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

by Stewart Copeland

  Well, yeah, we’ll rehearse, just get to know each other but yup, we’ll pretty much make it up as we go along.

  It so happens that Les has found me at exactly the right moment. There is a prowling energy that has been building up inside me for a couple of years.

  I was once pretty good at whipping up a frenzy with those drums of mine. I could drive the surge of power that you get from a great band and a raging crowd. It’s the kind of thrill that sticks in your mind.

  Just recently I got a call from Gene Provencio over at Tama Drums. I started playing Tama thirty years ago, and Gene was calling to find out what had become of me. I confessed to a deep lapse in my drumming acumen, but he said he had a remedy for my shame. A gleaming new drum set!

  To tell you the truth, I never did get misty-eyed about drum sets. They are too bulky to bond with the way that one does with a guitar (yes, even drummers sleep with their guitars) and when you play in a world-touring band, you never know which of the many identical kits you might be playing. You never share a hotel room with them. You only see them onstage, assembled by other hands. After the show the crew devours them.

  Les’s band Primus is playing in Burlington, Vermont, next week. This is the hometown of Phish, Trey’s group. How about if I fly over there and we meet up at the Phish barn for a jam?

  Meanwhile, back in L.A. I’m in the middle of exploring, with The Moody Blues, the idea of conducting their orchestra on their next tour. I have never conducted onstage in front of an audience before, so this is a pretty sexy option for me. I am lucky to have a flair for conducting and this is a chance to develop it into a real skill.

  So there is a choice to be made. Do I saddle up my familiar old warhorse or do I go after that untamed stallion in the field? My usual method would be to use the warhorse to catch the stallion. By which I mean that I instinctively say yes to almost any creative endeavor that I’m presented with. The word no is alien to me. The problem is, both of these options require massive homework. Even as a naïf you can’t mount the podium before a sixty-piece orchestra without full command of the material. And especially if you are a drum god, you can’t mount the stage with rubber fingers.

  But I’ve got Les Claypool on the phone and he is a persuasive man.

  A couple of weeks later I’m sitting in a Vermont café on a sunny morning, surrounded by bearded granola crunchers, and Trey comes bubbling in. Grinning through his orange beard, he gets straight into grilling me about the ways and wherefores of working with orchestral music, of all things. He’s burning up with a symphony that he’s writing.

  Les saunters in and we head over to Trey’s barn. It’s a picturesque wooden structure that he bought over there, to put on some land he bought over here. It’s a scenic spot at the other end of several miles of dirt road. The old barn is on a promontory overlooking the Vermont mountains, and inside is a recording studio. It’s just the kind of place that I used to fantasize about as a kid. The ivory tower where bands go to lose themselves in the magic of music.

  Within ten minutes Les, Trey, and I have strapped on instruments and are lost in some far-away magic. We probe the mysteries deeply: soaring, we crest the waves; gliding, we span the universe. Every so often we stop for hysterical laughter. And then we fall back into another groove, another ride, another blazing inferno. Through the day and into the evening we romp around the barn.

  Well, I’ve participated in a few supergroup-type lineups and they are usually disappointing, but this is something else. This is worth coming to the party for.

  When I get home, there is a gleam in my eye as I set up my new Tama Starclassic Maple wood kit. The tom-toms come out of the boxes first. The natural wood finish has a luster that is pleasing to the eye and satisfying to the hand. The bass drum is the best. It’s too big to hold in my arms, but the large expanse of exposed burl enflames my passion as I search the floor for the position of power on which to land this mighty drum.

  Urgently I unbox the maze of chrome stands. The cool metal warms to my touch as I kick the legs open and unfurl the boom arms on which to hang the glittering flotilla of new Paiste Signature Series cymbals.

  I am a ten-year-old boy with a large erection of drums and stands that represents the pinnacle of all my youthful desires. To describe this catafalque as the Rolls-Royce of drum sets would be inadequate. The fine tooling, the advanced metallurgy, the sophisticated engineering, the ingenious design all add depth to my growing ardor.

