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

by Stewart Copeland

  It’s been twenty years since I’ve had to put up with this, so maybe I’m a little stuffy and cranky, but his obsessive creativity has evolved into a monster. He hasn’t heard the umpire’s whistle in thirty years. Back in the day we clashed, but the struggle made us better. There was a mutual respect that fueled the debate and we always ended up with a result that we were all proud of. This isn’t that.

  The great musical mind that brought so much joy into our lives has veered off into a style that confounds me. Maybe our prophet is onto something that will surprise the world—starting with us. It’s always worth listening to Stingo, he’s had at least of couple of good ideas in his time. That’s why I’ve been listening all day. But now he can shut the fuck up.

  He does know when to stop though—right at the moment before we hit Code C. The threshold is way past my comfort zone, but I’m sure he can hear my silvery little bell, too. It’s the sound that you hear in a Hitchcock film just before something very bad happens. Right at the moment when my hackles are up, my knuckles are swelling with murderous desire, and a feral snarl is rising up my gorge, he swings away and the heat is off. We coast blankly until the end of the day. Sometimes the back of his head is better than the front.

  CHAPTER 28

  EBERHARD SETS US FREE

  1978

  GERMANY

  Flashback: We found our band sound almost by accident.

  O

  K…. Komplete Dunkel!” commands Eberhard Schoener, eminent composer and conceptualist. The giant aircraft hangar–sized soundstage falls dark. Andy, Sting, and I are three hired guns, ready at our stations. Andy, the triple-scale alpha session guitarist, has managed to get Sting and me hired as bass and drums on this fat German tour. There are other players and performers around us in the shadows. Above our heads, on a giant screen, brilliant geometric shapes begin to flicker and dance. It’s this new thing called Laserium. I start up a tickling hi-hat thing and my companions kick into gear. Starting with little stabs and thrusts, a rhythm starts to build. Inspired by the dazzling display above us, we gather momentum and soon are flying down the groove. We’ve never played like this before. Back in London we have our own band but it’s constrained by punk dogma. In our own band we abhor sophistication or anything comfortable or introspective. London rules are very strict.

  But we are flying now. Eberhard, like Francis Coppola, values instinct above all in his players. After explaining his dramatic needs for the opening of the show he cuts us loose. There aren’t any London cognoscenti in earshot so we get grooving in ways that would kill us back home. We’re actually pleasantly surprised by ourselves. After the discipline of the punk straitjacket, we’re concise in our playing; but now we’re free to blow like the wind. When I first met Andy I valued him for his edgy command of the riffs, but now he’s coming out with stuff that has Sting and me lit up like a laser show.

  Olaf Kübler leans into his saxophone with a sound that we had forgotten existed. The German players are old-school, which is to say that they play with sophistication and depth. We look a little strange among them with our spiky white hair and hostile attire, but they are all over our groove. With Olaf we surge to a raging gallop at a tempo that astonishes everyone, and then fall back to a canter. This, unfortunately, is the lame part.

  The “jazz” element to our ensemble is represented at one extreme by Olaf, all smoke-filled soul, and at the other by this young American jazz singer. The most jazz thing about her is the attitude. Perfectly nice girl offstage, when she gets on the mic she slouches into a jazz pout and sings out of tune—and likes it that way. She’s the official singer of the tour.

  Still, we do our best to support her turn in the focal point. She conjures up an arty attitude with her jazz babbling, and then we all decrescendo gradually down to a whispering thread of rhythm and mysterious lights. At a signal from Eberhard, stationed at his keyboards, we hit the end of the line, and there is a sudden silence in the dunkel.

  Lights go up; the promoter and his guests are applauding wildly. The big room is echoing with their cheers. We’re looking at one another in amazement. We’ve never heard anything like that before. Did we just play that?

  Eberhard shoos off the guests and we get back to work with some urgency. We’re creating a show that involves as many disparate elements as Eberhard can assemble. Every time we start to make some progress, the promoter arrives with sponsors or journalists or TV crews. And then it’s “OK…Komplete Dunkel!” and we play the opening tune again, which gets more and more amazing each time we play it. Problem is, the first show is coming up and we haven’t gotten as far as rehearsing the end of the set. Our leader has verbally walked us down the length of his concept and we have actually worked up some terrific stuff, but we’re not at the finish line.

  The tour begins and the first sound check is when we finally get to address the finale—or we are intending to, but there are all kinds of technical problems for the sound crew to deal with. By the time the stage is clear for us to work, it’s time for the doors to open. It’s showtime, but our finale is just something that we’ve only talked about. Never mind….

  This time, when we start up the show with our well-honed opening ride, there is an audience, which provides a whole new propulsion. When we get to Olaf’s solo the train is screaming down the tracks at four hundred miles per hour and he soars, incandescent overhead. Even the lame jazz chick almost doesn’t suck. And then, when she is spent, something unexpected happens.

