Music
11 Dec 25

Rolling Stones approve Fatboy Slim sample after 25 years

Fatboy Slim at Electric Picnic. 30 Aug 2025. Copyright Erica Keogh

"We've had a pretty flat 'no' for 20 years," he told BBC News. "I think we asked four times, and I wouldn't have dared to ask them again."

The Rolling Stones have formally approved Fatboy Slim’s long-bootlegged mash-up ‘Satisfaction Skank’ for release, 25 years after the DJ first created it.

He combined the riff from ‘(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction’ with his 1998 single ‘The Rockafeller Skank’.

Norman Cook, aka Fatboy Slim, produced the track in the late 1990s for use in his live sets. Although it circulated widely through early file-sharing platforms such as Napster and Kazaa, the Stones repeatedly refused to clear the sample for commercial release.

Cook confirmed that the band have now granted full clearance and supplied the original master tapes so the track can be rebuilt in higher quality.

The change follows a broader shift in the Stones’ approach to sampling; in 2019 the band returned their publishing share of The Verve’s ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ to Richard Ashcroft, more than two decades after its release.

The official release of ‘Satisfaction Skank’ arrives at the end of one of Cook’s busiest years. He played 115 shows in 2025, published his first book, It Ain’t Over… ’Til the Fatboy Sings, and continued to support a DJ-workshop programme in Sussex for people experiencing severe mental health challenges. He also headlined this year’s Electric Picnic.

Cook will begin 2026 with shows in Indonesia and Bali, followed by a UK tour and the return of his Big Beach Boutique event in Brighton.

Listen to 'Satisfaction Skank' below: