Zoot Money heard the song for the first time Johnny B Goode he misinterpreted the lyrics. When Chuck Berry sang “you will be the leader of a big ol’ band”, a teenager growing up across the Atlantic in the posh resort of Bournemouth didn’t quite understand the American accent and heard it as “big roll band”. It’s likely that his mishearing was an improvement on the original lyrics, but either way, it made a big name for Money’s group, which became leaders in the early British beat boom.
With Money on keyboards and lead vocals, the Big Roll Band played their first gig in 1961 at The Downstairs club in Bournemouth, which has since been honored by the local council with a blue plaque which also states that The Who, Eric Clapton, Manfred Mann and the like have played the venue.
Al Kirtley, the group’s founder, remembered Money as a flamboyant frontman and a natural leader. “He made you play better than you thought you could and he pulled you along. It was like a dog sled and we were the sled,” he said.
Zoot Money has been known to jump to the top of the band’s keyboard
JEREMY FLETCHER/REDFERNS
Andy Summers, who later rose to fame as guitarist with the Police, was also an early member of the Big Roll Band, whose high-octane form of R&B laced with blues, jazz and soul influences and topped with Money’s exuberant stage presence, made her a very popular fixture on the club scene in the 1960s.
The Money’s band were also regulars on ITV Ready Steady Go! although Top of the Pops the look turned out to be more elusive. The Big Roll Band released eight singles between 1964 and 1966, but only Big time operatorwith Zoot’s Sermon on the B-side, they made the top 30 and their record sales never matched their live popularity.
It was no coincidence, yes Zoot!, the most successful of the band’s two albums, was recorded live at North London club Klooks Kleek. Zoot! reached No. 23 on the album charts in late 1966, but by then musical tastes were changing rapidly. Psychedelia was on the horizon, and by the Summer of Love in 1967, the Big Roll Band had become Dantalion’s Chariot, who in those esoteric times took their name from the devil from a medieval treatise on witchcraft.
Accompanied by one of the earliest psychedelic light shows, the band became regulars at London hippie clubs UFO and Middle Earth, while the single A fool runs through the fields supports The sun broke through my cloud became a classic of its LSD era, in the style of Pink Floyd See Emily Play and the Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever. In a 2010 interview, Money described it as “an account of our personal experiences and subsequent self-disclosures caused by hallucinogenic products”.
When Dantalion’s Chariot disbanded, Money and Summers joined Eric Burdon and the Animals, who formed A fool runs through the fields in the band’s live set. When the Animals also disbanded and tastes changed again, Money returned to his R&B roots, recording solo albums and playing for a number of artists including Long John Baldry, Scaffold and skiffle pioneer Lonnie Donegan.
In the late seventies, he began to develop a parallel acting career. Had bit parts in many TV shows including Bergerac, Account and EastEndersin which he played aging rocker Johnny Earthquake. He also supervised the score for the 1987 hit Tutti Frutti about a 1960s rock ‘n’ roll band on their silver jubilee tour featuring Robbie Coltrane and Emma Thompson.
Money, right, with Robbie Coltrane and Maurice Roeves, left, promoting Tutti Frutti in 1986
GETTY IMAGES
He appeared on the big screen in 1979 in Ronnie Barker’s film adaptation Porridgeplayed music industry PR in Hazel O’Connor feature Breaking the glass (1980) and bartender v Absolute beginners (1986) starring David Bowie.
He was predeceased by his wife Veronica, known as Ronni, in 2017 and is survived by their daughter Marissa and two sons.
Money, here in 2014, performed almost until the end
KEVIN NIXON/CLASSIC ROCK MAGAZINE/FUTURE VIA GETTY IMAGES
George Bruno Money was born in Bournemouth in 1942 to Maria and Oscar Money, an Italian immigrant who fled Italy after Mussolini’s rise to power and became a hotel waiter. The youngest of four children, he was obsessed with music from an early age and sang in the choir and learned to play the French horn at Portchester High School in Charminster. By his mid-teens he had formed a skiffle band called the Four Ales and adopted the name Zoot after seeing American saxophonist Zoot Sims play at the Bournemouth Gaumont in 1958.
After leaving school he became an apprentice optician while playing in various bands at night before forming Zoot Money and the Big Roll Band, choosing his members from the best musicians from Bournemouth’s other various rock’n’roll bands. He had a second gig soon after, playing with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, although the blues veteran didn’t entirely approve of his stage antics, which included climbing a Hammond organ and dropping his pants. The Big Roll Band followed him to London and landed a regular set at the Flamingo Club on Wardour Street in Soho, the legendary fashion hub where Georgie Fame first rose to fame and where Money’s pants-dropping earned him the nickname “Flamingo Flasher”.
His last recording, The book of life… I read itappeared in 2016 and has never stopped playing, with one of his last appearances in 2022 where it all began in Bournemouth to celebrate his 80th birthday.
Zoot Money, the leader of the group, was born on July 17, 1942. He died after a long illness on September 8, 2024, aged 82.
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