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

by Stewart Copeland

  It’s perfect. My hair is standing on end. But we’re just getting started. Andy is mounting the stage and is still walking when he hits the opening riff to “Message in a Bottle.” The shriek of the crowd goes up an octave. Andy has them by the throat. I stride manfully to my drums. The room is already throbbing in time with the guitar riff, but I can just add a little four-on-the-floor with my bass drum to focus the twenty thousand pairs of feet into a stomping pulse that will surely weaken the structure of the building…and then, CRACK!

  And Sting is on the mic. Sting is in the house!

  “Just a cast—” he begins….

  “AWAY!…AN ISLAND LOST AT SEA-OH!” scream the tumult of voices as if their lives depend on it.

  It’s perfect. We are the mighty Police and for the next two hours we are going to play our music as if our lives depend on it. We are The Police and we are back!

  “Message” is the perfect way into our show. The song is like a diamond. It has resisted all our attempts to resculpt it, so we’ve been playing it in almost exactly this form through four months of rehearsal. The response from the audience is perfect. They may have been wondering, When are they going to play “Message”? and the answer is: Right Now.

  In the front row heads are bobbing, arms are waving, and there are a few people who are sobbing. I’m pretty excited, too.

  Sting is at the helm like the Flying Dutchman, with his 1957 Fender Precision outthrust and his voice gliding over the waves of singing people. Over on my left Andy is an orchestra of sound. He has the most detailed job in the band. While my sweat comes from physical labor and Sting’s comes from emotional commitment, Andy sweats over some of the most complex guitar parts in show business.

  “Message” pays off with a tight little turnaround at the end and a solid thump so the crowd knows we’re done. But we’re not done; we’re straight into “Synchronicity II.” Once again Andy starts us off, this time with a vaguely familiar fragment of a familiar riff and then we kick into Sting’s tribal yell, and we’re blazing away in another heavy one. It’s going well; for the first time this tour I actually remember the push into the second verse that we’ve rehearsed a hundred times. Andy looks surprised, the rotter!

  On stage right, the Lion of Judah is on the prowl. Sting has so much physical energy that any instrument less robust than a bass would crumple in his hands when he plays this kind of music. All of that power goes into those four heavy bass strings that lay the rhythmic and harmonic foundations of our music.

  At the end of the chorus, going into the guitar solo, it’s all so damned exciting that I loose the hounds before Sting has finished his song. He whips around from his mic and comes charging up to me full of fire and brimstone. For a moment I’m raising the shield because Captain Queeg is coming for me. But he’s not glaring at me personally tonight.

  He’s on a new bass riff that has just popped into his hands, a kind of an upside-down version of what he’s supposed to be playing. I like it when this happens. He kicks off from the drum riser and then goes to harass the front rows while Andy rips up his solo.

  And so it goes, for song after song. We have an almost perfect mix of well-greased moments and seat-of the-pants challenges to keep us alert as the waves of passion from the heaving crowd sweep over us. Some of the time we’re so on target that we throw one another little curve balls and trick shots. Other times we’re skating with urgent concentration through thinly rehearsed recent music changes.

  Both of my buddies have new tricks. Andy used to obsess with Sting over the parts so much that he hardly soloed in the old days. He’s burning it up now. He has a command of his instrument that allows him to develop his classic parts into abstractions that catch fire as searing wild lead lines. Old-school blazing guitar. And then he snaps back into the delicate and precise fingering of classic Police arpeggio ostinatos (“Message,” “Every Breath,” “Magic,” etc.). And it’s not just his fingers that change gears. At his feet is an array of guitar sound gadgets. Like Fred Astaire, Andy dances on his pedals, switching textures with huge contrast as the band powers through the sections of the songs.

  And yes, there are many unintended departures from the plan (behind locked doors we call them mistakes), but the trick is to make them work. We have an epoch of stagecraft experience between us and we could write the encyclopedia of swaggering through mistakes. That’s the great thing about music. If you played it, it’s correct. The worst musical train wreck hurts absolutely no one. It’s all part of the show. In fact it’s how we get to the great stuff. There is no penalty for skating on the edge or throwing ourselves off the cliff. So we do.

  I’m told that our set runs over two hours. It seems to me like twenty minutes have gone by before we’re at “Roxanne.” This song is the easiest/hardest, simplest/most complicated in our oeuvre. It is our own curse of Macbeth. All three of us have equally besmirched form cards on this one, and tonight it’s my turn. After the first bridge, I go to the chorus instead of the next verse. Since this has happened so often over the decades at this spot in this song, the solution is an extra flourish that snaps right off and the moment is cured while Andy and Sting share a smirk. Songs of this caliber are bulletproof.

