Bad Cops: Sting vs. The Police

In the 1980s, the biggest rock band in the world was The Police. While all three members were blonde and good-looking, they were hardly a conventional success story. The Police was a supposed punk band composed of a prog-rock drummer, a jazzy bassist, and a guitarist who was pushing 40. But their unique chemistry (as well as Sting's trove of catchy pop songs) made them among the first acts to really break out during the MTV era. As they gained in popularity, however, they also grew to despise each other more and more, especially as Sting sought to take complete control of the band. As a result, they became the rare band to break up at the height of their popularity, though the members would remain frenemies for years afterward.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Rivals as a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone,
and welcome to Rivals, the show about music beefs and
feuds and long simmering resentments between musicians. I'm Steve and

(00:21):
I'm Jordan, and today we're gonna talk about one of
the biggest bands of the eighties, The Police. They burned
hot and fast for just a few years before coming
to an abrupt and weirdly civil and given the epic
and sometimes physical fights in the studio and on the road,
it's pretty amazing how friendly they've all remained over the years.
It is amazing because when I think about the Police,

(00:41):
I usually just think about them hating each other, especially
Sting and Stewart Copeland. You have the two biggest personalities
in the band, and then you have Andy Summers in
the middle, whose greatest talent was knowing when to stay
out of the way of the other guys in the band. Yeah,
the three members of the Police came from wildly different
backgrounds and they had wildly different personalities, and this would
account for the band's distinctive sound and also for the

(01:02):
fact that the band was vollatles hell pretty much from
the start. And I think it's important to note that
these were not like school friends coming together. These were
all fairly established players, especially Andy Summers, who was already
in like his mid thirties and a veteran of like
the mid sixties blues beat scene. So they formed not
out of friendship, but out of a shared talent and ambition.
And when these ambitions started to diversify, that's when the

(01:24):
problems began. And this happened pretty much immediately and in retrospect,
the Police were born to implode. An Exting later said,
we didn't have a great deal in common. We were
of different generations in Andy's case, and weld together by
a flag of convenience. And Stewart Copeland was even more blunt.
He said, we were attached at the wallet. And yet
when these three guys came together, they really did form

(01:46):
I think, a unique band in rock history. I mean,
they were a trio, but they weren't really a power
trio per se. I mean, usually in rock trios the
guitarists as the leader, but in the Police, the rhythm
section took the lead while the guitarist provided musical eating
and that reflected the pecking order of egos in the band.
You know, Sting and Stewart Copeland. They demanded a lot
of sonic real estate. Well Andy Summers was able to

(02:09):
accommodate that, and somehow you put all these different elements
together and it worked and they became just an incredibly
successful pop rock band. So I'm excited to explore how
this happened. So without further ado, let's get into this mess.
In the beginning, it was Stuart Copeland's band. I cannot
stress that enough. That's the theme we're gonna come back

(02:31):
to over and over again in this episode. He was
the worldly son of a CIA agent and he lived
all throughout the Middle East before settling in London in
the mid seventies, where he was drumming in a cult
favorite prog rock group called Curved Air. One of the
great prog rock names right there, Curved Air, I love that.
What does that even mean? I don't know. I mean,
I keep thinking of like the Grateful Dead, like heavy

(02:52):
air thing. I I can't figure it out. But he
played with them for about two years before punk started
to dominate the British music scene, and he was intrigued
by this, you know, unbridled passion and vitality of the genre.
Which was so at odds with his really schooled musical background.
And he also was looking to achieve some degree of
musical success which he wasn't getting through curved Air. So

(03:13):
he decided to form what he called a guerrilla band,
which is like a stripped downside project to play this
rough and ready rock and roll. And he had an
idea of who he wanted for a singer. Yes, and
that's where Sting enters the picture. But before we talk
about this thing, I just want to say quickly like
I love Stewart Copeland. I love him as a drummer.
I love his interviews. He has this like incredible energy

(03:33):
to him where I think he's a really funny guy,
but there's like always this like weirdly like angry edge
to him, I think, especially when he's talking about Sting
that kind of scary. Yeah it is. It's very magnetic
and great and it definitely powers his drumming because his
drumming is also very energetic and polyrhythmic, and uh ended
up being a huge, I think element of the Police sound.

(03:55):
But of course, as you said, this was Stewart Copeland's
band at the beginning, but it wasn't gonna made his
band for very long, because before long he meets this
guy named Gordon Sumner who insists on calling himself Sting
for some reason. It was his sweater. He had a
sweater that looked like a B and all like, I
guess his school friends would call him Staying because he
looks like a B and that's just stuck. Isn't it
funny though, that like he looked at that as an

(04:17):
endearing nickname and not like something to live down or
be like, all right enough with the Sting. I guess
he just hated the name Gordon. That seems to be
the only explanation for that at the time. You know,
it was weird that Sting ended up being the singer
in a new wave band because he really had no
interest in rock music at all. He was playing in
a band calls called Last Exit, which was this jazzy group,

(04:40):
very out of step with what was going on in
music at the time. But Stewart Copeland ends up seeing
this band. He doesn't really like the band's music, but
he feels that Sting has something on stage. He has
a presence to him. Obviously, he was a very good
looking guy. He has a good voice and there's something
about the thing that just makes Stuart Copeland feel that
this is the guy to be the singer in his

(05:01):
new punk rock band. So he ends up bringing Sting
into the fold. And then they also have this punk
rock guitar player named Henry Pottavanni, who I guess is
the pete Best of the Police. He ends up not
being a part of their history for a very long time.
He's going to get booted here shortly. But he was
really the only I guess, legitimate like punk musician in

(05:21):
the Police, because you know, Sting really had no connection
to that kind of music in Stewart Copeland. I mean
he could play circles around the average punk drummer. Yeah,
I mean they really started off as a fake punk band,
and again it was very much Stewart's fake punk band.
Their early songs for these mile a minute punk screeds
that that Stewart had written, and he wrote the band's
first single song called Fallout, and he founded his own

