{"id":44,"date":"2010-11-01T16:28:35","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:28:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=44"},"modified":"2010-11-01T16:28:35","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:28:35","slug":"the-police-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"The Police 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

On page 253 of his compellingly readable memoir, One Train Later<\/em>, Andy Summers logs the April 1978 release of the Police\u2019s \u2018Roxanne\u2019, adding tersely, \u201cIt gets reviewed by John Pidgeon in Melody Maker<\/em>.\u201d That short statement telescopes a more convoluted reality. True, for one issue only, I was MM<\/em>\u2019s singles reviewer, though not until mid-October, by which time \u2018Roxanne\u2019 was a six-month old stiff. But that record was still a hit on my turntable, so I made it the yardstick by which I would judge the new releases.<\/p>\n

\u2018Roxanne\u2019 had come at me out of nowhere on a wavering car radio signal, as so much rock\u2019n\u2019roll of my short-trousered youth had, title or artist\u2019s name or both obscured by static, leaving only a half-heard lyric and melodic hook lodged in my brain, along with a memory of the palpable thrill they had provoked. It took a trawl of record shops to track it down. \u201cIt was the Police\u2019s \u2018Roxanne\u2019, and it still makes me tingle,\u201d I preambled. \u201cI had no idea who they were, and I still don\u2019t really, but I don\u2019t care. \u2018Roxanne\u2019 is simply a great single.\u201d And if that reads like an all-too-obvious endorsement of an acknowledged pop classic, remember: \u2018Roxanne\u2019 was a flop, a sleeper that wouldn\u2019t chart until May 1979.<\/p>\n

My singles column appeared on Thursday 12 October. No one had matched \u2018Roxanne\u2019, not Elton John, not PiL, not Bruce Springsteen. That afternoon the A&M Records\u2019 press office rang, asking would I be free to spend some time on the road with the Police in November? Let me check my diary. In the States? I\u2019m free.<\/p>\n

I had already seen the Police play live, at one of the scant ten gigs they had played since April. The venue was the Nashville Room in West Kensington, and I was accompanied by two pals, former Faces keyboard player Ian McLagan, who\u2019d been every bit as excited as I had on hearing \u2018Roxanne\u2019, and lugubrious, lovable Kevin Coyne, in whose band Andy Summers had played and who was intrigued by his erstwhile guitarist\u2019s punk make-over. While Kevin chuckled over Summers\u2019 bottle-blond hair, Mac and I scoured the sparse crowd for someone who might be Sting, our only sight of the singer having been an arty Xeroxed image on the single\u2019s sleeve. It was the parachute suit and peroxide crop that persuaded us we\u2019d found him, but, to be certain, Mac asked, \u201cYou\u2019re Sting, aren\u2019t you?\u201d To which Sting responded, \u201cYes, but you\u2019re<\/em> Ian McLagan.\u201d<\/p>\n

Half a lifetime later, on 28 July 2007, after the first of two formidable performances at Boston\u2019s Fenway Park on the US leg of their reunion tour, the Police are convoyed back to their hotel with a full lights-and-sirens police escort, each intersection cleared of cross traffic, every red light run as green. Having sprinted from stage to car, Stewart Copeland heads for his room to shower. A couple in the lift have seen the cavalcade arrive the wrong way up a one-way street. The woman will rail against this extravagant abuse of her top-rate tax dollars, but, before she does, her husband asks the still sweating drummer what he has done to merit such treatment. Copeland grins and says, \u2018Easy, why d\u2019you think I named my band the Police?\u2019 My<\/em> band. Which it had been originally. Having tired of the unwinnable race to recoup record company advances, been invigorated by the punk scene, and spotted a singing bass player in Newcastle, ready to try his luck in London, Copeland had not only come up with a name for the group, but composed its entire repertoire of mile-a-minute thrash and found a three-chord Corsican guitarist, Henry Padovani, to help play it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a difficult period,\u201d Sting, that singing bass player, confided in 1978. \u201cStewart had wanted to form a new wave group, but I\u2019d just come down from playing in a jazz group and I wasn\u2019t exactly keen, but I was inspired by the amazing energy of the whole thing, and I thought, \u2018Well, I\u2019m new to London and I\u2019m totally unknown, so I\u2019ll give it a go.\u2019 We did a 15-minute lightning set and I squealed and screamed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then Summers, already an experienced player, saw them at the Marquee. \u201cI thought there was fantastic potential in Sting and Stewart,\u201d he explained. \u201cI\u2019d always wanted to play in a three-piece band and throughout all my years of playing I never had. I felt that the three of us together would be very strong. They just needed another guitarist and I thought I was the one.\u201d The group played a French punk festival as a four-piece; then there were three.<\/p>\n