  Cool thing is, when you miss a shot, you get all fired up with renewed commitment. You play your way out of a hole. So when we get to the jam, I’m full of a homicidal rage and go hurtling off the chorus riff into outer space. This is when I really experience the thrill of this band. I’m with two players who can ride anything. They know I’m a little excitable and are now dusting off their years of experience with my tantrums. They are well armed for dealing with the clattering tirade coming from the drum riser. Sting rides the surge for a while, occasionally pouring fuel into the flames, and he then goes into some call-and-response with the crowd. That always shuts me up because I like to hear the folks singing. A big crowd in a big space, singing a big tune, is worth stepping aside for, so…BOMP! I stop dead, and the audience can hear itself. The folks are responding to their own power, and rising with Sting’s exhortations.

  Roxaaaaaahnnooooooooooooohhhhh!

  We have done our work. The room is alive with its own swelling momentum. The joint is rocking and we can dance along silently while the good folks carry the rhythm and the tune up through the roof. The front row is foaming with the babes who were sixteen back in the day and are now forty-something. They look great! As they pulsate to the mating dance of our species and ogle Sting, their husbands are behind them with happy faces because they know that they are going to score tonight. Aahhh…we’re hardwired for music and this is what it’s for.

  Well, the next half hour is what all of us musicians live for. When you come back onstage for the encores the body has caught up with the mind and there is a different atmosphere to the rest of the show. Even though the ritual audience/band etiquette guarantees that the encores are fully included in the ticket price, there is a just-for-fun casual joy in the “extra” music. This is when we really own every moment of every bar. We have fought the waves, climbed the mountains, and now it’s all ride.

  When there are no more songs to play, I climb off of the drums and go to the front of the stage for the corny traditional band bow. I take out my in-ear monitors and am bowled over by the volume of the howling cheers. It’s hard to be at the focal point of so much joy and not lapse into goofy body language. Hard to imagine a more ideal moment, really. Can’t say I can think of a more euphoric circumstance for a musician.

  Well, thank you!

  It’s getting better with every show.

  Much more like it…

  Copyright © 2009 Jeff Kravitz / Getty Images

  CHAPTER 33

  MALIBU

  JUNE 2007

  “Let’s get a male choir….”

  W

  e’re staring out to sea, the three of us, with Kathy Schenker intently examining the wooden deck beneath us. Behind us is a chamber full of singers and some worried-looking executives. This ain’t work
ing. I had high hopes, but now I’m shaking my head. Sometimes in art things aren’t as obvious as they ought to be. The idea of texturing the proposed Unplugged MTV deal with a choir of male voices grabbed me immediately, but as Jordan asked me later, what did I think they were going to sound like? “This is the only thing that has excited me, that has got me thinking,” says the gravelly voice. “If not this, then maybe nothing at all.”

  A little eye contact with Andy has confirmed that we both are thinking that “nothing at all” is looking like a better option. This is a shark that we are reluctant to jump.

  I long to just get on the piano, ask Andy to help me out—tell me how many sharps we’re working, and build some modal textures that would take us closer to Barber and away from Streisand. But I haven’t got the nerve. It would be like one of the crew leaping forward with a suggestion. After decades of being the boss of everything in music I’m back in this movie, in which it’s just not my role.

  Much more strange is the abdication of the leader whom we’re here to serve. The reason that I’m content with my role as noisemaker is that my buddies have it covered. Sting’s pretty good at this stuff, Andy, too, but he’s just sitting there while a genial professional arranger is painting fey stuff over our music.

  The singers are an extremely tight choir. Even these milquetoast charts have them individually singing oblique lines. They are right on the money, so none of this is their fault and we’re trying to give them a good vibe—but we’re not a Broadway musical. Jordan and his fiancée, Ami, are filming everything, but this is one scene that probably won’t make it in to the documentary.

  As usually happens when danders are raised, ultimatums are made, and Danubes are crossed, life in The Police becomes suddenly bearable. As the sun follows the rain, love follows the hatchets. Sting and I lack emotional stamina; we lose our taste for righteous anger within the hour. Andy exacts a higher price. Piss him off and he goes dark for days. Today he’s happy, though, and we’re soon chuckling at his dry wit as we finish the session. The mighty Police sounding like a wedding band for Freddie Mercury is actually pretty damned funny. These two eight-hundred-pound gorillas of mine can be vexatious at times, but it’s never boring in this band.

  CHAPTER 34

  HOW BIG IS MY AMP!

  JUNE 2007

  How heavy is my truck!

  The Police is an army on tour. 100+ trucks and eleven crew buses. At the heart of all of this is the team of Billy, Phil, and Brad, whose job is to herd Sting, Andy, and me, respectively, in and out of our hotels, on and off the band jet, and to and from the gigs. There is a huge industrial complex for whom the staff must deliver the three “principals”—in mental and physical working order—to the stage.

  O

  K, everybody, switch to show channel number 16.” Dug’s voice is squawking out of Brad’s unit. While I wrap my fingers down in my room, the army of Police crew are swinging into gear. Fiction Plane has just finished their set; it’s time to clear their gear off the stage and rig for the main event.

