The Police were something entirely different. One of the those 'miracle bands' where each member brings their own genius (and temperament) to the party, and the result is more than the sum of the parts. This is our take on one of pops most vibrant trios.
Words & curation by Keith, cover art by…Lee Smith!
The last time I looked, The Police ranked 235th in the world on Spotify, yet their biography hasn’t been updated since before 2007. You might think well who cares? The band first announced a “sabbatical” in 1983, one they never returned from. Except they did. The Police reformed for a one-off world tour (which at the time became the world’s 4th best-selling, grossing $360 million) in 2007-08. I attended the Twickenham stadium show in September 2007 and it was the best stadium show I have ever seen. It opened with a quasi-heavy-rock version of Message in a Bottle and I remember wondering if it was going to work out. It wasn’t subtle. But then it just got better and better. Through a combination of a well thought-out (but far from obvious) setlist and just the most amazing performances, the show was mesmerising.
The earlier part of the set contained a bunch of tracks from the third album Zenyatta Mondatta which hit the spot for me probably more than anyone else in the stadium. But by the time they broke into the sombre opening bars of Invisible Sun (can you believe, an actual choice of single back in 1981 (cough, the first single from 4th album Ghost In The Machine, that would never happen these days), I was in the transcendent zone, transported many many miles and years away, but right there in the moment at the same time. It's the sort of effect Sting himself might be proud to achieve. Like all special gigs however, the highlight came from an unexpected place - toward the end of the main set with the song Walking In Your Footsteps (an otherwise ordinary Police track or so I’d thought) which was given more of a Saharan feel than on the record and featured a virtuoso display of percussion from Stewart Copeland that just took your breath away. The whole thing was surprisingly good, given that it could simply have been three superstars coming back together to make a few quid and pay off their tax bills. I have been known to spend entire gigs in a state of worry (and then disappointment) that my own favourites might be missed from the setlist, but the show was so good in fact, that I hadn’t realised they’d not included Spirits In The Material World until well after the show. I forgave them, even though that song has the best bass line I have ever heard (or should that be the six simple notes of Walking On The Moon?).
They are in many ways a curiosity of a band The Police. Their early stuff was classified as punk, but then wasn’t punk supposed to be played by less than average musicians, as opposed to three individual musical geniuses? They had belting singles but knocked off album tracks that were sometimes not even good B sides. Zenyatta Mondatta might be a case in point. The album thrust The Police to giddy heights and worldwide fame, but was really a series of jams between its two hit singles Don’t Stand So Close To Me and De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da (a direct cousin of Abba’s Knowing Me Knowing You if you want my opinion). Even the band later admitted it was a rush job. On the other hand, it’s awesome. A relaxed and nonchalant album that also has a restless energy about it, not least down to Stu Copeland’s signature showy syncopated drumming style (Copeland is all over the record - you could listen to the album right through and just pay attention to the drums). Maybe that’s when it started to first rub Sting up the wrong way. It’s how I really came to discover The Police, even though the earlier hit Walking On The Moon is in my all-time favourite singles list and one of the first 45s I ever remember spinning round on a turntable, over and over again.
As it happens, I first properly discovered The Police on my doorstep, on a chilly winter's night in 1980. I heard a knock on the door and a motorbike speeding away down the street. I went down the stairs, opened the door, stuck my head out and looked around. Nothing, just cold still air and the sound of that motorbike speeding off into the distance, two or three streets away by now. Then I looked down and there it was, on the doorstep, an LP record. The sunset burst background and the band’s three headshots in that distinctive blue triangle, with The Police logo set at an angle and the words ‘Zenyatta Mondatta’ in an eastern scribe. Egyptian, was that the effect? What did/does Zenyatta Mondatta even mean? Exotic for sure. It’s one of my favourite band album covers (which is what makes the Spotify canvas for Don’t Stand So Close To Me so cool). I took it upstairs and put it on the turntable. I was excited to hear it and I hadn’t spent much time with albums. Albums were like the musical equivalent of watching a live football match in real time - they took too long. But listen I did, over and over and over. No wonder that Twickenham setlist got me straight in the heart.