The effect of Summers\u2019 arrival was instant. \u201cOne by one, Sting\u2019s songs had started coming in,\u201d Copeland explained, \u201cand when Andy joined, it opened up new numbers of Sting\u2019s we could do, so the material started to get a lot more interesting and Sting started to take a lot more interest in the group.\u201d Despite the lack of progress represented by those ten UK gigs in seven months, Copeland insists today that he never doubted for a second \u2013 \u201cnever<\/em> for a second\u201d – that the trio would make it, the core of his unshakable confidence: Sting.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe minute I saw Sting,\u201d he recalls, \u201cplaying in the refectory (of St Mary\u2019s College, Newcastle), I thought, \u2018There is a unique talent that is going all the way to the top.\u2019 Once we were in a band together, I would go on stage knowing that whatever was going to go wrong, Sting was going to kick ass, and he wasn\u2019t going to quit until he\u2019d got the place going.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having joined the Police in August 1977, timing that lends this tour the symmetry of a 30th<\/sup> anniversary, Summers owns up to moments of doubt during those first twelve months. \u201cWe\u2019d been at it for a year, and just basically hanging by a thread,\u201d he recalls. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t anything happening. There was no point in doing gigs, because we\u2019d end up with about two quid each a night. Then we lined up that first little tour of the East Coast of the US, and that\u2019s where it started.\u201d<\/p>\n

I met them in Washington D.C. on 10 November 1978, and took advantage of my tab at the Watergate Hotel, several stars swankier than the band\u2019s budget accommodation, to treat them to dinner. After two shows at the Atlantic Club, I joined them in their van for the drive to Philadelphia, where they played the half-empty Grendel\u2019s Lair, then we drove to New York for two final gigs at CBGB\u2019s.<\/p>\n

The tour had been made possible by three things: Freddie Laker\u2019s pioneering Skytrain, which delivered the trio and their tour manager to New York for \u00a3100 each; an Econoline van with two rows of seats and space behind for equipment, which their manager Miles Copeland (Stewart\u2019s brother) had bought earlier in the year for a Squeeze tour, but which suited the three-piece and their tour manager better than Squeeze\u2019s five-man line-up; and the support of a third Copeland, Ian, an agent who would not have picked up the phone to book $200 club gigs for anyone other than his kid brother. That fee covered two modest, shared hotel rooms, fuel for the van, and a $20 per diem each for food and drink. Some nights they made more, which took care of extras and their flights back to the UK.<\/p>\n

On my own (non-Laker) flight home, I composed the opening paragraph of my piece: \u201cThe Police are not punk. The Police are not disco. The Police are not heavy metal. The Police are not power pop. The Police are just the best rock and roll band I\u2019ve seen in years.\u201d I assured MM<\/em>\u2019s editor they would be the next big thing and, as such, deserved the cover, but when the issue appeared, they had been demoted to an inside spread, with no-hit-wonder, rockabilly voodoo weirdos the Cramps on the front instead.<\/p>\n