(05:42):
label called The Legal to release it in nineteen seventy seven.
And the Police were really a Copeland family affairs. Older
brother Miles managed the band and his brother Ian was
the booking agents. So again very much. This was Stewart's thing,
and in the spring of nineteen seventy seven, Sting and
Stewart were booked for a side gig backing this guy
Mike Howlett, for a project called stroni Um ninety and

(06:03):
they played a few gigs in France and recorded some
demos with this guy which released later after the Police
blew up. And the other member of this project was
Andy Summers, who, as I said earlier, was a longtime
London music veteran. He was a decade older than the
others and he backed people like Eric Burdon and Kevin
Eyres of the Soft Machine, and he came up through
the London mods scene with people like Jeff Beck and
Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page. So he was a different

(06:25):
generation and he clearly outranked Sting and Stewart. But Andy
loved working with these young guys. He really thought they
had something special and he more or less invited himself
into the Police, which is funny because Stewart wasn't really
all that keen on and he tried to talk him
out of it. He was saying, you know, you're you're
a you're a big session star, where just these there's

(06:45):
no money in what we do, Like, why would you
want to join us? But and he ends ends up
getting his way and he joins in. His first role
in the band is to remove Henry. It's the only
true punk guy in the band, Henry the guitarist. And
it's great if you watch Henry and interviews, it's really hilarious.
He's just laid back Corsican guy who seems to really
not give a shit about anything. He's really kind of
my favorite member of the story. Yeah, like he really

(07:07):
had no regret about, you know, being kicked out of
this band that ended up being again just hugely successful.
I saw an interview where he was like, I had
no idea that Sting was gonna one day, right every
breath you take, you know. I was like, oh, you know,
if you don't want me in the band, that's fine.
I think at the time even he felt relieved because
he was this legitimate punk and I think his friends
that were in the punk scene they looked at the

(07:29):
police as a joke, you know, like they weren't a
real punk band. So I think in the short run especially,
he felt like, well, it's probably not very cool to
be playing in this band. It is crazy when you
look at the Police in the early days, just like
on paper, you know, you have this prog rock drummer,
you have a jazz bow bass player, and you have
this like guitar player who I'm sorry, but he was
old as hell at this time. Like he was like

(07:52):
I think you said mid thirties, Like he was like
late thirties. Really, I mean he was like on the
verge of turning forty almost by the time he joined
the Police. Uh, you know, he was like you know
Paul McCartney's generation. You know, he wasn't like the Johnny
Rotten generation. But Andy Summers really ends up being a crucial,
i think component of this band because he's someone that

(08:13):
I think just in terms of his demeanor, as I
was saying before, I think he was very adaptable as
a guitar player. He didn't have the ego of a
lot of guitar players where you know, it would be
about his guitar riffs or his guitar solos. He really,
I think became like a textualist in the Police that
he could add shadings to this very busy rhythm section

(08:33):
that was in that band. The other crucial thing about
Andy Summers again that because he wasn't a punk guitar,
is it really freed Sting up as a songwriter to
start writing more sophisticated kinds of songs. Uh. You know
you mentioned Fallout being a Stewart Copeland composition. You know
that's a very you know, by the numbers type punk song.
But now that you have Andy Summers in the band,

(08:55):
they had the ability to write songs that like sounded
superficially like punk. It if you actually like dug into
the musical guts of what they were doing. They were
actually using like pretty complicated chords and different time signatures,
and it really added an element I think to those
songs that ultimately made them more pop friendly. You know,
they could have the aggression and the energy of punk,

(09:16):
but have something extra that would appeal to people that
would never listen to a punk record. Yeah. I think
Stewart a couple of Like I said an interview, you know,
we were like a punk band because we played four
chords and our songs, but there were four very complicated chords,
and that was the difference. Yeah, it was. It was
the fact that, like you know, most punk bands, they
only knew four chords, whereas the Police knew like forty

(09:36):
chords and they could pick the four right chords to
put in, you know, or they wouldn't always be the
same four chords. And it was just like a much
wider template to draw from that I think ended up
benefiting the Police once New Waves started to burn out
a little bit. And as you said earlier, the addition
of any Summers to the band really allowed Sting to
develop the kind of songs that he wanted to write,

(09:58):
because he wasn't really interested in writing punk song at all,
so the band didn't really seem like it was something
that really interested him much. But now that he was
able to have this wider palette to explore, he was
writing stuff like in his earlier jazz band Last Exit.
And that kind of is when he starts to flourish
as a songwriter. And it's also when Stewart realizes that
he's not the strongest songwriter in the band anymore. I

(10:19):
think he even said years later, the minute and he joined,
it stopped being you know, strictly my endeavor anymore. I mean,
he was not Andy is ten years older than he is.
He's not somebody secession professional He's not somebody that's going
to take a backseat to Stewart, so he knew at
this point it was a band of equals. It was
a band of three producers, as they would later say,
and it wasn't just his project anymore. And probably one

(10:41):
of the best early examples of this strange blend of
all the different musical backgrounds is Roxanne, their breakthrough song,
because Sting wrote it in almost like a Bossa Nova style,
almost like an Astro Gilberto kind of song, because he
knew and he could handle that sort of thing. But
bossa Nova in the punk scene would have obviously have
been suicide. So Stewart put this reggae ish backbeat to it,

(11:02):
and that's really where you get the band's unique sound,
this blend of diverse influences where you get punk, new wave, jazz,
reggae all coming together, and you compare Roxanne with Fallout,
it sounds like two totally different bands, you know, I mean,
it's just you. You can't compare. And Roxane would become
their breakthrough hit, but it was a slow burn. I
think it took about a year for it to really

(11:23):
climb the charts. And during this period when they were
when the song was out, but it really wasn't doing anything.
The Police went to America and played small clubs. I
think their first American gig was at CBGB's and UH,
and by the time they returned to England they were stars.
Effectively it was. Roxane was released in nineteen seventy nine
and became a huge smash. Uh. They released their debut