  There are two bands on tour but just the one giant stage. Within the horde are actually several crews. Way out there, probably asleep right now, are the truckers and drivers. After they drop off the gear and crew, they hit the sack. They’ll wake up again when it’s all over, and then load back up and drive through the night. When we arrive at a gig in the afternoon we pass though acres of parked sixteen-wheelers and tour buses. Man we are large!

  Big Mike at far right.

  photograph courtesy of John Huddleston

  Mostly the trucks are full of steel. The stage shell is made out of thousands of bars and clamps. There are several buses just to carry the swarm of unnamed riggers. We hardly ever see these guys; their work is done long before we arrive.

  Our arena stage is an oval plateau, upon which we strut with our two amps and drum set. It’s actually a living, breathing mechanism, a separate animal from the lighting and video towers. The huge structure that looms over the field is a shell into which our stage fits. They actually build it separately and roll it into position.

  Above deck is the world of music, lights, and joy; belowdecks, our Nibelungen toil. With only three of us in the band, we’re kind of shorthanded when it comes to switching sounds or instruments. Each one of us requires maintenance during the show. Our principal crew—Jeff Seitz, Danny Quatrochi, and Dennis Smith—have been with us since back in the day. It’s like a submarine down there, with about a dozen crew inside the stage operating the lifts, monitors, video cameras, and blinking technology.

  Sting’s hatch.

  Copyright © 2009 Kevin Williams

  Deep in my casbah of pipe and drape I can hear the increased bustle in the halls outside. Even though we do this every day, we have to do it right. From this moment until midnight, when the trucks are rolling away with our tents and camels, every move by every member of the show crew is tightly choreographed, including us three musicians.

  By now I’ve got my armor on and my blood circulating. Jeff pokes his head in for drum report, Ian checks the batteries on my radio packs, Karen Nicholson runs a lint brush over my black threads.

  The units squawk. “We are…Ready On Deck.”

  “Thank you, Dug,” squawks Billy.

  If Billy has done his job today, by planes, trains, and automobiles the band has arrived at this moment ready to dance, happy, inspired, rested, healed, coddled, and generally all shined up for public display. Charlie Hernandez and his army get the gear into position; Billy Francis and his staff get the band to the gear.

  “Phil, Brad, walking in five.”

  Down the hall in two further casbahs are my bandmates, each of them completing their preshow rituals. In my case these are mostly concerned with the physical component of my work. I have to hit the stage running. So I’m prowling in circles swinging my arms like Tarzan until Brad gives me the nod. Then I lurch out of my lair and into the white concrete hallways. We’re walking. Each band member has a posse of staff and crew. We converge in the cavernous loading bay, just out of view of the stadium field. It’s kind of industrial back here, but just beyond those curtains are the tens of thousands of the multitude. The stage is set and waiting.

  With the three of us convened, Charlie starts the show. “Roll Bob,” he commands.

  The towering sound system that has been tinkling nicely as the stadium filled up during the evening now roars to life with Bob Marley’s “Get Up Stand Up.”

  Everybody in our crew is heartily sick of this classic track after hearing it at the start of every show, but we’re all synchronized to it. It’s our countdown.

  As the Wailers wail, we’re plugging into the closed audio environment of our earplug monitors. The crew are running audio through our headsets, checking that we can hear each other. The guitar and bass are being strapped to their masters and the signal from each instrument is being checked (again).

  At a moment of Charlie’s choosing, we are summoned to the stage. We start across the field, guided by a thicket of flashlights, which are visible from some areas of the stadium. It’s very quiet in our earplugged world, but we can feel the voodoo rising. Eighty thousand souls are welling up around us.

  We dart into the stage, and the black curtains close behind us. We’re now in the belly of the beast. Our stage appears to be a flat oval dish, but behind the drums, it slopes up slightly. This rise is achieved with very shallow steps that create a kind of duck blind, through which the crew can watch the action. Right now we are down in there, peering out at the audience. It’s huge and expectant.

  Andy is about ten feet away, on the other side of the submerged percussion riser. He’s at the foot of the short stairway up to his hatch. Sting is next to me preparing to go up my stairs through my hatch. His is over on stage right but he uses this one at the show open. We take turns exchanging ritual gestures and invocations with Jeff, whose station is close by. Pressed into a notch in the gear, trying to take up as little space as possible is a video cable
grip, an Asian woman whom I never see except at this time of day, every working day. We exchange the same formal bow that precedes every show.

  The Marley track starts to fade. Charlie, Dug, and Chris are assembled behind the percussion riser. They regard me with exaggerated indulgent invitation. I eagerly join them and we form a circle around a specific spot on the deck. Same spot every night. The three crew bosses are holding flashlights in the dark.

  Jeff in the duck blinds

  Copyright © 2009 Kevin Williams

  “Kill house lights!” barks Charlie. There has been a rising thrum from the multitude out there, but now there’s an explosion as the giant klieg lights around the stadium go dark. The flashlights are focused on the spot.