why [the Police’s 1983 album] Synchronicity Reissue in progress [as an expanded box set] now? Dmitry S.
The Police had a revelation thanks to the Beatles documentary Get Back. Though we were each in our own ivory towers, we learned that showing sketches and demos along the way didn’t detract from the value of the final master. Ghost in the Machine [the previous album] We played in stadiums with Synchronicity and then got even more famous with Synchronicity, but the recording sessions were very dark. We beat each other up pretty badly. We’ve laughed about it since, but going back into a black hole is not our thing. But we had a lot of fun listening to the demos and unreleased material, so there will be more reissues in the future. We worked backwards from the end, like Wagner’s Ring Cycle.
What was your relationship like with Sting and Andy? [Summers, guitarist] At the height of your success? Do you still keep in regular contact? The eternal skeptic
We had a great bond but it wasn’t easy recording together. We argued so much in the studio but those two motherfuckers produced something amazing and got along so well on stage, in the van, on the plane. We still send each other stupid Instagram clips to this day. It’s a myth that Sting and I were always fighting. I broke his ribs once but we were fighting as a joke.
We understand “I’m Blind,” but can you tell us about some of the other songs that you and Andy brought to Synchronicity that Sting turned his nose up at? John McAleese
It wasn’t that Sting was snubbed, we all were. We all brought in songs, but the ones Sting put out were always really good songs. Sometimes I put out songs like Darkness. [on Ghost in the Machine] But my material, especially lyrics-wise, was not The Police. It may have been disappointing at the time, but a song of mine that didn’t make it into Synchronicity became the score for Francis Ford Coppola’s film Rumble Fish, which was nominated for a Golden Globe and a Grammy. I’m very proud of The Police, but my outside life has been better. Now I’m writing film scores and symphonies and I’m on my eighth opera. I still practice drums four hours a day. I’ve had some small degree of success in just about every form of music except pop.
Will we ever meet Clark Kent? [Copeland’s early solo project] Also? ReteuCooper
Ah, my little success with pop songs [his track Don’t Care was a hit in 1978]There were a few songs that weren’t Police songs for reasons mentioned above, so I recorded them myself with a guitar and a primitive drumbox that only had settings like “rumba”, “samba”, etc. Driving home listening to those tracks was one of the happiest days of my life. [Police] The blondes appeared on national television as Clark Kent’s backing band, performing Don’t Care on Top of the Pops.
I kept a diary [released in 2023 as Stewart Copeland’s Police Diaries] Did you start out just filming for fun? What’s your favorite piece of footage? Misty 62
It was a really exciting time. I wish I could have captured some of it. I never thought people would be interested in it 40 years later. My little diary mostly contains how much we were paid and how many people came, but also grand plans (Hey, if I can sign Clark Kent I’ll make £7,000 a year!), frustrations, dark thoughts and innermost thoughts. My favourite footage is when we were opening for Albertos y Los Trios Paranoias at Birmingham Town Hall. Their manager said they should have charged us touring fees because they had sold out. I soon found out why. We took to the stage to the shrill screams of adolescent girls. After struggling and constantly performing as a pseudo-punk band, suddenly we were on the cover of every women’s magazine and a teenybopper band. That night we had to push our way through the crowd to get to our car.
Before you had a drum kit or even sticks, did you try to pretend to play drums with knitting needles? Marshall Charlton
I used a wooden hanger pole so my dad’s suits wouldn’t fall off, but I had a stick. I was an anaemic, squealing 12-year-old, but every time I was insulted at my boarding school in Somerset I would imagine a giant drum break that would split the prefect’s head open. I would hit the imaginary drum and I would become an 800-pound silverback swinging through the trees. The other instrument I had was a tennis-racquet guitar. I would stand in my room listening to Jimi Hendrix at full volume on headphones. One day my dad tapped me on the shoulder, and Jimi evaporated, and suddenly I was a skinny kid with a tablecloth wrapped around my shoulders playing a tennis racquet.
Your father [Miles Axe Copeland Jr] Have you ever suggested joining the CIA to follow in his footsteps? Bauhaus 66
He didn’t, but I was pleased when people realised my band was in company with The Police and my brother Ian. [Frontier Booking International] They called me the FBI and I thought it was all a CIA conspiracy orchestrated by the priest. The band was originally called Fuck the Police but I hesitated. My dad was a jazz trumpet player who played with people like Glenn Miller, but then the war came and he joined the intelligence agencies. [becoming a founding member of the CIA]Books about him say the story he told is colorful, but subsequent research has shown it to be true: One day, his younger brother Miles came home from the American Community School in Beirut and asked, “Dad, are you a spy?” His father replied, “Who wants to know?”