(11:44):
album I can never pronounce any of these albums out
Landos de More. I think that's in UH in November eight,
which had incredible songs can't Stand Losing You next to
You so lonely born in the fifties, and they set
out on this huge epic global tour after at and
that pretty much instant fame from that point on. Yeah,

(12:04):
it seems almost like an opposite Jimmie Hendrix phenomenon, like
where you know, Jimi Hendricks had to go to England
to become famous and then he came to America and
he was almost known as like this British phenomenon and
that's how he caught on in America. And with the Police,
that was the opposite. Where As you said, they put
out Roxanne, it's not really a hit. They come to
America and they play a three week tour that is

(12:25):
like a sensation, and they really start to take off
in the States, and then they go back to England
and they're known as this American phenomenon, and that's where
they really start to hit it big in England. And
even though it took a while for Roxanne to catch on,
it seems like after that the Police really were a
rocket ship. I mean, if you look at their career
from like seventy eight to eighty four, they're putting out

(12:46):
an album pretty much every year. They're you know, having
hit singles. They're going on these like lengthy tours where
not only are they playing you know, Europe in the
United States, but they are a true international band, playing
markets that most rock bands would never play, you know,
whether it's like Hong Kong or Thailand or all over
the world. And you really see that, like Sting is

(13:07):
becoming like a pretty huge star, like he's really catching on.
He's obviously the front man of the band. He's this
really good looking guy. He has an interest in acting.
He ends up appearing in the nineteen seventy nine film Quadraphenia,
which is the beginning of Sting being looked at as
a separate entity from the police, even though his appearance
in that film obviously, you know, I think benefited the

(13:31):
band in their celebrity, but there starts to be this
theme in their interviews, like where people are asking about,
you know, are the other two guys are they feeling
bad about all the attention that Sting is getting? You know,
is this going to undermine the solidarity of the band?
And of course when the media starts asking questions like this,
it just implants the idea in the mind of the band,
this becomes an issue that they can't avoid. And you know,

(13:54):
I'm just thinking of like the No Doubt video Don't Speak,
you know, where you know, instead of when Stefani being
the attractive blond in the band, it's Sting is the
attractive blond in the band. And it really seems like,
you know, that becomes a major, uh, you know, theme
in the Police's career. It's certainly a theme in the

(14:15):
two documentaries about the police, which by the way, Quicksidebar.
You know, there's two documentaries about the police and they're
both spearheaded, like one spearheaded by Andy Summers and the
other one is spearheaded by Stewart Copeland, and I can't
recall another instance of that in rock history, like where
like members of the band are making separate documentaries about

(14:38):
the band, like from their perspective, and it's not the
most famous guy in the band, Like like there's no
sting documentary about the police, but you know there's there's
Can't Stand Losing You is the Andy Summers documentary, and
trying to remember the Stewart Copeland one. The Stewart Copeland
one is like not very good, Like you've seen both
of those. Yes, I mean Kids Us is incredib a ball.

(15:00):
I mean it's got. But there is that weird scene
when he goes to his photo gallery show. Yes, yeah,
there's yeah, because there's this thing where, uh Andy Summers
just started taking photos when they were on tour, and
uh he ended up being like I think, like a
relatively renowned photographer and they have this photo show this

(15:20):
is like years after the Police broke up, and like
there's this section of the show where it's just like
photos of like naked groupies and presumably like Andy Summers
hotel room, and like Andy Summers wife is there and
like she poses next to like the shot of like
a woman's like pubic hair, Like I think it has
like a piece of fruit on it or something. I

(15:40):
can't remember exactly what it is, but I was like,
this is this kind of weird. Like I just feel like,
if I was a rock star, I would keep the
groupie photos in like a separate file on my laptop,
you know, keep that away from the mrs. I feel
just like, out of respect for the wife. It just
seems weird to me. I just want to say quick,
the Stuart couple movies called Everyone Stairs, Yes, but anyway,

(16:04):
that's just the sidebar on that. I just think it's
interesting that both of those guys felt the need to
make a documentary. It just speaks to how the power
struggles in this band continued well after they broke up,
like they still had to have the last word, you know,
in these movies. And there's a great clip in the
Antie Summers documentary where reporters asking Sting about writing more
songs than the others, and you see him visibly cringe

(16:25):
like he he clearly felt that the press was trying
to drive awage between him and the rest of the band,
And obviously there was an element of truth to this.
But it was also a case of reporters knowing that
stories about a band in turmoil sell a lot more
than you know, a happy, peaceful band. So there's obviously
enough tension in the band to go around. But it's
weird how early the whole like when are you going

(16:45):
to go solo? Conversation was had in the press like
it seemed to be there from the very beginning, which
is I think it's strange, very premature. Yeah, I mean,
I think that there was a perception among the press
that somehow Stuart Copeland and Antie Summers were like the
supporting musicians for Sting and I don't think that that's
a fair impression to have of this band. I think

(17:07):
the Police at their best, to me were a real band.
And you know, my favorite record by them is Zenyata Mundada,
which comes out in eight and this is a record
that really I think was the turning point for them becoming,
you know, a major rock band in the world. You
I mean, the first two records had a lot of

(17:28):
hits on them, you know, like regarded the Blanc comes
out in that is like message in a bottle on there,
the beds too big without you bring on the Night
all these classic songs from the Police, but Zenyata Mandada
is the one I think where people really felt like, oh, yeah,
this this is like the biggest band in the world.
And you knew that they were getting big because they
recorded that album in Holland, because they were tax exiles

(17:51):
at that point. You know, that's yeah, like when the
British rock band reaches the tax exile moment in their career,
it's like, Okay, you're big, You've you've achieved a level
of stardom that this is like rarefied air, and you know,
they were dealing with all the usual pressures of course
working on that record. I think Sting later said that
he felt that the whole world was waiting for this record,

