Strange things happen: a life with the Police, polo, and pygmies

by Stewart Copeland

  Through the twenty or thirty microphones we can hear the rustling of scores as the sixty players turn to the spot. Pete on the podium conveys the instruction for the horns, trumpets, trombones, and tuba to not play for the specified six measures and to play slightly less loudly when they do enter. Rustle, Rustle.

  Copyright © 2009 Lynn Goldsmith

  He raises his baton. The room stills.

  “Roll tape.”

  The chatter behind me stops, and the scene is playing on everyone’s screens. At exactly seven minutes, eighteen seconds, and twelve frames into the reel a bright yellow streamer appears on the screen and a loud clicking indicates the tempo of the incoming music. After four clicks the band strikes up—although we can’t yet hear it. We’re listening to music that we recorded on the last pass, as the orchestra plays along in parallel. At measure 27 the recordist hits his red button, and seamlessly we are now hearing the new recording of the current performance.

  All this is in response to the client behind me, who wants his favorite line of dialogue to be more clearly audible through the din of sound effects and thrilling music. This is an easy one; all I have to do is carve off some of the orchestra to clear audio space for the dialogue. The mood of the scene is playing well so I don’t have to rewrite the music and put new charts on the stands.

  But it does happen sometimes, that a hitherto undisclosed producer will show up at the orchestra date with a brand-new perspective on the scene. This is the last high-octane, thousands-of-dollars-per-minute event of the film production, so distant functionaries whom I’ve never before met will arrive for one last piss on the tree.

  “Wait a minute!” such a producer might say. “This scene is supposed to be happy-sad! I’m only hearing sad!”

  By the time we get to the hyperexpensive scoring stage the relative happy and sad have been fully calibrated to the satisfaction of the director and more immediate producers. But now this guy wants more happy in this scene. That’s when you have to put the orchestra on a fifteen-minute break, sprint over to the keyboard, and start figuring.

  With modern software it’s not too hard to immediately print up new parts to put on the stands. The tricky part is manipulating the emotional message of the chords, melodies, rhythms, and timbres. The film composer has to work very decisively and quickly to hit the precise emotional spot. Composing for full orchestra on the fly separates the men from the boys. I’ve had to learn how to do it with the clock ticking. It’s been the formal part of my music education—and I’ve been paid for all of it!

  CHAPTER 5

  CURVED AIR

  1975

  My first pro rock band.

  Dear Sirs,

  I recently had the exquisite joy of experiencing a Curved Air concert and was most impressed by the exceptional talent of their new drummer….

  Dear Sounds,

  Curved Air are BRILLYANT!

  What’s the drummer’s name?

  To whom it may concern,

  Wow! Me and some mates went to see Curved Air at the…. Incredible…especially the drummer….

  I’m writing all of these letters to music magazines myself, using different handwriting, styles, spellings, and stationery. After playing a show we usually pull over on the edge of town to gas up for the drive back home to London, so while Darryl pumps gas into our Ford Zodiac, I find a letterbox and slip another piece of skulduggery into the system.

  Phil, Mick, Sonja, Darryl, me. I loved those boots.

  Photograph courtesy of Michael Allard

  I have no faith that the crown of fame and fortune will be justly placed upon my deserving brow. For some reason I’m desperate, even though I’m only twenty-three. I’m in too much of a hurry to wait for the apples to drop, so I must shake the tree. In a strange kind of way I’m more proud of plunder grabbed than honor bestowed.

  We’re having a great time in Curved Air. I’m in a big pro band now—as a member of the band. I’ve had many other jobs in show business—roadie, tour manager, journalist, promoter, radio disc jockey—but now I’m back on this side of the line. I’m the product, not the producer.

  When big brother Miles got to London and started building bands, I latched on to any of his projects that had a free seat in the van. I carried amps for Wishbone Ash. I drove for Renaissance, did lights for Cat Iron, and tour managed Joan Armatrading.

  In college my drumming had actually lapsed in favor of composing and publishing. I started a little magazine in Berkeley called College Event. Actually it was more of a tip sheet than a magazine. I published letters by college concert promoters, who were students like me. I pooled their experiences with the industry professionals and artists—and then sold advertising to the same industry people. It was kind of a journalistic protection racket—a concept that Miles had dreamed up and perfected in England.

  But those drums just came back and got me. I was about to finish up college in California when Miles called from London with an opportunity to get in a band with Darryl Way, the virtuoso violinist of the long disbanded Curved Air. Even though my drum fervor had faded a bit, I jumped on the next flight to London and immediately sparked a connection with Darryl. He was looking for players with passion at a time when everyone else was looking for plush. He had kept enough of a reputation going that we could form a group called Stark Naked & the Car Thieves (a name borrowed from Ian’s Vietnam tour) and start playing shows.

  Just as we were about to get serious, maybe three or four shows into our push, Darryl and each of the other members of Curved Air got tax bills that had been bequeathed them by previous insect people. Since all of the Curvians were in the same predicament, they were able to patch up their differences and reunite for a tour to pay the bill. It did put our new band on hold for about a month, but at least I was able to cross back over the line and weasel my way into the Curved Air tour as tour manager. I’m the only guy I know (OK, except Henry Padovani) who could ever work both sides of the camera.