Skip forward a couple of years and came Invisible Sun and Spirits In The Material World, two of my favourite pop songs ever (and of course, the smash single Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic is about as good as pop gets don’t you feel?). All three came off the fourth album Ghost In The Machine, a unique album in many ways. It’s a sombre collection, at times downright angry, with most of the tracks being Sting’s first real political and social statements (though he was warming up on Zenyatta Mondatta). The Police introduced new musical depth through the use of a horn section and the resulting sound is like nothing else you’ll hear in modern pop. Yet it moved the band away from the early punky or reggae stylings into full blown rock-pop. There are a few hidden gems on the record: Secret Journey (a single release in the US only) and Darkness - which provided a spiritual buffer from the polemic of the heavier tracks. But the peak achievement must be Spirits In The Material World. It’s a pop song constructed of three entirely separate entities: a staccato string arrangement, a jumpy, agitated bass line and then by the third verse, a looping guitar arpeggio. All move independently but are held together with Stu Copeland’s drums. It’s disorientating until the chorus pulls everything in line, commanded by a tap on the snare a full quarter-second before the beat. It’s still somehow pop, and it’s genius.
Then came Synchronicity: by all measures the peak of the band’s career, though possibly bombastic compared with what had gone before. The music contained less space and was often wrapped in a lot of production. But it’s not boring. The guitar line of Synchronicity II loops through four movements, every one of them thrilling. Tea In The Sahara is a great listen every time. And of course it contained a bona fide monster hit Every Breath You Take, with its beguiling scale riff that sadly became a bone of songwriters contention between Sting and Andy Summers. My favourite on that record is another single King Of Pain, in which Copeland does the same trick as he did on ‘Spirits’ but flips it and taps the snare a quarter second after the beat. He gets me every time with those.
In a way though, I feel like Synchronicity is Andy Summers’ record, as Ghost In The Machine was Sting’s, and Zenyatta, Copeland’s. Just me? Sad to think when ploughing The Police catalogue that there are a meagre five studio albums to farm off. By the time they made Synchronicity they were a stratospheric pop group, but burned out and at the end of each other’s tethers. Better to burn out than to let ‘creative differences’ fester away.
The Police forever struck me as castaways, as they characterised themselves on the early smash hit Message In A Bottle. Castaways first from their punk and reggae beginnings, then from pop itself as they all followed more high brow musical journeys including jazz, world music, film soundtracks and even musicals. They went from three bleached blonde pop stars into worldly, idiosyncratic and larger-than-life artistes. And of course, they castaway from each other when they broke up at the height of their powers.
I just wish they would send out an SOS and get back together to make some new music.
Three after words
Coffee in the Marquis, with Sting! A long way from the cold doorsteps of northern England and to the exotic surrounds of the breakfast garden room of LA’s rock & roll Sunset Marquis hotel, I got to have a chat with Sting in which we discussed precisely none of the above. He didn’t seem to be in the mood for a chat with a fan. That is, until I asked him “are you here for your musical” (one of the more recent post Police projects Sting has applied himself to is a musical about the decline of the Newcastle shipbuilding industry) and his eyes lit up. I might have been the only person in LA to even know he’s written one. We did talk about the fact that I’m from a sea-faring city as well (“you’re from Hull?”) and that we were both therefore quite far from home. As he sipped his coffee mindfully, it was on to each other’s real business there that day (he was on tour with Peter Gabriel, I was there for a business meeting at Spotify though kept it short to ‘on business’ just in case he was a non-approver). We wished each other well and that was that. I may as well have said “hey Sting. De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da Da, that’s all I want to say to you”.
Mystery solved. Zenyatta Mondatta was a gift from my older sister Karen to her boyfriend Pete Kisby, whom she then broke up with. He’d returned it. His loss, my gain. Thanks Pete.
Welcome Lee Smith! His unique style bring a humour to the proceedings and we look forward to seeing what he comes up with next!