  As it takes shape before me my breathing starts to rhythmatize. Sharp patterns are whistling through my teeth by the time I reach for the sticks. I pause to admire, one more time, the virgin beauty of this shining prize.

  Top left tom-tom takes the first blow and responds with a joyful boom that travels up my arm and down to my soul. And the monster is released….

  The next couple of weeks are consumed by obsessive self-improvement. On the bike path my general physique is strengthening. Deep immersion in mesmerizing rudimental exercises is limbering and strengthening my wrists while tuning the rhythmic engine room in my brain.

  In one of the more brightly lit corners of my skull, a team of brain cells is creatively segmenting the passage of time into patterns. These patterns are converted into instructions for my hands and feet. Getting this system to work at high speeds with consistent precision is what practice is all about. The brain is tuned for rhythmic acuity and the hands are balanced for synchronized aggression.

  Les is on the phone again. Guess what buddy, the tickets for our show went on sale this morning and were all sold within twelve minutes. Whaa! For a moment my abiding love for my fans wakes from its slumber and the love music is welling up in my heart, until it occurs to me that these ticket buyers must have been huddling over their computers waiting for the sale to open. I happen to know that all three of my fans have jobs. Les is quick to clarify. It’s the Phish-heads, a tribe of beyond-loyal fans of Trey and his band. Damn, that cheery little fellow is popular. Maybe that’s why he’s so happy all the time. A week later Les tells me to look us up on e-Bay, where I see that tickets are selling for $2,000! Now these are my fans, I imagine proudly.

  The Primus rehearsal place is a large shed in an industrial park on the waterfront in Sausalito, California. This is where we meet again to get just a little bit organized for our New Orleans show. Since our session in Vermont I’ve been hacking up the tapes that we made and we listen to the distilled high spots to find nuggets that we can join together to create material. Les and Trey are shouting lyric ideas back and forth and scribbling furiously, but since I’m already blasting around on my drums they mis-hear each other and are writing down intriguing non sequiturs.

  These guys amaze me. It’s just so how-you’re-not-supposed-to-do-it. I come from a world of pop music where improvisation in front of a paying audience is something that has to be surrounded by solid material (songs). The idea of making it up as you go along is plain unprofessional. If you are just screwing around, how does the wardrobe lady backstage know which sequined jacket to bring out and when? How does the guitar tech know which guitar to have ready? Well, it turns out that Trey only uses one guitar for a show, and Les wears the same sequins all night.

  Next day we are heading down to New Orleans. I’m getting a real buzz from being in a band with a cool name and I’m ready for mischief. For me this amounts to staying up beyond ten o’clock. My new posse and I are out later than that tonight as we cruise the French Quarter, ripping from joint to joint down Bourbon Street and beyond. When I finally bail, in the wee hours, the youngsters are still raging.

  Next day at sound check, Trey isn’t smiling so much. This is the other Trey. The one you get every four or five days when the party hits the wall. Sullenly he stares at his foot pedals as we run through our “material” and organize the stage sound. There is an occasional bitter glance in my direction when I crack my snare. Les is only a little more laconic than usual after his night on the town, but he’s all business.

  Back in the
dressing room I’m eager to figure out the set list but get piteous looks from my band. Set lists are for wimps, they tell me, we’ll decide as we go along. Now this takes balls! I now realize that I am amongst real men.

  Then Brad Sands comes in and gives us the nod. Showtime. When we get to the wings, the stage lights are on. Les and Trey keep walking, and without so much as a “Ladies and Gentlemen…” they are onstage plugging in. I stroll on in their wake and strange noises are already coming out of Trey’s guitar.

  Since we haven’t decided what to play first and since the band looks pretty saddled-up, I just start playing something and Les is on it in a heartbeat. There is a buzz from the audience. They know we are faking it and that’s what they love! They want to see us think. They want it never to have happened before. They want an uncharted musical adventure.