  THE FIRST SHOW OF the tour is a college gig in Reading. After dropping the band off in their dressing room I go up to the stage to check the crew. They are in the usual first show panic. For its day, this is a high-tech band, with banked synthesizers and special effects gadgets. The stage is a tangle of gear and wires. I let each of the roadies unload his tale of woe and then let them get on with it. Classic roadies—they bitch…and then just do it. I’m just a kid, but I’ve done the job of every man on this crew.

  At least the promoter is happy. Massed college kids are straining at the doors, and the show is going to be packed.

  Back onstage the crew is finally ready for a few minutes of sound check before the doors must open. I bring the band up for a panicked run-through of one song. There are still uncontrolled buzzes from the amps and unintended screeches from the PA, so everyone is tense. Sonja Kristina, the singer, is absolutely calm, smoking a cigarette as she surveys the crew’s raging spaghetti fight.

  We can’t hold the doors any longer, so I hustle the band off the stage. I have to pry Francis Monkman’s fingers from the keyboards. Some musicians are never finished with their sound check.

  It’s much easier to manage a band than to be in a band. There isn’t any of the nervous sweat. I can leave them in the dressing room to stew until showtime while I go see what fires I can put out onstage. The crew are a little calmer now, and the griping is down to a grump. They’re much happier now that the support act crew are setting up and can be lorded over. The room is filling up fast. Whatever noise comes out of the amplifiers, this show is going to start with some momentum.

  When I take this news down to the band, their mood brightens and they start to puff up with the mojo. While the other band thumps away over our heads, laconic drummer Florian rat-tat-tats his hand exercises, Phil rattles his bass, and Darryl arpeggiates furiously on his violin while Francis frets mysteriously. Sonja is in another room doing chick singer stuff with her wardrobe and makeup posse.

  It’s showtime. The other band has cleared
off, our stage is set, and the crew is ready. I go down and give Darryl the nod, and he’s raring to go. He leads the guys up to the wings, rapping on Sonja’s door as he goes by. I head up to shake some payment out of the promoter before the band plays a note. Gigs these days can be shifty.

  I was supposed to meet Darryl in the wings before the band went onstage, but before I make it back to the hall he has already started up. He opens the show with some heavy rhythmic scrubbing on his electric violin as an attention grabber, and then the band kicks in for an instrumental romp through some slightly classical, vaguely Verdi riffs.

  They do have something here, this band. They immediately have the crowd moving. There are a lot of groups out there these days that are sophisto-classical, but these guys actually rock. And that’s not all.

  After blizzards of virtuosity from Francis and Darryl the band cuts down to a low throb. They hold the groove for a minute, and the kids are yelling. I can see why. My own hackles are on end. Sonja Kristina has arrived on the stage. Suddenly there is no band, no stage, no college kids. Just Sonja glinting in the green light. She moves like smoke across the stage, hardly seeming to move at all, but undulating in slow motion. Who cares what the band is doing? As a muso I’ve never bothered with singers, considering them to be musical passengers. How wrong I’ve been! She’s not even singing yet, and she owns everything.

  SIX MONTHS LATER SONJA is squeezed into the backseat of the Zodiac between myself and Mick Jacques, and we are chuckling off down the motorway back to London after a show. We’re a happy band and we have just killed another crowd. After the Curved Air tour wrapped up, Francis and Florian went back to their lives, leaving Sonja and Darryl to consider the value of their band brand. It seemed like a no-brainer for Darryl to bring in the Car Thieves and continue as Curved Air with Sonja, Phil, Mick on guitar, and me on drums.

  Who could ever expect that Sonja will one day become my first wife and mother of three of my four sons?

  Melody Maker reprint: After a rather sudden and mysterious avalanche of readers’ letters, this one was printed in the “Any Questions?” section. My First Ink, and I scammed it myself.

  Fourth drum set

  Clipping courtesy of Melody Maker, published April 19, 1975

  CHAPTER 6

  TAGGING LONDON

  1977

  F

  uck!…is that a cop car?” Paul Mulligan and I are lurking in a cleft in the cityscape, peering up the rainy night street and trying to discern the threat to our endeavor. Stashing our spray cans in our coats we, for the umpteenth time, interrupt our mission and pretend to be normal until we can see that there are no protuberances on the approaching vehicle. We’re still nervous because this is our first crime wave.

  We started out with a stencil, but ended up getting more paint on ourselves than the walls. And the logo, THE POLICE, just wasn’t dominating the canvas with enough pride. So we ditched the soggy, dripping cardboard stencil and have been spraying the band name in uneven capitals on suitable walls around London. The word tagging hasn’t yet been invented, but that’s what we’re doing.

  The inoffensive car passes on down the street, and we are about to resume our insurrection when a couple of pedestrians come around the corner. Damn. After a reflexive lurch back into the shadows, Paul lights up a smirk.

  “Do you think they could give a damn? Fuck ’em,” he says as he strides out into full lamplight and draws his can. The pedestrians pass by with not a sideward glance. They completely ignore Dalí and Picasso flagrantly spraying on their city walls.