Have you ever heard the Sex Pistols perform live in their early, blistering shows? Dave Mel
I’d come across them at gigs and parties but never seen them live as they didn’t play a lot of shows. I’d seen The Clash and The Damned and stuff and loved the DIY side of punk. [prog band] I discovered Curved Air when Sound journalist Phil Sutcliffe took me to see Sting’s band Last Exit in Newcastle. Sting could sing, play bass and had great charisma. I knew there was this new scene emerging but I had to call him and convince him to come to London and start a band. The rest is history.
Was she really squatting in Mayfair? The 1970s? Or will you just share someone’s apartment? Kellysahero 1970
My father knew a socialite who owned a Gothic two-storey penthouse and was taking in lodgers to help pay the rent, and when she wanted to vacate the apartment and the lodgers wouldn’t move out, my father said, “I can’t kick them out, but I can’t stop you from inviting my two angry sons and their sons over.” [Curved Air singer] “Bring in rock diva Sonia Christina and her son’s drum kit.” So we moved in and everyone else moved out except Lady Colin Campbell, who’s worth a Google search. Her brother Ian threw the wildest parties. Sting must have been impressed when he came to see us. We jammed and then did the first ever Police photo shoot on the roof afterwards.
Before you begin On a normal day, at the Regatta de BlancsI hear you say, “The other ones are done. Bullshit“What were you talking about? Eddie Chorepost
I had a bunch of crappy lyrics before I made it into a decent song, and then I started writing them and someone told me the first ones were so much better, and I was like, “Oh, the other ones are total bullshit,” but then I just used them and they weren’t so crappy after all.
Besides 1986’s “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “De-Doo-Doo-De-Da-Da,” have you ever attempted to record any new Police songs?? translator
Sting’s idea was that, now that he had a better studio environment and was a better musician, he would go back in the studio and re-record all his hits. Then I played a polo match, my horse slipped, flipped, and broke my collarbone. I couldn’t play drums, so I put my Fairlight CMI music computer up against Sting’s Synclavier. We spent two weeks yelling at each other. I thought the result was cool, but there was pretty much universal agreement that the new arrangements were awful.
What are your memories of making it? [1985 album and film] Rhythmatist? Keepst
I went to Africa looking for the origins of American music. They didn’t know who I was. In the triple-canopied dense jungles of the upper Congo River, people had never seen a white person. They had never seen themselves, even in the mirror, so we gave them a Polaroid picture of our group. We had 400 people come and have a party, and to them it was like Martians had landed. The director (the same guy who took Sting to the Amazon) and I argued all the way through Africa, but the movie had some great scenes where I serenade the lions in the henhouse. It’s the silliest movie ever made, but looking back on it for a bit, it’s actually pretty funny.
Dune: Who could pull off those winged pants better than Sting? VamiiP
Oh no! Sting has amazing pectoral muscles and I can’t wait to show them off. My chest is still skinny and bony.
What was it like working with the Cramps when they supported you on tour in 1979? Bunaboy
I loved The Cramps. They were really weird. You would walk into their dressing room and they would hang from the ceiling like bats with the lights off. The audience hated them. When they finished playing the stage was covered in beer, glasses, rotten eggs, tomatoes etc. The other opening act I loved was The Go-Go’s, five ladies who lit up the stadium and we just rocked when we came out on stage.
If you could have been in any other band in the 70s or 80s, which one would you have chosen? original
If I could play guitar, the Ramones… If I could play drums, could I go back even further? Could I play with Jimi?
What memories do you have of the 2009 arena performance of Ben-Hur? Verulamium Park Ranger
Oh, what a drama. These crazy Germans [Franz Abraham] We pulled together everything we had to produce this huge show. Then the stock market crashed and all the money was gone, so we had to lie and cheat to get the show going. At the O2 Arena. [in London] Sean Connery declined, so I got to narrate on horseback in front of 18,000 people and 400 Romanian and Ukrainian extras. My voice had been pre-recorded, so I was just lip-syncing, and the horse took off at full speed. It looked amazing, but it was what they call an emergency exit.