(18:13):
that there was like this machinery in place that was
waiting for that album to come out and to sort
of take it away from them and take it out
in the marketplace and and kind of transform it into
something that really went beyond what this band was in
the early days of their career. Um and of course
this record ended up spawning very famous songs. Don't Stand
So Close to Me is the first track. Do Do

(18:34):
Do Do Da Da is another big hit. Those are
both Sting songs, of course, But when I think about
that record, I really think of it as an album
showcasing the instrumental chemistry of that band, the interplay of
the bass, drums, and guitar, and that's where I love
about it, Like there's an element to it that to
me sounds like a little Jammie like that they were
working those songs out in the studio and it was

(18:55):
about spotlighting what each guy brought to the band, and
it just seems like on that record things just seem
perfectly calibrated in a way that they weren't going to
be on the albums after that. Yeah. Instrumentally watching them
and listening to their inner plays incredible. And it's even
more amazing when you realize looking back on it that
this was around the time when Sting really began to

(19:16):
assert himself more in the studio and this was no
longer a democracy. Sting was very clearly a dominant songwriter
at that point, and when he would bring his songs in,
it a very clear idea in his mind of how
he wanted them to sound, and it was really stifling
to to Stewart and Andy. I think Stewart would later
say he was very clever in his vision. But for Sting,

(19:36):
there's only one artistic truth. All his creative juices tell
him this. But the other two mortals in the room
also had their musical truths. So it became really this
power struggle of will you let me support you, will
you let me actually contribute. It's like, you know the
later Beatles sessions with Paul McCartney, who comes in with
a with a fully fleshed out song and he just
wants the other guys to be side man. And I

(19:57):
think that that was something that was happening with Sting
and the police here, and it really they felt smothered.
Stewart always good with the quotes, uh said years later
he said that being in police was like wearing a
protest suit made out of barbed wire, which I'm not
sure what that means exactly, but it's a very colorful
quote and I love it. I mean, I think, genuinely speaking,

(20:18):
when you look at the Police records, I feel like Sting.
You know, he was writing the hits. He was writing
I think, the most accessible pop songs on on those records,
and it makes sense that his records became the most
famous but I actually appreciate the Andy Summers and Stewart
Copeland songs because I think, generally speaking, they're more eccentric,
they're more experimental, they're they're a little like more art

(20:39):
rock and even more prog rock. And a great example
of that is this song called behind My Camel, which
ended up being a pretty controversial track within the band
from Zenyatta Mandada. This is an Andy Summers song, and
I love this song. It reminds me of like a
Brian Eno track from the mid seventies, like you can
imagine that song being on Another Green World or Before

(21:02):
and After Science. But for whatever reason, Sting hated Behind
my Camel. He told the story later on about how
he actually like took the master of that song and
buried it in the garden, like behind the studio or whatever,
uh to, like prevented from ending up on the record.
But then Andy Summers, I guess like got a dug

(21:23):
it back literally dug it back up, and he got
it on the record, and that song actually ended up
winning a Grammy later on, I think for like Best
Instrumental Rock Performance, and I'm glad he did. I mean,
that is a song that I think brings something unique
to Zignata Mandata. It ensures that it's not just a
collection of Sting pop songs, but there's maybe something a
little stranger, and that's something that I think police records needed,

(21:46):
and I think the records after this don't quite have
that collaborative element as much, and they suffer from it.
I think, yeah, I agree, and I think that that's
really when Sting begins to take over those later records.
But you know, bearing a tape in in the garden
is pretty extreme. And this is really the era when
the fights it wasn't just sniping. Sting would later admit

(22:09):
that we didn't like each other very much. At this point,
there were three big egos pulling in different directions. I
started to be very ruthless and very cruel in order
to get the songs done and Stings tempered during this
period is somewhat legendary. Stuart's alluded to physical confrontations and
many interviews over the years and uh and he has
described an incident when Sting once blew up at him,

(22:29):
just apparently just letting loose with us, just a string
of Florida insults that just left everyone in the room
white faced. And shock, he said, And Stewart apparently used
to have a message, Uh Sting is a C word
written on his drum skins, so he'd hit them all
the harder. And this is this is barely after three
years into the band. You know, it was very quickly

(22:51):
that they reached the stage of physical altercations and bearing
tapes in the garden all right hand, We'll be right
back with more rivals. So that brings us to the
next Police record, which is Ghost in the Machine. And

(23:12):
it seems like one of the few things that all
three members of the Police agree on is that this
is where things really started to turn toxic in the band.
And again it has to do with Sting really asserting
his control. This idea that not only is he going
to be the main songwriter, and not only is he
going to discourage the other guys from writing, but this

(23:32):
is the beginning of him actually starting to show up
with like more or less completed demos. So he has
an idea of how he wants the song to sound,
and it's really limiting like the remaining creativity that the
other guys have. I think especially Stuart Copeland was feeling that,
you know, he didn't want to play like a drum machine,
you know, or like the very regimented beats that you
might have on a demo. He's a very expressive drummer.

(23:53):
He wanted to bring his expression to the songs, but uh,
it wasn't something that this thing was going to allow it.
I think Sting, you know, to to his credit, I mean,
I think to some degree you could say that he
earned the right to take controls because of all the
hits that he was writing and that continued on Ghosts
in the Machine. I mean, this is a record that
has every little thing she does is magic and spirits

(24:15):
in the material world, and you know, songs that are
still played on classic rock radio all the time, and
you can hear them starting to move away from that.
I guess white reggae sound of like the first three records,
that more sort of you know again, funky music that's
about the interplay of the musicians. It's really starting to
move more towards I think what stings solo career is

(24:36):
going to be, you know, which is more of like
the middle of the road type pop sound that is
very lush and rich and has great melodies, but is
less about you know, an energetic rock band type vibe. Yeah,
I always thought Ghost in the Machine was, you know,
to use my favorite spinal tap reference of all time.
This was their jazz Hodyessey album. This was there like
Kitchen Sync album where they weren't afraid to get weird