  And that is what they get. For two and a half hours we gloriously indulge ourselves, committing heinous crimes against stagecraft and organized music. Referring to our material only occasionally, we blast here, cruise there, and sometimes drift away completely. Trey has that Andy Summers thing where he can create a whole atmospheric environment with his guitar without even playing it. The focal point of the band though is Les. While Trey gazes into the distance, Les is the one to watch. Between disjointed dance excursions around the stage there are mysterious snatches of storytelling and odd instructions to the audience. His bass is thundering all the while. After the show Trey disappears, and I don’t see him again.

  When I get home and listen to the tapes, I discover that there were some really inspired moments in there between the train wrecks. As I love to do, I get out my scalpel and once again splice all the best moments together. It’s frustrating to get a show together and only play it once, so I like to at least have a listenable recording for my archives.

  But it turns out that this is not the end of Oysterhead. A few weeks later the stars are aligned over Las Vegas, where Phish and Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade happen to be playing shows on the same night. It’s also Trey’s birthday.

  My brother Ian and I fly over from L.A. in his little airplane, landing in downtown Las Vegas, right next to the flashing lights of The Strip. Phish are just winding up their show as we arrive at the arena. Kid Rock is onstage with them, and Trey is on drums! The show soon finishes and backstage the Phish guys are all hospitality. They really are a fun group to hang with; very relaxed. Kid Rock, whose name turns out to be Bob, is back there, still singing snatches of this and that. But across town Les is just about to fire up his band, so we head over to the House of Blues at the Mandalay Bay Hotel.

  The Frog Brigade is in full swing when we get there. Les has already told us that he’s expecting an Oysterhead moment at the end of his show, so Trey and I are in the wings plotting what song to play and, in a rush of mad enthusiasm, have inducted Kid Rock into Oysterhead. This all evaporates however when Les finishes his show, comes offstage, and gives us our marching orders. They don’t include Kid.

  Well, it’s Les’s show, so Trey and I troop onstage and blaze through a couple of Oysterhead songs. It’s actually a pretty tight little show. With only twenty minutes to kill (and Trey’s birthday party to get to) we curtail our meanderings and cut to the chase. Trey plays a blinder.

  Way upstairs in a suite over the city lights, Brad has a party room prepared. There is a set of drums and amps and a well-stocked bar. There are no industry sharks. No local deejays, journalists, or retail bigwigs. No record company promo guys (who are actually usually quite fun). It’s just my new Phish buddies and their wives, various odd-looking Frog Brigadiers, and Kid Rock, who now has a little solar system of babes surrounding him. I am delighted to see that young rock stars are still acting the part. Long into the night strange rituals of rock bacchanalia are performed. The floor shakes with misshapen dancing and the walls ring with weird incantations. We are musicians, and in the nighttime after the show, with the door locked, we are even stranger than you think.

  ONE YEAR AFTER OUR first meeting, we are back in Trey’s barn to record an album. Outside, Vermont is under deep snow. Inside, the three of us are setting up all of our toys. The barn is so big that we have plenty of room to each create our own jungle of (in my case) drums, percussion racks, gong stands, gamelan rows, xylophones, glockenspiels, gran cabassas, and gran falloons.

  Trey just uses one electric guitar (made by one of the Phish crew) and one acoustic Martin guitar. Behind him is a collection of vintage amps. At his feet is a carpet of foot pedals. Les has a bunch of basses and a few distant relatives of the bass. Just one big amp drives an imposing array of speaker enclosures far back in the room (bass sound waves like to travel).

  At the other end of the barn is a large mixing console, behind which Oz is recording our every move. We are deep in Phishdonia, and we have their briskly upbeat crew around us, led by the ever-resourceful Brad Sands. Brad’s day job is to corral the free-ranging spirits of the four happy Phish guys and get them on/off the bus, in/out of their hotels, and to/from the stage. He is the band’s interface with terra firma.

  We spend the next month working, playing, jamming, overdubbing, lyric writing, singing, and laughing. On a typical day, I get to the barn at 10:00 A.M. The crew don’t arrive until noon, so I have a key and let myself in. I have the studio tapes to myself for a solitary morning of examining, editing, organizing, and generally tampering with the tapes of the previous day’s wild creativity.