By then the Police were back in the UK, supporting student favourites Albertos Y Lost Trios Paranoias on a short tour, during which it became clear to Summers that \u201cthere was something serious happening. The period of self-doubt probably disappeared with the Albertos gig in Bath (on 1 December), where there was just this mob scene and hysterical girls, and that was the moment when we went, \u2018Wait a minute.\u2019 That was a turning point, and we started to go like a rocket after that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six years earlier, my first major assignment as a music journalist had been to tour, riotously, with the Faces, and as recently as July 1978 I\u2019d caught the end of the Stones\u2019 US tour in California, more fun and games. But in Washington, with the Police, I visited the National Air and Space Museum; on a night off in Philadelphia we went to the cinema; and in the van we talked about books. Photographed in New York, Sting hid neither his glasses nor the copy of Daniel Martin<\/em> he was reading. I remember thinking, sure, the other way is fun, but there\u2019s no denying theirs is a practical, economic approach to touring. Those thoughts stayed with me, until, reading One Train Later<\/em>, I came across Summers\u2019 sardonic description of his on-the-road self in 1982: \u201cI am a rock-and-roll asshole, an emaciated millionaire prick.\u201d How did he get to that from where I\u2019d left them? Could the clue be in the penultimate word? \u201cIt got much more dissolute as time went on,\u201d he confirms. \u201cIt did turn into the usual clich\u00e9d stuff, where everywhere we turned up there was a party. The rot set in. You know, the water keeps hitting the rock and it finally starts to crumble.\u201d Sting\u2019s assessment of their excess is more moderate. \u201cWe never really qualified as rock and roll animals ever. It never crossed my mind to trash a hotel room or get completely fucked up. We dabbled.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Police had by then, of course, become the biggest band in the world, legendarily playing Shea Stadium in New York, a marker for mega-popdom set in 1966 by the Beatles. This was in August 1983, by which time the three were reputed to be permanently at each other\u2019s throat. Yet, in 2005, when Stewart Copeland got round to editing the fifty hours of Super-8 he had shot on the road and in the studio for his film, Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out<\/em>, and he reached the moment where the band broke up, the only footage he could find was of them goofing around. While pointing out that when they weren\u2019t getting on, he would not have been filming, he admits that Sting\u2019s anguished look, inserted to signify strife, was in reality a frown of concentration, as the singer worked on a vocal harmony.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople have asked what went wrong back in the day,\u201d Copeland expands, \u201cand the answer is it didn\u2019t go wrong, it went rather well actually. We broke up at exactly the right time. What would have gone wrong is if we had stuck together to the point where we hated each other and started to hurt each other and self-destruct. That would have been wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

After the final gig in Melbourne in 1984, all three, he says, \u201chit the ground running.\u201d Each made signally non-Police music. Sting\u2019s first solo album, The Dream Of Blue Turtles<\/em>, was \u201ca real patchwork of all kinds of styles. I was just having fun as a songwriter, and I carried that on in the interim.\u201d Summers formed new musical alliances, played jazz, pursued his interest in photography. Most strikingly, for a decade Copeland didn\u2019t pick up a drum stick. \u201cI was a film composer, and not only that, but I was desperate to escape type-casting as the drum score film composer, and so for many years I was writing scores with no discernible rhythm at all. I went a little too far, as you do when you\u2019ve got something to prove.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his memoir Summers writes of \u201cthe ache of something unresolved\u2026 The problem with the demise of our group is that we didn\u2019t play out all our potential,\u201d though he now admits, \u201cWe had it all there in a way. But I definitely felt wounded afterwards. It felt like something was stolen and I had to deal with it. Then I occasionally thought, \u2018Maybe it was the best thing to do.\u2019 I didn\u2019t just want to be in a pop band.\u201d<\/p>\n

Distilled into a two-hour live show, the Police\u2019s musical history feels fulfillingly complete. Every stage of their musical journey, from the proto-punk of \u2018Next To You\u2019 to the enigmatic universality of \u2018Every Breath You Take\u2019, is revisited, and, surprisingly perhaps, although the songs are all familiar, they still sound vital, visceral, with emotion or meaning still to impart.<\/p>\n

