Playing instruments. What's that? For some rebellious teens in England, it was all eff Yes, give us The Sex Pistols.
Punk got big quickly, but for the public at large, it was a short trend. Yes, after the artsy pretensions of bands like ELP and Rick Wakeman (and I love those guys, but they did go to excess sometimes), there was a (probably much-needed) movement towards simpler, rawer, more aggressive music.
But after a year or two, people started noticing, "Hey! Most of this sucks!" So rock evolved again, and bands with actual musicians started taking some of the better parts of punk rock (like the raw energy), and using them to create music that was more sophisticated. (I know, I'm oversimplifying here. But the gist of what I'm saying is true.)
One of the better bands that did this was The Police. They blended punk with reggae and even a little jazz to form a tasty brew that was all their own. They formed in London in 1977, and released their first album, Outlando's d'Amour, in 1978. I first heard them shortly thereafter on WNEW-FM, and I liked them right away.
I'm sure the first Police song I heard was "Roxanne." It was something of phenomena - who can forget Eddie Murphy butchering it in his jail cell at the beginning of 48 Hrs.? And even though it's one of those songs that's been around so long I can't really hear it anymore (and I suspect neither can Sting), it is a great song. It's a classic story - boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, girl keeps on whoring around, literally "walk(ing) the streets for money," boy tries to sing her out of it.
But when I bought the LP, it was immediately apparent these guys were no one-hit wonders, as this first album also featured another pair of powerful singles, "Can't Stand Losing You," and "So Lonely."
The follow-up, Reggatta de Blanc (1979) was even better. "Message in a Bottle" was a huge hit in the U.S., and I liked it a lot, but the song that really grabbed me was "Walking on the Moon". I can remember laying in my bed in the dark, listening to this through headphones with closed eyes. By this time I was a young man of 22, floundering about, trying to figure out what I was going to do with my life, and the loneliness theme of both songs really hit me. And as an added treat, the LP also had a couple of other minor classics, "The Bed's Too Big Without You" and "Bring on the Night". In two albums, The Police had already put together a collection of singles that most bands would kill for.
I also had a special love for the title track, "Reggatta de Blanc." It's one of those songs that doesn't have any real lyrics, just Sting singing something that sounds like "Dee-oh, dee-oh, dee-oy-oh." At the time, I was mad about Fantasy Baseball, and my team was called The Hughes Deodorants. And in my mind, this was the theme song that played when my beloved Deos ran out to take the field. (I think he's actually singing, "E-oh, E-oh", but what the hell.)
Let me say a few things about The Police's sound - Sting is a very distinct vocalist. His high-pitched voice isn't necessarily for everyone - in fact, it can get pretty strident in his upper range. But it can be very beautiful, and it's certainly a very expressive voice. And while I could take or leave the little jazz flourishes in their music (and that's even more true about Sting's later solo stuff), I loooooved that infusion of reggae. And let's face it, for a three-piece outfit, these guys had a pretty full sound - these boys could all play their instruments. Add that to some top-notch songwriting that included way-above-average lyrics, and what was not to love?
Many people consider their third album, Zenyatta Mondatta to be their worst album (to the extent that they had a worst album), but for years if you'd have asked me, I'd have said it was their best. It's only within the last two or three years I've been forced to admit that wasn't true. But more about that later. The band themselves were a little disappointed by it. One of the big hits off of this one, "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" is a pleasant but relatively vacuous little number about inarticulateness. (And you can see it was kind of a callback to "Reggatta de Blanc".) But the one that really hit me was "Don't Stand So Close to Me." It's a whole little movie in and of itself, an anxious yet sensual tale of forbidden love. You can almost feel the singer's longing. (Sting being a former teacher, I suspect there was a touch of the autobiographical in this one.)
There were a number of other tracks on this album that I also liked, even though none of them were released as singles. These included "Man in a Suitcase", "Canary in a Coalmine", "Voices Inside My Head", and "Bombs Away". And "When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What's Still Around" also garnered a decent amount of airplay.
Ghost in the Machine (1981) was the one Police album I never fully warmed to, and I didn't buy a copy until years after it came out. In fairness, though, I seem to be in the minority about this, and there are certainly some gems here. These include "Spirits in the Material World" (and how many times did freaking Sting get to recycle that line about the umbrella?), "Secret Journey" and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic".
I never really got either "Demolition Man" or "Invisible Sun", though.
Unfortunately, after this, the band got so big that tensions were inevitable. Sting took up acting, appearing in films like Brimstone and Treacle and that godawful David Lynch version of Dune. (I usually love David Lynch, but this film was hot garbage.) Andy Summers cut a really good album with King Crimson's Robert Fripp. Stewart Copeland wrote a very successful movie score for the film Rumble Fish. And the heads were getting too damned big to all fit in one band.
So what did they do on their inevitable way out the door as an ongoing project? The bastards put together what in retrospect I've come to realize was the best album of 1980's - 1983's Synchronicity.