(24:58):
and trying to expand their sonic palette. Which, again, a
band trying to expand their sonic palette is right up
there with recording abroad for tax reasons. In terms of
like red flags for where their bands at in the career.
It's that's rarely a good thing, and usually usually trouble,
you know, personal trouble follows after that. But yeah, this
album was layered with just really dense multi tracked vocals
and synthesizer keyboards and horn riffs. Sting was very adamant

(25:22):
on this album that he was this is his quote.
After our first three albums, we wanted to go so
far away from the sound we already created. I was
determined to play some saxophone, man. I had that bolded
and underlined in my notes. I was determined to play
some saxophone. That's like the last thing you want to
hear your singers say. Yes, that's when you must feel
like if you're the drummer in that band, you must

(25:43):
just feel like I wish there was an objector seat
on my drum kit. I could just shoot out of
this studio, man, because that you don't want to hear
your your singers say it's time to play some saxophone,
even though I don't really playing. They don't know how
to play. Yeah, and this this whole new approach really,
and so all the other members of the band, I mean,
Andy Summers was really open about his hatred of synths

(26:04):
and the whole non police sound, and in later years
he'd say I was getting disappointed with the musical direction
around the time of Ghost in the Machine, with the
horns and the synth coming in the fantastic raw trio field.
All the really creative and dynamic stuff was being lost
and we ended up being a backing singer doing his
pop songs. Yeah, you really see stings ego come into play.

(26:25):
Although in fairness this thing the other two guys had
pretty big egos too, And like in the case of
ghosts in the Machine, I just think about the story
for the Andy Summers song Omega Man, which is like
a pretty good song. It's a good deep cut from
that record, But apparently there was a time where I
think A and M Records had earmarked that song as
being a potential first single from Ghosts in the Machine,

(26:46):
and Sting put his foot down immediately and said, there's
no way Omega Man is going to be the first single.
And of course, you know, there's the usual ego thing
there where I'm sure Sting felt like it should be
one of my songs that's a single, But this is
a record that had every little thing she does is
magic on it and spirits in the material world, Like,
how can you not put out one of those songs

(27:08):
as the first single? I mean, Omega Man again, it's
a it's a fine deep cut, but like I feel
like when you listen to Ghosts in the Machine, like
those two songs, like those two big hits, they jump
out because not only are they famous, but like I
think they're clearly the best songs on the record. Oh yeah,
I mean it gets back to to Sting being like
Paul McCartney. He was very rarely wrong in his ear

(27:29):
for what would do well and what made a hit.
Maybe he could have been more sensitive about it or whatever,
but yeah, Stings sense for what worked was almost always
dead on at this period too, So yeah, I mean
it seems strange that the A and M executives would
look at Omega Man as the lead single when those
other Sting classics were right there alongside it, But supposedly

(27:51):
that's how it went down. Um, there's a lot of
darkness on the album. Specifically, the album ends with a
track called Darkness and it's it's it's bleak. There's references
to violence in Northern Ireland and invisible Sun and skinheads
and Nazis and rehumanize yourself and it's just it's it's
a dark album. And Sting would say that he wanted
to create the impression of something struggling to the surface

(28:13):
with this music, something hidden in the recesses of the mind,
something from our dark subconscious waiting to be seen. And uh,
that was kind of where he was at in his
life because the success of the band was disastrous for
all three members in their personal lives. I mean, all
their marriages were breaking down, and they kind of saw
themselves on this road that they didn't really know how
to get out of. Because this was who they were now.

(28:35):
They saw that the only way to sort of make
a living at this point was to make records, and
I think Sting would later say that then it hit
us that this is how we're gonna have to make
our living for the rest of our careers. I started
looking for a way out. Stings said around this era, Yeah,
you really see the police. They're trapped now in a
system where on one hand, the way that they're making
records is clearly like not good for bad morale, you know,

(28:58):
it's really eating a way at any kind of unity
that they might have once had. And yet on the
same token, it's incredibly successful, Like they're making records that
people really like, and that culminates with the album and
Swan song Synchronicity, And it's fascinating to me because like
they had this really bad experience making ghosts in the Machine,
but then when it comes to doing Synchronicity, they go

(29:21):
back to the same studio. It's Air Studio in the Caribbean,
George Martin's stewage studio, like in luxurious, uh surroundings. It's
a beautiful place, but like you just feel like, why
did they go back there after so much negativity and
not only did they not really learn any lessons from
Ghosts in the Machine in terms of like how to
you know, baby be a little bit better inter personally.

(29:43):
It's just like it seems like things got exacerbated. Like
they're in the studio and like the air conditioning isn't working,
so it's like literally like a hothouse in the studio
that they're having to work on. So that's making them miserable.
And then the way that they're recording, it's like really
getting far away from again the group interplay that they
had an albums like Xeniana Mandada. Like they're literally recording

(30:04):
in three different rooms I think, like Sting was in
the control room, Stewart Copeland was like in a room
upstairs I think, and then Andy Summers was the only
person in the actual studio. So like they're laying down
tracks and like they're literally separated, like they're they really
can't communicate. Yeah, like they're not a band at all,
and it's just feeding this negativity that had already existed

(30:26):
and Ghost in the Machine and it's just worse now.
And like Stuart Copeland said, basically like we hated each
other's guts at this point, but meanwhile you have Sting
coming up with like songs that are going to be
even more popular than anything he's like written for the
Police before. So while they're at a personal like rock bottom,
they're about to hit like their highest peak professionally. Right.

