(Credit: Bogaerts, Rob / Anefo)
Mon 1 September 2025 8:00, UK
As much as The Police was all about the chemistry between the three members, each of them brought their own individualistic style to the group to the point that the absence of any of them would have made a dramatic difference.
With Sting’s melodic bass playing underpinned by the slick drumming of Stewart Copeland, the rhythmic element of the band was always strong, but that left guitarist Andy Summers with plenty of acrobatics to perform to fill out all of the empty spaces in between.
However, the dexterity he demonstrated on his instrument showed that he was the perfect accompaniment for the band, and their fusion of new wave, post-punk and reggae showed that between the three of them, they were able to bring radical change to the pop music of the period.
But where exactly did Summers get his style from, and what had he done in the past that showcased that The Police wasn’t exactly the place where it all started? Stewart Copeland had been the drummer with progressive rock group Curved Air prior to joining the band, and Sting had played with various jazz outfits in the northeast of England, but Summers’ credentials were even more far-reaching, with his innovative guitar sound appearing in its primitive form throughout many of his previous projects.
Having spent time with The Animals and Soft Machine, both of which tested his playing ability in a variety of ways, one of his lesser-known ventures was with the short-lived psychedelic rock band Dantalian’s Chariot in the late 1960s. Alongside frontman and keyboardist Zoot Money, who would also go on to spend time in The Animals after the band’s demise, Summers was one of the primary songwriters for the group, and although they’re not widely remembered, their most famous single is still worth a visit for how it shows early signs of Summers’ abilities.
The track, ‘Madman Running Through the Fields’, feels very reminiscent of much of the psychedelia of its time, but holding everything together is a taut guitar lick that sees Summers show off his ability to play sweeping sequences of notes as a counter-melody to what the vocals and other lead instruments are doing. His work on the track is ultimately what brings it to life, and while it’s hard to necessarily differentiate this song from others by their contemporaries, it shows that Summers had a firm grip on his own style early on in his career.
“It was of the time,” Summers would later comment in a 2024 interview with Music Sonar. “I don’t know if it was ahead of time. We were at the forefront of what was going on then, and we were really pleased with that track. I wrote that with Zoot Money. It got some notice: acid rock. Very much of the zeitgeist. Great playing, nice singing; and all the rest. It’s a bit Spinal Tap at this point.”
While he may be dismissive of the song, essentially going as far as calling it a novelty song by today’s standards, it’s still a fascinating peek into Summers’ early work, and allows us to see that even in the early days of his career, he’d laid down a marker of what was to be expected from him in the future.
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