  It is art for art’s sake, and a real contrast with my day job, which is ultraspecific and very disciplined. The collaboration side of it is refreshing, too. In my film work I collaborate with the director to serve his dramatic needs, but in the music room I am president-for-life. All other musicians on a film score are employees, serving my vision, which in turn serves the director. In a band you share the music: you ride as well as drive. One idea inspires another, and with the right group of conspirators, big things can happen.

  THE OTHER SIDE OF band life is the tour. We were never sure that we would make it this far since two of the players are already members of important groups and one of us (me) has a day job. But we manage to push aside other business to make space for a one-month USA national tour with a week of rehearsal in Vermont.

  By now it is fall and Vermont is rusty red. Inside the barn we are hard at work figuring out the songs on our record and working up a show. After a week, we are going to do a warm-up show in New York, launch the record (press and stuff), then reconvene a month later in Seattle for the first date of the tour.

  One morning, it’s nine o’clock and I’m rambling around in my hotel room with the TV on when I notice that there is smoke coming out of a skyscraper. Wait a minute, that’s New York! There are flames! Un-muting the sound, I hear a commentator saying something about a plane crash. Maybe terrorists. It’s the eleventh of September. My hair is standing on end. “Al-Qaeda!!” I scream at the TV. I’ve been watching them for some time now. In cahoots with those Taliban crazies in Afghanistan, they have been attacking U.S. targets for years, with increasing audacity. A TV head suggests that it could be some of Timothy McVeigh’s buddies. No, this is too smart. Someone suggests Saddam Hussein. Unlikely. Things are going Saddam’s way right now. The sanctions against Iraq are withering, the oil embargo is leaking, and America’s grip on his throat is loosening. He’s keeping his head down. Why poke the Eagle? What the FUCK!!! Another plane crashes into the other tower!! I’m on the phone to L.A. to wake Fiona. Her voice calms me, but she’s still fast asleep as I shout down the phone.

  “OK, darling,” she soothes (she’s used to my political excitability). “Turning on the TV now…love you…bye.” I call Les in his room. He’s a late riser so I have to keep ringing. TURN! ON! YOUR! TV! RIGHT! NOW!

  Later, band and crew are gathered around the TV at the barn. The phone rings. Fiona asks, “Where’s Jordan?” A momentary warmth at the thought of my son, then: He’s on his way to New York…arriving at 5:30 A.M…. for a day of sightseeing!

  I�
��m calculating: off the plane with his bags by 6:30, on a bus to Manhattan by 7:00, getting him to his first site—the Twin Towers—by 8:30….

  Mercifully, the dull fear only has a couple of hours to build before Fiona calls again with news that the catastrophe missed my son by about ten blocks. His bus stopped when the first plane hit. He was walking toward the towers when they fell. Unbelievably, my nineteen-year-old thought to call home, even though it took him a couple of hours to get to a phone.

  But I digress, and so does Oysterhead. There will be no show in New York. We are glued to the TV like three hundred million other Americans, knowing that the world had suddenly shifted on its axis. Nothing will ever be the same. I fly home through deserted airports. I have the whole plane to myself and it’s the easiest day of travel in my life.

  A month goes by before we head for Seattle, where we resume our rehearsals. Then, once more, it’s showtime for Oysterhead. The first show is in a theater that has been sold-out for months, to Phish-heads of course, who have pretty much gobbled up the tickets for the whole tour.

  My brother Miles arrives during the sound check. He finds an empty chair in the wings and waves hello as we finish up. Later, I am reminded of Miles’s legendary status in show business when I hear some of the crew describing how Miles Copeland stormed into the hall, glared around the stage, yanked up a chair, and breathed fire upon passersby. A few weeks later I hear the story retold, only now the tale has Miles arriving with a gang of cutthroats, torching the stage, and eating the stage crew. I do love show business.