(30:49):
This is the album that has every breath you take.
And it's amazing to think that a lot of the
songs on the record this thing would bring in the
band wouldn't hear until he brought them into the studio
the day that they were due to be recorded. And uh,
and this song was one that you know, obviously probably
they're they're defining song, i'd say, but the one that
really ripped the band apart because Staying again had a

(31:10):
very specific idea of how he wanted it to sound.
In this case, he wanted Stuart Copeland to play a
very simple, steady, straight ahead beat, and for Stewart it
was like, well, okay, you're writing all the hits, fine,
but at least let me do my thing and be
me and contribute in the last way that I can.
And Sting dictating the terms on that was completely intolerable

(31:33):
to Stewart. Yeah, and again, it's one of those situations
where I'm sympathetical Stewart Copeland because I'm sure Sting was
totally obnoxious this time, you know, like being very dictatorial
and and just being Sting. I mean Sting seems like
a kind of a difficult person in a lot of ways,
but this is every breath you take. This is like

(31:53):
one of the most famous pop songs of like the
last forty years. And having Stewart Copeland do like awesome
drum fill on that song, it's not going to serve
the track, like it didn't need stuertcope and to assert himself.
The song itself was so strong that this thing was
right to just tell him to lay back, you know,
serve the song, don't just serve your own artistic impulses

(32:14):
or or your own ego by you know, showing off
with fancy drums. I think the bigger problem with Synchronicity
and Sting himself highlighted this is that it's essentially a
solo record for Sting that he's now writing from a
very personal point of view, and I think, you know,
again he's starting to write lyrics that are more like
what his solo career is going to be like than

(32:34):
with the Police, Like if you look at like early
Police videos, they're basically all the same. It's like those
three guys just dancing around acting like idiots. You know,
they're very happy. It's very up. You know. It's like
I was watching like the videos for like Don't Stand
So Close to Me, and every little thing she does
is magic and like it's it's infectious. There's like a
boy band element almost of the Police. Like these three

(32:57):
blonde guys. They're all cute, they're all wearing like short shorts,
they're pretty hunky, and they're just having a good time.
And then you get to like synchronicity and it's like
very you know, sort of ponderous songs like all these
Carl Young references on that record, and you know, songs
like King of Pain and like Wrapped around your Finger
and like Murdered by Numbers. Like there's not a lot

(33:18):
of laughs on that record, and it seemed like, you know,
that element of fun had really been drained out of
the Police by this point. And that was a huge
sticking point for for Stuart and Sting also because they
would say that they approached music from completely opposite directions,
and for Sting, music was a pain killer, a way
to sort of escape from this world that he saw

(33:38):
as being really evil and harsh and grim, and Stewart
would say, for me, music is a celebration, like let's
light up the room and have some fun. And you
see sort of the light and darkness on Synchronicity, I mean,
even down to the fact that the album was was
sort of split in half with all the up Temple
songs on one side and the sort of dark, slower
ones on another. But yeah, as you said, every breath
you take when you listen to the lyri it's it's

(34:00):
weird that a lot of I was a wedding DJ
for years in college, and I can't tell how many
times I played that song as like a first dance,
and it's a weird first dance because it's like a
Sting said, it's a really sinister song. It's like all
about like surveillance and stalking essentially, and then King of Pain,
like you said, and wrapped around your finger. And Stewart
would say that Sting needed to be able to relate
to songs authentically from an authentic emotional place to be

(34:23):
able to sing them, and that also limited Andy and
and Stuart's contributions to songwriting because if they were writing
these sort of happy, joyous, celebration songs and Sting absolutely
wasn't feeling it, which he wasn't at this time, and
his marriage is breaking down, and King of Pain was
a very real, uh, sort of cry for help for
or he was at that point in his life. He
wouldn't be able to tackle those like that. Was wasn't

(34:46):
something that really he was able to do and bring
himself to, so that they also felt him in by
basically writing songs that were true to how Sting was feeling,
which was miles away from how they were feeling. So
again we had this, you know, and crazy dichotomy in
the Police, like we're the way that they're making records
is just tearing them apart. And yet when you look
at the results, it's like you couldn't ask for anything more.

(35:07):
Like the album Synchronicity, it comes out in eight three,
sells eight million copies in America alone, Every Breath You Take,
an enormous hit, an iconic song of the era, ends
up putting the Grammy for Song of the Year, and
the Police become a stadium band. Like if you look
at the Synchronicity tour, they're playing stadiums all over the world,
and I would love watching clips of the Police from

(35:27):
that time. Like Sting is wearing like that Joseph and
the amazing technicolor dreamcoat coat, like that huge coat with
all the tassels on it. It's like rainbow colored, which
I don't know what the deal is with. I guess
it reflected the three colors on the cover of the album.
Maybe maybe that was the idea, but it's this very
grandiose uh uniform that he's wearing every night. And again

(35:49):
that's another contrast with the early days of the band,
which we're not that long ago. I mean we're talking
maybe three years earlier. They were this scruffy band that
would play very energetic shows. Again, much more about a
group's spirit, a group energy playing off of each other.
And now there's just this like larger than life stadium
rock band with this like platinum blonde singer who was

(36:10):
clearly up in front of the band. And really they
sort of hit their high water mark when they sell
out Shaye Stadium, which was sort of the benchmark of
rock and roll success since the Beatles played there in
six I mean that was kind of the apex of
what they set out to do. And uh, I guess
at that point that was really when Sting kind of thought, well,
this is it. We did it, we climbed the mountain. Really,

(36:33):
the best thing we can do at this point is
to just do it again. And it really wasn't all
that fun to get here, So why would we do that,
go through all the how we've been through just to
repeat this success that really isn't all that fulfilling. So
I guess the same night that they played this this
huge show at Shaye Stadium, he turned to Andy and said,
you know, it doesn't get any better than this. We
should stop, and Andy, to his surprise, agreed. And uh.

