The Police, Part One

They were the most unlikely of pop groups; three ambitious mercenaries of disparate ages and origins, each individual desiring complete control as a cardinal sun sign in clashing square aspect. Together they were clandestine musos coming up during the incendiary late seventies London, when to flaunt any facility was exhibit A that one was in bed with the opulent enemy and tantamount to career suicide. Initially posing as dumbed-down homo sapien impostors infiltrating the ranks of authentic Neanderthal punks, their musical camouflage was as prefab and affected as their Bleach-Boy hair, but they would have the last laugh when, after only five studio albums in about as many years, they would bow out as the new wave kings of the international charts, the only post-sixties band to have experienced anything like the Beatles phenomenon, and with punk having dissipated like sulfuric flatulence from a freeway convertible. Each of the triumvirate would be recognized for their respective instrumental talents, and Sting would emerge as one of the most brilliant and distinctive singers, lyricists, and songwriters of his generation, a reputation he would consolidate in his subsequent solo career. Barring the Greatest Hits fiasco, they refreshingly–and with iconoclastic novelty–called it quits at the top of their game, having made a Beatles-reminiscent appearance at Shea stadium.

The Police would go on to overcome and wildly surpass their lowbrow-cum-teen idol beginnings—not to mention the overtly combative interpersonal and creative tension that would make and break them—to be recognized and envied as innovative musicians’ musicians in an inimitable (though many tried) power trio that combined punk, jazz, rock, and reggae into a sophisticated, contagious, and unassailable pop alloy subtly underpinned by each of their prodigious chops and choices. That they created such complex yet memorable and lasting songs under such non-conducive parameters—and under that questionable band moniker that belied their unapologetic desire for world domination, for a start—is just one facet of their surprising, enduring, and unrepeated legacy.

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The aptly-named Andy Summers (formerly Somers) was born in the south of England at the very end of 1942, smack dab in the middle of the second World War, with the horrific German blitzkrieg raining sporadic firestorms from overhead. Who knows what sort of imprint this may have left on the infant, as the war ended before he could form his first memories, but with his father away with the RAF and amid the panic of intermittent air raids (and later as he played among the detritus), he developed a keen, cynical, vigilant wariness, a hunger for eastern and western art and philosophy, a taste for the finer things peacetime in the sixties would offer, and a quick, sharp, intelligent, and often self-deprecating brand of humor to carry him through any and all of life’s tribulations with a bonhomie-gilded grace.

As with most acolytes who pick up the instrument, he would become obsessed with and completely taken over by the portable, versatile guitar, and with one of the most complex, galvanizing musical art forms imported from the promised land of America: jazz. From that sophisticated starting point he would eventually expand his horizons to include multiple genres such as classical, Brazilian, blues, pop, progressive rock, fusion, psychedelia, and many others in his open-minded quest to master and stay true to the instrument that chose him.

Summers started gigging regularly in his teens and moved to London to try his luck as the sixties British invasion began to percolate and proliferate. By the time of his fateful meeting with the preexisting rhythm section of the almost nine years younger Sting and almost ten years younger Stewart Copeland as part of a reunion/tribute show for a defunct band called Gong, he had already “made it” with the likes of Zoot Money’s Big Roll Band, Kevin Ayers, and the Animals, among others, but hadn’t yet found his musical soulmates with whom to assert and become known and rewarded for his distinctive voice on his beloved instrument.

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Gordon Matthew Sumner—alias Sting, as we all know him—was born in the northeastern city of Newcastle in early fall of 1951. Molded by the tough, run-down former shipbuilding town, the physical demands of splitting his father’s morning milk rounds and the strictly disciplined but substantially educational formative environs of St. Cuthbert Catholic School, Sting would become a confident, ruthlessly ambitious young adult who saw music not only as a vital vehicle for the expression of his inherently romantic nature, but also as his ticket out of a cold, dead-end town in which suffering the nightmarishly banal, lower middle class fate of one’s postwar parents was more than likely.

With first wife Frances and newly born first scion Joe in tow, and already fast-tracked for a pensioned but staid teaching career as a weekend-warrior bassist in local jazz and fusion bands (in which he was already neck-deep in the honing of his songwriting chops as one of Last Exit’s competing frontmen), Sting pulled up stakes and moved his young family to London despite his all but nonexistent prospects (an exploitatively imbalanced publishing contract with Virgin music, which would later make his life a living legal hell, was a paltry lifeline).