  It dawns on us that the shade of night is more of a hindrance than a shield. If we do this in broad daylight, we can see cops from further off. We can certainly see them better than they can see us. Everyone else on the street, whether on foot or in cars seems to be blind to us. We’re invisible! So we get bolder and soon are out at high noon plastering posters and spraying our turf like any male mammals. Paul, eager to invest in show business, lent us £400 to record our first single. We both have high hopes for a return on his gamble.

  CHAPTER 7

  KLARK KENT

  1978

  My first hit record was as an artist who hid behind a mask. The mask reveals the true identity.

  I

  ’m never going to make it home. I’m driving through the night and not getting anywhere. Lost somewhere in London, or maybe I’m not even in London anymore. No matter. My ears are glued to the speakers in my car. The music coming out has me transfixed because of course it’s my own. Really, really mine. After years of home-recording my guitar riffs, today was the first time that I’ve had the chance to professionally record my guitars, bass, and piano over real drums—my drums!

  In my car, lost in the night, I’m listening to a thrashing band that hangs together with unholy cohesion.

  It’s been a busy day. At the crack of dawn (10:00 A.M. for my kind) I loaded my trusty Gibson SG guitar, Fender Telecaster bass, a tiny little Fender Champ amp, a cheesy drum box, and my real drums into my purple VW and drove down to Surrey Sound Studio. Nigel Gray is the owner and chief engineer. We’re working with state-of-the-art sixteen-track one-inch recording tape.

  The first track that we lay down for each of the three songs is the cheesy drum box pattern, as a glorified metronome. This machine was designed to accompany lounge singers who are too cheap to hire a drummer. It has preprogrammed rhythms, of which most are rumbas, sambas, and the like. But it does have “Pop 1” and “Pop 2,” which gives me two serviceable rhythms that I can use.

  Then I plug in the SG and work my way down the songs, chugging the rhythm guitar parts in time with the drum box. It’s already sounding amazing compared with my home recordings. Just having someone else to hit the record button for me is a big luxury. But I don’t get too carried away with the guitar yet. Next, Nigel puts up a microphone for me to quickly yodel out a guide vocal track, which helps navigation during the whole process. I have three songs on tape.

  Now it’s time for the real recording, starting with the drums, which are the foundation upon which any modern music is built. Very carefully Nigel arranges the microphone tree around my drums and I lay down the beat, with the guide tracks in my earphones. It’s the easiest drum session I’ve ever done, since the guitarist has exactly my sense of rhythm. But drums are still the most demanding aspect of band recording—even if I am the band.

  It’s about four o’clock, but I’m just getting started. It’s time to get serious with the guitars. My little Champ amp would never be big enough to play with a band, but for overdubs, with near and distant mics, we can get a big, raging guitar sound. After the slog of all that drumming now I’m in Guitar Hero heaven, and that drummer on the tracks is just the perfect guy….

  All of the parts that I’ve been noodling over at home now come to life in full stereo studio sound. There is no greater joy than this. When I’m working at home, engineering my own sessions, I spend most of the time fussing over wires and connections so when I finally strap on my guitar, my head is still engineering. With Nigel at the controls I can spend all day getting deeper and deeper into the pocket. Music is like that. Inspiration and vibe gather momentum. Guitars, bass, piano, even a bit of wild kazoo as fake brass, and I’ve got three tunes thrashing. The band sounds pretty thick when you consider that there are just two guys in the building—and one of them is the engineer.

  Tomorrow I’ll do vocals, but now I’ve got the backing tracks going around and around on the cassette player in my car. I don’t ever want to get home.

  I CAN’T SEE VERY well out of this mask, but I’m enjoying very much the befuddled amusement on the face of the journalist before me. Most of my experience with interviews has been watching the artists that I have worked for stammering their way through boring responses to standard questions. Now it’s my turn, and I’m doing it a little differently.

  I’m wearing a thick rubber mask, a long black coat, and thick gloves. On my way over to the record company press office I have
concocted another bogus persona, life story, and scam. This time I’m an escapee from a government scientific program involving radiation synapse crevulation—I hope you are wearing your lead diapers! Under this mask I’m still glowing….

  Copyright © 1977–2009 Lawrence Impey

  Everybody wants to talk to the masked man of mystery, but the last thing I want is for anyone to identify me. How do you like that? My first brush with honestly earned fame, and I’m sneaking!

  For one thing, my reputation in London right now is suspect, and I don’t want to taint this new brand that is working so well for me. I’m the chief mercenary behind that fake punk band The Police, and while the musicians here generally respect our chops, the rock press has already written us off as not cool. The Police is actually kind of dead in the water right now—which is going to change because Stingo, out of nowhere, has started writing some pretty incredible songs. Andy’s joining the band has really woken him up. There’s this one new song that we should record called “Roxanne.”

  So, since I am nothing and no one, how about if I use a mask to suggest that I’m someone and something? When confronted by the mask folks might ask, “What’s he got to hide if he’s not somebody?” It’s what my sly father taught me: If you want to create a rumor, start by denying it, as in: “I swear that I never slept with Diana….”