in one early morning.
“I never thought I was famous,” he says. “Unbeknownst to me, there were all these people who read about me and were trying to find out who this Phelge guy was. When I went on the Internet I was getting like 60 or 70 E-mails a day. People said, ‘Hey, I thought you were dead.’ I’m no one important, but it was quite nice.”
Before the concert, White brought Phelge to Sterch’s to meet the Glimmers. D.J. and Bob Beaton, who drove up from Arkansas for the United Center show and have seen the Stones four times on the current tour, said a stir went through the Glimmer Gathering when Phelge entered the bar.
Mishell, an attorney from New York City who’d thrown her bra onstage the night before, says Phelge surprised her too. “I’m always surprised at how small they are. Keith and Mick are really little just like that. It’s like they never had meat or something.”