All Sting really had was the London number of the loquacious American drummer from an incumbent prog-rock band which had passed through Newcastle on tour and had lauded Sting’s ear off about how great his stage presence, bass playing, and voice were as the one shining light of the lackluster opening band.

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Stewart Armstrong Copeland began life in Virginia during the high summer of 1952 as the youngest of three boys and a girl in a globetrotting, type A American family (his father, Miles Axe Copeland Jr., cofounded the CIA). He spent most of his formative years in Beirut, the indigenous music of which contained reggae-adjacent rhythmic DNA, though his preoccupied father favored jazz. Despite never quite cottoning to the genre like his dad or two future bandmates, Stewart developed a unique form of the traditional left-hand grip native to that genre’s drummers, though with the stick passing through his index and middle fingers as opposed to the usual middle and ring finger positioning. This allowed him to appease the detached paternal presence without sacrificing the power of match-grip hits, enabling him to properly emulate his preferred rock heroes Mitch Mitchell, Ginger Baker, and Keith Moon, the first two of which propelled power trios from rear center stage.

Copeland left the middle-eastern nest and eventually found himself in early seventies London, first road-managing and then taking over drumming duties for the crunchy, already anachronistic Curved Air, the red-headed singer/violinist Sonya from which he would eventually marry and with whom he would have his first children.

The first inklings of punk would begin to manifest just after the incongruous Curved Air dissolved, and Copeland, captivated by the brazen, irreverent, reactive energy of the new scene, began to envision a hypothetical trio called The Police that would echo its fast-paced vigor. He began writing songs for this as of yet imaginary group and would even go on to have a minor, like-minded hit under the solo project moniker Klark Kent, but would intellectually (if not emotionally) concede songwriting superiority to the contemporary bassist/vocalist who would ring him in early 1977 as a lonely new Londoner in search of a musical and professional synergy that would translate to worldwide success and world-class remuneration.

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There’s that ripe old caveat against going into business with family, but without Stewart’s older brothers—Miles III and Ian, who would eventually become the band’s manager and booking agent/tour manager respectively—The Police would have died on the vine.

Intelligent and ruthlessly shrewd, Miles was sagacious and cunning on multiple levels, having already succeeded and failed several times in the back-of-his-hand familiar music industry. He was initially stand-offish to his younger brother’s spurious punk trio (Stewart would later label it “Reverse nepotism”), refusing to manage them until they had come up with an original hit song that would make it easier to approach a label for either a development or a full-fledged record deal. This was crucial from a long-term perspective, as the band needed material that would allow them to outshine and outlast—but also temporarily coexist alongside—the flash-in-the-pan vicissitudes of punk if they wanted a shot at the proverbial brass ring.

That song happened to be “Roxanne,” about which the band was initially embarrassed but over which Miles gushed effusively, instantly recognizing its massive hit potential. Originally penned by Sting on a nylon stringed guitar as a cheesy but hook-laden bossa nova about an imagined relationship between an idealistic, controlling john and a French hooker, this was the first Police song that got taken to the punky reggae party, mostly courtesy of Stewart, who would later lend Sting some Bob Marley records and told him to match his bass hits with the kick drum in emulation on the verses (Sting would initially cotton to the sparseness of the reggae bass line as a way to mitigate the technical difficulties of having to simultaneously sing and play). With Summers cleverly placing the song’s trademark staccato-stabbing inversions on the rock downbeats instead of the usual reggae upbeats, the song would become a modest hit and fizzle out before finally leaving its quirky, indelible imprint on the zeitgeist, just like Sting’s laugh-inspiring ass accidentally hitting the vocal booth’s piano during the song’s intro.

“Roxanne” would also catalyze the reggae-fication of the band’s sound (Sting would write the next singles—the similar “Can’t Stand Losing You” and “So Lonely”—in rapid response to “Roxanne’s initial traction), as well as the subsequent expurgation of many of the derivative punk-styled songs—many of which had been expediently cobbled together by Stewart—in consideration for the debut album. If a definitive moment can be pinpointed when Stewart Copeland lost control of The Police, other than the Sting-corroborating jazz cat Andy Summers edging out the image-strong-but-ability-bereft original guitarist Henry Padovani, it was the comprehensive acceptance and celebration of “Roxanne” as a timeless underlying work worthy of several million turntables and constant, long-term radio airplay.

