On 3 August 1979, The Police completed work on their second album, Regatta de Blanc. It would include their first Number One single, Message in a Bottle, and a 7 month tour to support the album would begin on September 1, 1979. Travel, promotion, concerts, tv appearances & video filming all stretched out ahead of the band. How would they spend August 1979, enjoying their downtime before their lives became dominated by tour itineraries?
Guitarist, Andy Summers may have chosen to spend time going to the cinema. What might he have been able to go and see? If he wanted escapism, then there was the 11th James Bond film, Moonraker. Perhaps, he would have wanted to see Woody Allen’s continued progression into sophisticated romantic comedy with Manhattan.
But there was a double-bill showing in UK cinemas over that month, which would have brought him face to face with musical spirits from both his present and his past…
He would have known all about what to expect from the movie version of The Who’s Quadrophenia, not least because his Police bandmate, Sting, had a small but memorable role in it. But, what would his reaction have been if he gone to see the movie version of BBC sitcom, Porridge, only to find his first major bandleader causing havoc in the prison kitchen with his pepper measures in the curry, “I said a dash, Lotterby!”
13 years earlier, Summers had been the guitarist with one of the UK’s leading soul bands, Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band. Zoot Money himself was a classic musical contradiction. Sat behind his Hammond organ, he looked like a medieval dung seller, but was blessed with a voice that sounded like he’d been one of the original children birthed by Rhythm & Blues. Money and his band are spoken about as one of THE “you had to be there” live attractions of the early to mid-1960s. In 1966, they broke into the UK Top 30 with their single, Big Time Operator, at which point the Mods washed their hands of them. However, Money was unconcerned. He could see which way the musical winds were blowing and as 1966 rolled into 1967, he slimmed the Big Roll Band down to a quartet of himself, Summers, drummer Colin Allen and bassist, Pat Donaldson. The Big Roll Band name was changed to the more psychedelically infused, Dantalian’s Chariot. The band started writing their own material, incorporating light shows into their gigs and established a striking visual look so as to get full value out of lights by not only all dressing in white robes and kaftans but by painting their equipment white as well. As he related on this show, John Peel was among the beguiled spectators when Dantalian’s Chariot played The Festival of the Flower Children at Woburn Abbey over the 1967 August bank holiday.
The following month, Dantalian’s Chariot released their first - and only - single. Co-written by Money and Summers, The Madman Running Through the Fields is essentially Tomorrow Never Knows on a budget, though if there was any justice it would be just as well known and as widely celebrated as an example of acid trip evocation. A little bit like ZuZu’s Petals Sisters, the track uses a dual perspective, with the vast majority of it being sung from the perspective of the tripper. Money claimed that the song was autobiographical in that it was an amalgam of his and the other band members’ drug experiences. The first verse seems to be written from the perspective of someone who has become burned out by the world and the expectations placed on them:
World at my feet/Life seemed to be sweet.
I was admired, but I was so tired.
It doesn’t take much reading between the lines to see the tone of the song as being one where Money draws a line under the years of slog he went through with the Big Roll Band, and looks ahead to the utopia which the leaders of the psychedelic revolution promised would come to those who turned on, tuned in and dropped out. Money seems to suggest that he has crossed a threshold from which he seems to be unwilling to return from:
I’ve seen the crack/I cannot come back.
The other perspective that is briefly glimpsed in the song - on the Isn’t that the madman… lines - is that, according to Money, of those who had not yet taken LSD, but who were watching someone who had done so. There’s an air of wistfulness to the Wonder how he feels? line, which from a 2024 perspective seems irresponsible, but in 1967 it reflected a vibe among the counterculture that widespread use of the drug would cause a spiritual and mental awakening, leading to a gentler, peaceful society. For its detractors, LSD represented a threat to sanity, and there would be plenty of acid casualties over the subsequent years, who would lend credence to the theory that hallucinogenics were a path to madness. The counterculture embraced the theory by working off the principle of the wise fool, with the tarot symbol of the same name holding particular significance. Some tarot cards show the Fool with a small bundle of possessions, supposedly representing untapped knowledge, something which LSD would supposedly help the user to access.
Although Money’s vocal and the lyrics offer a friendly and supportive ambience, the final 30 seconds of the track evoke the onset of an LSD trip with discordant guitar, shrill organ notes, a gasp and other audible indicators of altered perception. It’s dark, slightly scary and, from my perspective, doesn’t work as an incentive to start taking LSD.
The Madman Running Through the Fields is a great song, but it wasn’t a hit. EMI, which had released numerous Big Roll Band records, dropped Dantalian’s Chariot after the single missed the charts. The band were signed by Direction Records, but were again quickly dropped before any music was released. Peel hoped that, one day, their unreleased recordings would see the light of day. He didn’t have long to wait as in 1995, a compilation called Chariot Rising was released by Tenth Planet.
Dantalian’s Chariot disbanded in April 1968. Money and Summers moved to the United States and joined Eric Burdon and the Animals, playing on the band’s final 60s album, Love Is. The closing track of the album saw a new version of the song, retitled The Madman, paired up with Gemini.
Warning! - Contains copious amounts of late-1960s musical self indulgence.
Video courtesy of Acid Revolver (DC) and astrom53 (Animals)
All lyrics are copyright of Zoot Money & Andy Summers.
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