Holy shit, is this an album! It's got singles ("Every Breath You Take", "Wrapped Around Your Finger", "King of Pain"), it's got depth (the two parts of "Synchronicity", especially "Synchronicity II". Yeah, I know that was also released as a single - leave me alone, I'm riffing here.) It's got underappreciated little gems ("Tea in the Sahara", "Murder By Numbers", "Miss Gradenko"). It's even got mania ("Mother"). I loved this LP from the beginning, and I think the only thing that really kept me from appreciating just how great it truly is for many years is that I was just so attached to Zenyatta Mondatta that I couldn't admit to myself that the band had made an even better album than that one.
So the boys went on tour, and by the time the tour was over, they were proclaimed the "The biggest rock band in the world" by many critics, a sentiment with which I agreed.
Sadly, they broke up after that.
It didn't happen right away. They went on hiatus. Sting made his first solo album. Summers made another album with Fripp. Copeland wrote another film score. In 1986, they tried to get back together to record a sixth album. But the only thing that came out of it was "Don't Stand So Close to Me '86", and by then, they were probably singing this each other. (Actually, Copeland broke his collarbone and couldn't play the drums. But the sentiment of the song was true - they pretty much couldn't stand being near one another any longer.)
And me, like an idiot, just assumed they'd always be around. So I never saw them live.
Andy Summers had a long career after that. He recorded a bunch of solo albums, the last in 2017. I have to admit, I've never listened to any of them, and I didn't listen to any prior to this write-up, because I didn't want to listen to stuff freaking forever, I wanted to start writing. I do love those two albums he made with Robert Fripp, though, especially the first one, I Advance Masked (1982).
Stewart Copeland has had probably an even more storied post-Police career than Summers. He's become known for writing the scores of for various films, television shows and video games. When my wife and I adopted our two children, one of the shows my daughter and I bonded over was Dead Like Me. It's about a young woman who is accidentally killed when the toilet from the disintegrating Mir space station crashes down on her during her lunch break on the first day of a temp job, and she becomes a grim reaper. I always liked the score from that show. It's one of Copeland's.
As for Sting, we all know what happened to him. He became a megastar, releasing a series of hit albums. I've mostly liked his solo work, except for some of the jazzier stuff or the songs where he lets his voice get all high and strident ("If you looooooove somebody, If you loooooooooooovvve someone, set them free!", or "If I ever loooooze my faith in you!")
He's written and recorded some truly beautiful ballads ("Fields of Gold", "When We Dance", "Shape of My Heart"), created some great jazzy little ditties ("Englishman in New York," "Fragile", "Moon Over Bourbon Street", "Seven Days"), and released some very Police-sounding anthems ("Fortress Around Your Heart," "The Russians", "We Work the Black Seam") .
He's also experimented with Arabic music ("Desert Rose") and country music ("I Hung My Head", "Fill Her Up"), recorded an album of 16th Century British folk music (Songs From the Labyrinth (2006)), recorded an album of old Christmas folk songs and madrigals (If on a Winter's Night ... (2009)), written and performed in a Broadway musical (The Last Ship (2014)) and gone back to his reggae roots with an LP on which he collaborated with the reggae singer Shaggy (44/876 (2018)). Not everything he's done has been a winner, but overall, he's had many more successes than failures. (And although it didn't have a long run on Broadway, Denise and I did get to catch The Last Ship before it closed. Yeah, the story was kind of dumb, but Sting's score was pretty sublime.)
When Denise and I first together, it soon became apparent that if Sting ever came a-callin', she'd be dumping my sorry butt in a hot minute. She not only loved his music, she loved him. She and I saw him live on a number of occasions, and at a variety of venues (including Jones Beach more than once). She used to get mad at me when I'd tell her that I thought Sting was kind of a jerk for not agreeing to a Police reunion to toss those other two guys a payday. But I meant it. Yeah, they were doing OK, but he was jetting around the world, saving the seals and all that. Why not give Summers and Copeland one last shot at some real buckos?
So in 2007, I finally got my wish. The Police reunited for one last tour, and Denise and I got to see them live at Jones Beach. (Even though unlike me, she was smart enough to have also seen them in their heyday.) No, it wasn't the same as if I'd caught them on that Synchronicity tour, but it was still pretty great. Will The Police ever reunite again? Who cares, they're all geezed out now! Seriously, I don't really need for them to do it, but if they did, I'd certainly pay attention.
So that's my write-up about The Police. In the end, they only released five little studios albums, but they made them count. Summers and Copeland, and especially Sting, have all added to the legacy of the band with the things they've done since that original breakup. But in the end, as much as I like Sting's solo stuff, he wouldn't have made the My Favorite Artists list by himself. His work has been artful, often subtle, and far-reaching. But The Police as a band were far punchier, and for a time, they truly deserved the title of "The Biggest Rock Band in the World".
Next Up: I'm excited to start my listening soon in preparation for the next article in this series, which should be up in three months or so. I'm not telling you who it's about. (Pause). Ok, you twisted my arm. It's Blondie! See ya then.