(36:56):
There's some debate about whether or not Stewart actually agreed
to sort of out on top and say goodbye, because
he would say later on that he was kind of
the one that was most likely to want to carry on,
because his general attitude was this is great. You know
I can carry on doing this. This is fun. I
like doing this. But then eventually I think he saw
the logic in going out on top and not you know,
not starting the decline at all. Yeah, I mean, I

(37:18):
think for Stewart and Andy, it's a much different proposition obviously,
because I think Sting felt rightly that he didn't really
need to be in a band anymore. Like he was
now a huge star, he was well positioned to go
into a solo career where he could do whatever he wanted,
where he wouldn't be, you know, having to fight with
these two guys anymore, and he could work with different
musicians and and and and really expand his music, I think,

(37:40):
really going back to the kind of music that he
made before The Police. I mean Sting would later say
that like the first rock band he was ever in
was The Police, that he was actually more of a
jazz pop singer, and that that's the direction of course
that he ended up returning to once he started putting
out solo records. It's interesting to me too, because like
this Shape Stadium show is like I think it's like

(38:02):
in the middle of that Synchronicity tour, like they ended
up touring like into the Spring of four, So like
this idea that they weren't going to stay together, like
it was hanging over the band at the moment where
they should have just been on top of the world.
You know, it's like, we're the biggest band that there
is right now. And yet you know, especially for Stuart
and Andy, they knew that, like the clock was ticking

(38:25):
for rock stardom. I mean, I do think that the
police deciding to do that is kind of an awesome move. Like,
I can't really think of another example of a band
or an artist that was that successful, really in the
prime of their career deciding to like walk away voluntarily.
I mean, usually it's because someone dies or you know,

(38:45):
there's some other sort of outside circumstance that forces bands
to quit. But like the police, there was no reason
for them to quit other than Stings saying that he
didn't want to be in the band anymore. Yeah, And
there's been a lot of theories about sort of his
motivation for wanting to kill it, other than it just
being you know, miserable, which is reason enough. I mean,
there's some people say that his marriage had disintegrated over

(39:05):
the prior years and it was just such a miserable
experience to watch the slow decline of his romantic relationship
that he didn't want to go through that with the band,
and he just wanted to to end it before it
just became so toxic that they you know, would never
want to speak again. So and then there are some
who thought it was more ego driven, and I think
it was in I think it was in Stuart's memoir

(39:26):
or Andy's memoir where they talk about the song publishing
for the band was actually split three different ways. So
maybe Sting got tired of of dividing up his income
equally when he was doing the lion's share of the songwriting. Uh,
and he figured, you know, he could make it work
by keeping all the writing royalties and hiring the best
jazz musicians in the world to come and play for him,
which you know, seems like a win win. But as

(39:48):
you said, yeah, that the band would later say that
it was best that they split at that moment before
kind of embarrassing themselves. It was a case of quit
while you're ahead and leave him wanting more, and their
artistic reputation was preserved for all alternity. You know, the
legend remains intact, is the Jimi Hendricks thing. And Uh,
it's really even more compelling to me that they never
made a formal announcement that they were technically breaking up.

(40:09):
You know, they they went sort of Beatles style and
just quietly stopped, which I thought was interesting. Yeah, that
was a deliberate thing to even though like you know,
Andy Sommers has talked about how they knew that the
band was over. You know, it's just that their management
thought it would be, you know, have a better mystique,
just just to leave it mysterious. And it is interesting
because you know, they do have this decision where they're

(40:30):
gonna like walk away at the top of their career,
but then not long after that they did come back briefly,
and you know, you talked about how their artistic reputation
is intact, it's only because people don't remember that they
actually got back together like two years later. You know,
I feel like that's been totally just like memory hold,
you know, and maybe for the best. But yeah, six

(40:52):
Sting called up Stuart Copeland and Andie Summers and asked
that they would want to play a few shows for
uh there was this fund reason to for Amnesty International,
which thing was involved with of course, and you know
you two was involved with at that time. I think
Peter Gabriel was also involved there. So it's a pretty
big deal. And you know, the Police still a huge
band in the mid eighties, so having them play these

(41:13):
shows was going to be great publicity for this We're
very worthy cause. But apparently, like even playing just like
three shows was like supertense for these guys, and they're like,
I don't know if this is really good. But then
they there was this idea that, Okay, maybe touring together
doesn't work, Let's try to go back into the studio.
Because the record company they wanted to put out the
Greatest Hits record, and as is often the case, they

(41:36):
felt that if there were some new songs on the
Greatest Hits record that that would help sell more copies.
So the police have this idea that they're going to
record new versions of old police songs, like no one
wants that, nobody wants. Nobody wants that, like songs that
aren't even that old. We're talking about Don't Stand so
Close to Me and to Do Do Do Do Dot

(41:57):
Dot songs that were only about five or six years
old at that time. And you know, it's a terrible
idea to record songs that you've already recorded. But like
it even got worse because Stewart Copeland was playing polo
before these recording sessions, and look, you can guess what's
gonna happen. All right, he's playing polo on a horse,
and guess why he falls off the horse. I think

(42:19):
he breaks his shoulder and he can't play drums. Which, look,
if you listen to the show any musicians out there,
you know, if you're a musician, you listen to the
show because you want to learn about how to talk
to your bandmates. You don't want to repeat the mistakes
of history. Please. We talked about this in our Steven
Steele's episode Steven Steeles had a horse incident. Don't don't

(42:40):
ride horses, or if you're gonna ride a horse, ride
a pony, right, ride a slow pony. Don't ride the
fast horse if you're in a successful band, because you
will fall off, you will break a limb. And in
the case of this Police reunion, he couldn't play drums
on these tracks, so they had to use a drum machine,
which if you listen to the Police, big part of

(43:00):
the sound is Stewart Copeland's drums. So if you remove
that element and it's just sting in Andy Summers playing
on this like dirgy synthpop reimagining of like these old
Police songs, it's not going to turn out well. And
you know, I think that's why this has been memory hole,
because like, no one wants to hear the version of
don't stand so close to Me. I mean, it's it's awful.