In the DIY spirit of the fake-it-till-you-make-it creation of one’s own luck, and with the foreknowledge that record companies want to step in and back a winning horse without excessive effort or resources required on their part, Miles recommended—and the band wisely heeded—that they forget about trying to woo a label to the cause before recording Outlandos d’Amour, which they then taped on the independent cheap with the more than affordable help of an aspiring but as of yet unproven doctor-turned-producer/engineer named Nigel Gray, who was given what would eventually become lucrative “points”—a cut of the album sale royalties—on the album in lieu of a full fee. And even when the interest of A&M Records was finally secured, Miles advised the band to take a hard pass on the large advance carrot most major labels dangle, which is really nothing more than the fiscal ball and chain of a loan in glorified disguise, in favor of a higher royalty rate for the albums and publishing. It was a gamble that would yield massive dividends over the long term at the cost of the virtually penniless present to which they were already comfortably inured.

Meanwhile, Sting—thanks to his rakish good looks and the connections of actress wife Frances Tomelty—was already reinforcing the by-now standard leap pop stars make into acting (and to a lesser extent, modeling) as a means to subsist amidst their royalty-awaiting, concomitantly impoverished rock ‘n’ roll doldrums. He appeared unabashedly in several magazine ads and even did a chewing gum commercial with Stewart and Andy for which they all dyed their hair the thereafter trademark blonde. Sting also managed to get cast as the Ace Face in the movie adaptation of The Who’s rock opera Quadrophenia, setting the stage for his protracted side hustle in cinema.

An aspirant must be very careful what they first become famous for, especially when it comes to juggling music and acting. It has been statistically proven that musicians can make the transition without damaging the credibility of the original vocation as long as the role isn’t too much of a stretch from their preëstablished musical artist’s persona, or the artist is actually possessed of genuine dramatic talent, but there is a downright prohibitive stigma that makes accomplishing the reverse crossover scenario virtually impossible. Keanu Reeves and Jared Leto may be two of the most in-demand actors out there, as are Selena Gomez and Hailee Steinfeld, but their musical output is easily disregarded or derided. Maybe it comes down to public perception of actors being inauthentic people (after all, they basically lie and pretend for a living), and the resulting inability of the have-their-cake-and-eat-it-too actor to suspend disbelief in the other medium, which is a more genuine, heart-on-sleeve field. Or perhaps they spend too much time pursuing the other craft to give music the necessary time it requires to become proficient, instead leaning on their celebrity in an attempt to prop up the histrionic, often cliché-frosted vanity-project material. In addition, actors—who have become so far removed from a normal life as to be out of touch with and not relatable to the average music consumer (which can’t help but be reflected in the resulting songs)—obviously don’t need any more money, much less for their substandard music.

The Police’s early adoption of the exploitation of visual media, which would eventually make them the darlings of the nascent MTV cable channel post-1981, could have easily blown up in Sting’s—and thus the band’s—face had he made his name as an actor first, especially because of punk’s emphatic distrust of and disdain for British media outlets (not to mention their vehement opposition to try-hard inauthenticity), but Sting was spared by the fact that Quadrophenia was a music-related B-movie that saw a limited release, and the Ace Face was not a central character (despite “selling out” in a way that would come comically close to rubbing up against real-life [rebel impostor Ace Face is humiliatingly outed as a well-paid but obsequious hotel bellboy during the 1964 Mod uprising in Brighton], the character had virtually no spoken lines in the entire film).

Also offsetting any image-harming effects was the band’s crucial appearance on The Old Grey Whistle Test just after filming wrapped on Quadrophenia, the former of which would be seen first, and on a wider scale, and by more of the right people. Being on the taste-making show was an instant shot in the arm for any band’s street cred, as it tended to feature so many of the cutting-edge groups of the time, which would go on to great success and heavily influence musical culture. It was a preemptive PR coup despite Sting having to wear a pair of Stewart’s awkward-looking sunglasses to hide the aftereffects of accidentally taking a self-administered shot of metallic hairspray straight to the eyeballs.