Confounding red top gossip, the three are emphatic that some form of alliance survived the intervening years. Copeland says, \u201cWe have a basic underlying respect and, I would say, love for each other, the three of us. There\u2019s a bond there that none of us can shake off.\u201d Sting concurs, \u201cRelations with Andy and Stewart have always been cordial. We didn\u2019t see much of each other, but it\u2019s bullshit that we\u2019ve been at loggerheads for years and years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOver the last twenty years,\u201d Copeland adds, \u201cpeople in my company have assumed that what I like to hear is Sting-bashing, so I hear a lot of it, and I\u2019m sure I don\u2019t need to tell you what the opinions are. I tell these friends of mine, \u2018If Sting was here now with a guitar in his hands, you would within moments realise he\u2019s the most talented, gifted musician you\u2019ve ever met – ever<\/em>.\u2019 Because he is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite all the crap written about us, how we all hate each other, we\u2019re not like that, it\u2019s such bullshit,\u201d Andy confirms. \u201cIf that was the truth, we wouldn\u2019t have been able to come back together and do this. Whatever we do, this is always going to be the seminal band we were all in.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Copeland was assembling his film, Summers was writing his book, a project with the potential, he became increasingly aware, to put paid for good to any chance of a reunion, but he stuck to his aim \u201cto be completely honest, not to do some varnished story. What I was interested in was the fragility of it, how it\u2019s always about to collapse at any point, and how difficult it is to bring three egos together and sustain it for a long period of time. It was necessary to talk about the arguments, the difficulties, the tension, as well as paying tribute to the talents of the other two. When I got the book out, I thought they may never speak to me again, but in fact the reverse happened. Sting was very complimentary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Recalling his suggestion for Synchonicity<\/em>\u2019s running order, Summers wrote spikily, \u201cSting likes this idea, and thus it is ordained.\u201d If a reunion was ever going to take place, Sting would need to like that idea too. As eventually he did, surprising even himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI woke up one morning in November last year, and the John Dowland record (Songs From The Labyrinth<\/em>) had just gone in the charts, so I was very happy about that, and I thought, \u2018What do I do now? Should I do that again? No, that\u2019ll paint me into a corner. Do I do another Sting album? No, I\u2019m not really ready for it.\u00a0 What do I do to surprise people? Or surprise myself even?\u2019 And this little voice said, \u2018You reform the Police.\u2019 And another little voice said, \u2018Don\u2019t be ridiculous, you don\u2019t want to do that,\u2019 but this persistent voice said, \u2018No, that\u2019ll really surprise everyone.\u2019 And surprise, as you know, is everything in this business. So I had a meeting with my manager, floated the idea, and she fell off her chair. We phoned Andy and Stewart, and they didn\u2019t believe it either, because I\u2019d been so adamant. If you\u2019d asked me the day before, I would\u2019ve said, \u2018You\u2019re out of your fucking mind. I don\u2019t want to do that.\u2019\u00a0 But suddenly everybody clicked with it, it just triggered something, and the timing was perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Sting long accustomed to tailoring the musical setting for his solo shows \u2013 \u201chaving my own way or \u2018You\u2019re fired!\u2019\u201d – what form would the line-up take? Backing singers? A keyboard player? Horns? Summers, for one, was initially apprehensive. \u201cIn the early days we did one tour with backing singers and one with saxophones, which I personally hated. I thought, it\u2019s got to be the band, the three of us, or not at all, and there was absolutely no contest about that. Because Sting is a natural musician, he\u2019s a player. He\u2019s not some singer who\u2019s got old and fat, he\u2019s the real thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMy instinct was it should be us raw, warts and all,\u201d Sting says, \u201cand I was pleasantly surprised at the first rehearsal. Although it certainly wasn\u2019t polished, there were still moments of, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s why we were good, that\u2019s why we were successful.\u2019 So rehearsal was just about joining those moments together and expanding them, and I think we\u2019re still on the way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Their once teenage fans are now in their forties, and from his drum stool Copeland has observed other changes, \u201cAt the front we used to have a lot of teenage females fainting, now we have grown men weeping.\u201d Weeping for what? Their lost youth? \u201cI guess that\u2019s what it is. There are certain songs, and I look out there and they\u2019re weeping inconsolably. It makes me feel good. It hits me with, \u2018I guess it must be important what we\u2019re doing.\u2019 I mean, it isn\u2019t, it\u2019s just music, but it does affect people \u2013 and that affects me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reunion is scheduled to end in February 2008, when Stewart is looking forward to getting back to being a composer and suburban dad, and Andy will be braced for a post-tour crash, before immersing himself in diverse projects. Sting, as always, is eager to embrace the future, \u201cNothing goes on forever, and once you accept that, that\u2019s a great relief. If I thought I was agreeing to be manacled forever to this thing, like Sisyphus, I wouldn\u2019t have come into it. I think freedom, even to go back, is what I want – to contradict myself, to go back on what I thought was dogma, to be open.\u201d<\/p>\n

So what is this bond, the shared chemistry that took these three from half-empty clubs to the biggest stages in the world, and still has people filling stadiums to see them? Does the man who formed the Police have the answer? \u201cThere are times when Sting and I shake our heads at the disparity in our music values,\u201d Copeland offers, \u201cand yet there are 60,000 people out there that want to hear us play together. How\u2019s that possible? We disagree so deeply and profoundly about fundamental pillars of our artistic philosophy that sometimes we look at each other and it\u2019s not just like we come from different planets, but that different rules of physics apply, and, like I say, we shake our heads and wonder at the strangeness of life that you put these two value systems together and something happens that makes people cry.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On page 253 of his compellingly readable memoir, One Train Later, Andy Summers logs the April 1978 release of the Police\u2019s \u2018Roxanne\u2019, adding tersely, \u201cIt gets reviewed by John Pidgeon in Melody Maker.\u201d That short statement telescopes a more convoluted reality. True, for one issue only, I was MM\u2019s singles reviewer, though not until mid-October, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-police"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/46"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}