  One long, clear note of golden purity rises in the eastern sky. It’s a man’s voice of such power and beauty that every heart is breaking as it rises up, pauses, sucking in the concentration of emotion, and surges through the entire evening of sound and light.

  On the dark stage beside him, under the laser-lit galaxies, Andy and I are hearing for the first time the sound that is going to take us to the promised land. Right before our eyes, our prophet ignites, lighting up our future with a keening wail of intense beauty. Every heart will be broken….

  CHAPTER 29

  A MIGHTY WIND IN THE MAGIC STINGDOM

  MAY 2007

  After a murderous day and a baronial dinner at the Palazzo….

  …d

  isbelief spreads across his face and he looks helplessly at Andy before dissolving into wild laughter. “Rox-ha-ha-ha-an-an! You don’t have to…”

  But it’s all over. Andy still has the riff going, but we’ve lost Sting. He’s gasping for mercy, leaning forward, agape, as I murder the bass line to his classic song. Every wrong note that I hit on his 1955 Fender Precision bass sinks him deeper and he’s howling.

  “You know my…”

  Wrong note

  “Is made up…”

  Wrong note

  “So put away…”

  Wrong note

  We are at the foot of a huge staircase that sweeps up into the dark. Scattered around us is a collection of stringed instruments. It’s a baronial hall with stone walls, and the sound that we make wells up around us.

  This whole bass thing is his idea. Andy and Sting have taken to pulling out acoustic guitars after dinner and most nights we end up here in the stairwell sounding like The New Seekers crossed with The Gypsy Kings. It’s actually kind of impressive to hear them dueling away with the twanging strings reverberating off the ancient walls. Couple of frustrated Manitas de Platas, the pair of them, blazing away there by candlelight.

  To stop me from going to grab some bongos, Sting put this venerable antique bass into my hand. Andy shouts out key changes to me and the two of them are head-to-head, exchanging phrases and trying to extravagantly outnoodle each other. I plod along on the bass, mostly keeping up, except for this verse in “Roxanne.”

  I’m a little giddy about my promotion to bass player in the band. Of course it’s just a power grab by Sting, who wants to upgrade to six strings, but I’m happy because now that my new instrument produces actual pitched notes (as opposed to the banging and clattering of my previous rank) it
makes me officially one of the musicians. I can join the huddle. The best part is that the notes on a bass are so low that it doesn’t really matter what notes you hit—except to Sting, whom I can now demolish with hearty wrongness on his own axe. And then Andy pulls out an…

  CHAPTER 30

  THE DISASTER GIG

  MAY 2007

  This is the blog posting that everyone took too seriously and which got me into trouble with my band. In hindsight, some of the language is unfortunate, but I swear I was chuckling fondly as I wrote it.

  M

  r. Copeland, at your leisure,” says Charlie, the tour production director, as two crew members hold aside the giant gong, creating just enough space for me to slither onto my percussion stage, which is down in its pit. I leap on board, but my foot catches something and I sprawl into the arena in a jumble as the little stage starts to rise into view. Never mind. The audience is screaming with anticipation as I collect myself in the dark and start to warm up the gong with a few gentle taps. But I’m overdoing it. It’s resonating and reaching its crescendo before the stage has fully reached its position. Sort of like a premature ejaculation. There’s nothing for it so I take a big swing for the big hit. Problem is, I’m just fractionally too far away and the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib. Never mind. I stride manfully to my drums. Andy has started the opening guitar riff to “Message in a Bottle” and the crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting and he’s not much help—his cue is me, and I’m lost. Never mind. Crack! on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four—so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho.

  Photograph courtesy of Dietmar Clös

  Well, we are professionals so we soon get sorted, but the groove is eluding us. We crash through “Message” and then go straight into “Synchronicity.” But there is something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cutoff hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve liftoff. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never mind. Next song is going to be great….

  But it isn’t. We get to the end of the first verse and I snap into the chorus groove—and Sting doesn’t. He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off-kilter that Sting counts us in to begin the song again. This is unbelievably lame. We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.

  And so it goes, for song after song. All I can think about is how Dietmar is going to string us up. In rehearsal this afternoon we changed the keys of “Every Little Thing” and “Don’t Stand So Close,” so, needless to say, Andy and Sting are now onstage in front of twenty thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both tunes. Lost, lost, lost. I also changed my part for “Don’t Stand” and it’s actually working quite well, but there is a dissonant noise coming from my two colleagues. In “Walking/ Footsteps,” I worked out a cool rhythm change for the rockabilly guitar solo, but now I make a complete hash of it by playing it in the wrong part of the song. It’s not sounding so cool.

  It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we’re The Police, so we are a little ahead of schedule. It’s only the second show (not counting the fan gig—four thousand people doesn’t count as a gig in The Police scale of things).

  When we meet up backstage for the first time after the set and before the encores, we fall into one another’s arms laughing hysterically. Above our heads, the crowd is making so much noise that we can’t talk. We just shake our heads ruefully and head back up the stairs to the stage. Funny thing is, we are enjoying ourselves anyway. Screw it, it’s only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it’s time to get out of Vancouver.

