Kid Charlemagne
The Dan, Again
The Royal Scam, 1976
Kid Charlemagne
While the music played, you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That's when you turned the world around
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes?
On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen-clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
Every A-Frame had your number on the wall
You must have had it all
You'd go to L.A. on a dare and you'd go it alone
Could you see the day?
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away?
Get along, get along, Kid Charlemagne
Get along, Kid Charlemagne
Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low-rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those Day-Glo freaks who used to paint the face
They've joined the human race
Some things will never change
You are obsolete
Look at all the white men on the street
Get along, get along, Kid Charlemagne
Get along, Kid Charlemagne
Clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get it all out of here
Is there gas in the car?
Yes, there's gas in the car
I think the people down the hall know who you are
'Cause the man is wise
You are still an outlaw in their eyes
Get along (get along), get along, Kid Charlemagne (get along)
Get along, Kid Charlemagne
Written by Fagen and Becker
A tale of dodgy characters with “Kid Charlemagne” at the heart. Who is Kid Charlemagne?
He’s LSD chemist Augustus Owsley Stanley aka “Bear” and he was a real person, arrested and sentenced to a three-year prison term in 1967 when his lab was raided.
“All the others were laced with kerosene, but yours was squeaky clean". Owsley was making the purest LSD and should be commended for that; many an experimenter has been done down by impure lace product.
I took LSD a few times in the early 1990s with my now ex-missus. It was very strange, a veil was lifted, I’ll write about it another time.
"Everyone stopped to stare at your Technicolor motorhome". Ken Kesey rumbled around in a technicolour bus called Furthur.
CIA acid?
"Is there gas in the car?" Rumour has it that Owsley was arrested after running out of petrol during a getaway in 1967. It’s mythology but gives us a wonderful line. Then again, Owsley died aged 76 in a car crash in Queensland, 2011.
As you’d expect the band is as tight as a mosquito’s arse. There are two impeccable guitar solos by Larry Carlton and Bernard Purdie is being Bernard Purdie.
“As the story is usually told, the 1960s countercultural movement posed a rather serious threat to the status quo. But if that were truly the case, then why was it the “pillars of the establishment,” to use Unterberger’s words, that initially launched the movement? Why was it ‘the man’ that signed and recorded these artists? And that heavily promoted them on the radio, on television, and in print? And that set them up with their very own radio station and their very own monthly magazine?”
- Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, by David McGowan