With a debut album in the can but sparsely attended London shows and British touring not yet yielding the desired results as far as label support, airplay, and sales, Miles put the band on an absurdly affordable Laker Airways plane (a 60.00 round trip was absurdly low, even in 1978 money) for their self-funded first tour of the States, which had been booked mostly by other Copeland brother Ian. The goal was to lift the group’s profile back home (“Bard—depart!” guitarist Andrés Segovia was told when he had worn out his early-career welcome in Madrid), improve relations with A&M (minimal to no tour support from a label was unheard of at the time, but the execs were being shrewdly circumspect and cagey due to the Sex Pistols fiasco and The Police’s lingering impostor status) and, as with the British invasion a decade before, to initiate the figurative mining of the expansive and fecund geographical, cultural, and financial territory and career opportunities the US embodied. As the tried and true saying went, and as mantra-ized by manager Miles, if one made it in America, the rest of the world would follow.

The aftereffects of this brief inaugural tour were as bountiful as they were beneficial. For a start, due to the stateside venues’ requiring of longer sets (which for The Police often barely clocked in at a line-toeing 15 minutes back home), and because American audiences were generally more open-minded, the band were musically and socio-politically liberated from the straightjacket dogma of London punk. They were suddenly given carte blanche to implement what they had studied individually, and to be more of what they truly were as a band: erudite, inventive, and entertaining improvisers with classic songs for grist.

During the shows on that three-week tour, the song arrangements became frameworks for extended, spaced-out jam tangents that featured Andy’s recently acquired Echoplex delay unit and a less-is-more approach that gave the band more dynamic impact as a trio. Sting began to either generate bass line variations or drop out entirely and would rhapsodically toast and yell over Copeland’s often Buddy Rich-esque rhythmic explorations. Added to the rapidly expanding reggae influence, this would all set the stage and provide the paints for the writing and recording of their second album, Regatta De Blanc (or “White Reggae,” translated from Miles’s Police-speak pidgin carried over from the first album), touring in support of which would all but win them the world by decade’s end.

The disparity between the types of shows they did and would do—two bookending spots at CBGB’s and four nights at Boston’s Rat Club alongside gigs in random backwater venues from upstate New York to Ohio and Texas—showed that the band were not above taking it straight to the people —à la punk, and not below availing themselves of higher profile exposure opportunities at well-known taste-making clubs and FM radio stations. This comprehensive assault would eventually win them the keys to the kingdom, making The Police both relatable and rarified in their understanding of fame as a byproduct of benign ubiquity.

“Roxanne” got picked up by a Texas radio station and spread out from there, becoming a surprise hit thanks in large part to the CBGB’s and Boston appearances, which, along with the DIY initiative shown in carrying out the career-saving tour, finally tipped A&M’s full attention and favor their way. The label would now shove all in, agreeing to push “Roxanne” as a single and finally releasing Outlandos d’Amour in the States.

The Police returned home to a hero’s welcome. While the band was away “conquering America,” all the punters had to remind them were the two singles—“Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You”—that were slowly gaining traction outside of London, earworming their way into the suburban youths’ collective consciousness. By the time they returned and embarked on yet another British tour as the opening act for a comedy troupe that they embarrassingly upstaged from the first show on, the writing was on the wall.

After that, and somewhat contrary to traditional practices, they would avail themselves of both high profile opportunities on TV and radio and tour their asses off in the States and elsewhere, hitting every hamlet and out-of-the-way burg in an all-encompassing quest to get every last human on board with the record-buying program (this modus operandi would eventually help the band sell a staggering 75 million records worldwide).

In another lay-the-tracks-before-the-train-exists coup from brother Miles, the tour for the third album—Zenyatta Mondatta (“Kings of the World” in Police speak)—would include many parts of the globe where western music had previously not tread (patriarch Miles Jr.’s CIA connections came in very handy in this regard). They would create the demand via the supply in terms of media content, recording and filming many of the shows along the way and including audio and footage in their live album and the rockumentary The Police Around the World respectively. They were one of if not the first western bands to take the phrase “biggest band in the world” literally, and The Police brought the irrefutable evidence back to market.