  CHAPTER 31

  ANGRY IN EDMONTON

  JUNE 2007

  A couple of days later.

  I

  ’m storming around my dressing room and I’m very angry. At myself, at the world, and at my band. I haven’t been this kind of angry in twenty years. I’m angry at my band because they’re angry at me. For one thing, they didn’t love my blog posting. They probably haven’t even read it, but they’ve heard the clamor. Apart from a couple of regrettable choices of word it was a cheerful little glimpse behind the curtain for the few denizens of my tiny Web site. I don’t even know how that crafty AP reporter even found the piece on my site, but he wasn’t shy about adding a few pejoratives and turning it into headline news. DRUMMER PANS HIS OWN GROUP! may not seem like much of a banner, so it must have been a very slow news day. Suddenly all the happy news about the big heroic comeback band gets a new round of attention as dirt, and I’m in the doghouse again.

  This all broke out yesterday in Vancouver, about an hour before lobby call for the flight to Edmonton. My profuse apologies to the band were grudgingly accepted, but the atmosphere in the van to the jet was cold and nervous.

  It should have been glorious. The first shows in Vancouver had been a smash. All the reviews were good (except mine) and this was the first day of actual touring. Our first ride on the band jet. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, but The Police was a cold dark cavern. Three grumpy millionaires in a bus. I’m expecting an ambush.

  Sound check is hideous. Any other band would be swaggering around our cool new stage, enjoying the big Tonka toys. The stadium rig really is quite spectacular. It’s a huge set that wraps around our arena rig—which is already verrry fly. The colossal scale of the stage, screens, lights, and amplification would normally gladden the heart of any performer. Right at the heart of this behemoth is us, with our back line. Two amps and a drum set. We get to play right in the focal point of all this technology. We are the eye of the storm.

  But our hearts are not glad and we’re not swaggering. There is a layer of cold dank hostility on the stage. We run through some songs. The Police riffs rattle around the empty stadium as each of us selects an area of empty sky to glare at. All the crew is hunkered down. Almost all of the crew. Billy Francis, our tour manager and chief of staff from back in the day, is smirking wickedly. He knows that band brawls fuel the hottest shows. He and Brad will be snickering about this later.

  Big Mike Keating, who runs the front-of-house sound, gives us a wave from way down at his end of the stadium and sound check is over. I can withdraw to my own sanctuary, to the quiet of my own opulent dressing room.

  This is all so alien to me. It’s still very early in the tour and there is a lot of preshow tension to deal with, but I’ve only ever felt this way in this band. I’m the problem—the weak link. Just a few months ago I was a happy patriarch, but now in this band I’m nothing, no one. They are muttering darkly to one another about me. As I sweat in my room I’m exaggerating everything to myself, replaying the tapes of our band discourse, attaching sinister significance to every word, gesture, and glance. Then Brad gets a message on his unit. Band meeting at eight. Oh great.

  Copyright © 2009 Danny Clinch / A&M Records

  After twenty years of a good life, rich with family, laughter, and accomplishment, I’m back here again. Back here again! I glower around the room with its silk drapes and mood lighting. There is an army of wardrobe assistants, chefs, therapists, ambience coordinators, and talent wranglers deployed right now to coddle every moment between now and showtime. There is another army of crew, with eighty trucks’ worth of gear assembled to project my show. OK, I get it. Maybe I’m worth a little more than nothing.

  When did I ever look to Sting or Andy for adoration or support? In this band we torture one another. We poke and prod. When Sting sears the masses with his yearning melodies, his pain is real.

  Now I’m prowling and stretching
. After snarling down an ambush by my playmates, I’m going to walk out there on that big stage with two giant musicians to face forty thousand emotional Police fans and burn every calorie of energy that I possess. When I was a kid this band was all that I knew. It could crush me. But now I know better.

  CHAPTER 32

  CONQUERING HEROES

  INSIDE THE EXPLOSION

  JUNE 2007

  A week or two goes by. Every show is different.

  M

  r. Copeland, at your leisure,” says Charlie Hernandez, the tour production director. The two guys holding aside the giant gong are smirking wickedly. It has been our running gag of the tour that I’m liable to trip on my way up to the little percussion stage as it rises from its pit into the arena. Tonight I’m lithe as a leopard as I leap aboard and a shriek goes up from the closest seats behind the stage. In the darkened arena there is an ocean of anticipation, but right behind the stage there are thirty or forty people who can see me and they know, before everyone else does, that the show is starting. “Stewwwaaaaaarrrt!!!” they are shouting wildly as I begin to warm up the huge gong. This thing is so huge that even as it begins to rumble my innards are vibrating. The deep sound is filling the arena; the roar of the audience is deafening on every frequency, washing over the people behind the stage. My arm goes back for a full swing. Twenty years of waiting for this moment has pumped so much energy into my shoulder that the heavy mallet is propelled like the hammer of Thor into the heart of the gong. WHHHOOOOOMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!