(43:23):
It's even more terrible when you realize that they recorded
it in one day and spent about two more weeks
of their session time arguing over which drum machine to use.
Like that's when when they all knew like, okay, we
are not going to do you know, when when Stewart
heals this is this is over, We're not actually gonna
ever reunite the studio again because we spent I think

(43:43):
it was actually three weeks it's been. Andy Summers later
say that they were arguing about which drum machine was
better to use. So yeah, this was not a happy experience,
and those songs were, you know, as you said, memory
Hold not well received by the public or the band
for that matter. And Sting would or say, you know,
it was too early, we shouldn't have done that. A
few years later, the band reunites again, this time it's

(44:07):
at Sting's wedding, which is incredible. There's actually footage of this,
I think it's on YouTube. After the hired band for
the night had wrapped up. Uh. The instruments were just
left on stage, and the guests were encouraging Andy and
Stewart to to get up there with Sting and Uh,
which again very telling that Andy Stewart were invited to
Sting's wedding, Like it really says the outside of the
musical realm, they were still friendly enough to like attend

(44:30):
each other's functions and stuff like that. Um Sting was
not down for having a reunion at his wedding, you know,
on his wedding day, but a couple of drinks later
he threw his hands up and said, you know what,
let's do it. He gets up on stage, they perform
Message in a Bottle in rock Sand and it was
basically three drunk guys goofing off. But according to Sting,
even on his wedding, even though they were trashed, the

(44:52):
old animosity intentions appeared instantly said we were back on
the same state of mind. Stewart was scowling at me
and throwing drama sticks at me. It was it was terrible. Yeah,
they have tension there that when they were inducted in
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I think
there was two thousand three they performed there, and apparently
there was tension there too. It's like anytime you get
these guys together, the old hatreds just instantly spark up.

(45:16):
Even if even if it's like presumably like a low
pressure situation like a drunken wedding gig, you know, these
guys still have that inherent tention that where they have
to strike out against each other. And yet in spite
of this toxicity, there is this ongoing narrative in all
of their careers where people keep asking them if the
police will ever reunite. And in the case of Stuart

(45:36):
Copeland and Andy Summers, it's a little more obvious why
people are asking that just because their careers weren't as
high profile. After the police broke up, uh, Andy Summers
ended up kind of drifting into this like instrumental jazzy world.
He also was scoring films. He did the score for
a Weekend at Bernie's, which is a great achievement um
Stewart Copeland also was scoring films. He actually the score

(46:00):
for a film I Love, the Francis Coppola movie Rumble Fish,
which was pretty early in his film scoring career, but
his score for that is so great and it's very unusual.
It actually reminds me of the scores that John Brian
ended up doing for Paul Thomas Anderson, like on Punchdruck Love,
like a very rhythmic score that is really about like
kind of throwing the viewer off rather than you know,

(46:22):
soothing them or you know, telling them how to feel,
acting as an emotional cue, like a lot of scores.
And then you have Sting and Sting of course hugely
successful in the eighties and nineties. And this is the
part of the episode where I have to make my
confession of like having terrible taste, because you know, we
had our Van Hagar episode where I talked about how
I loved Van Hagar as a kid, and I had

(46:44):
to say that, like I had a weird love of
Sting solo albums, like when I was like ten and
eleven years old, Like you know, my friends were listening
to like Guns and Roses, and I would occasionally like
sneak off to my room and listen to like Dream
of the Blue Turtles, you know, and love j n R. Two.
But I just had this thing like where the midlife
crisis boomer music of the Soul Cages spoke to me

(47:08):
in for whatever odd reason. And I still have a
lot of love for like the first like three or
four Sting solo records. So weird you mentioned that because
I around the same age and I was like eleven
or twelve when Brand New Day came out. I secretly
loved that album. I loved Desert Rose in my mind,
you know, growing up in like an apple orchard in
New England, in the middle of nowhere. I remember thinking like, Oh,

(47:31):
this is like, this is what the city sounds like.
This is what the cool, sophisticated people listened to. Like
like in High Fidelity when John Cusack's character goes to
dinner with Katherine Sada Jones is like, you know, sophisticated
city friends and stuff like that was what I imagine
was being played at like cocktail parties and stuff and
in the bright lights of Boston. So I yeah, no,
I have a a soft spot for for the most

(47:53):
ridiculous as I think that Sting is for his his
various lute enterprises that we'll talk about later. Uh yeah,
I of his solo stuff. Yeah, I mean the thing
with Staying is that he's always been a good songwriter.
I think he's always had a great ear for melody,
and I think he's always been a strong singer. The
thing that he lost after the Police broke up is
that I think his bands, even though they had incredible musicians,

(48:16):
it didn't have the energy that a real band has.
It doesn't have the tension that a real band has.
So his records just got blander and blander. You know,
there wasn't a real energy to them. There wasn't that
spark that someone like a Stewart Copeland could bring because
he would rub up against Sting and they would have
sparks and friction because of that. And that's why I
think for all of stings solo success, people kept asking like,

(48:38):
are the Police ever going to get back together? And
for years he would always shrug it off and sometimes
even get annoyed by it. But once we get into
the odds, it seems like he's warming up to it
and we're really kind of ramping up to like the
big Police reunion that happened at the end of that decade. Yeah,
I feel like the peak of staying sort of bland.
This is an album he did for the Loot call

(49:00):
Songs from the Labyrinth, which uh did so well that
even Sting was surprised, and he was sort of stumped
what to do next, because, as he tells it, the
most surprising thing he could do after going down this
really uncommercial route was to do the most commercial thing
imaginable and reform the police, which you know, took even
the band by surprise. But apparently he made the call

(49:23):
and within a week the contracts were all signed and
they were starting to book venues, and it came together
incredibly fast. I mean, Stewart and Andy were we're ready
to go. And three months later they were playing a
reunion set at the Grammys in Uh in early two
thousand and seven, and the next day they did a
small set at the Whiskey a Go Go, which was
the same stage where they had their l A debut nine,

(49:43):
and they announced that they had a new tour and
uh and yeah. Sting was asked sort of why he
was doing the one thing he always said he would
never do. He said, I know things about music that
I didn't know then or couldn't express. I'm a better
band leader now than I was then, which I thought
was a very I guess it'd be silly to argue
that Sting isn't the band leader, but also an interesting

(50:07):
thing to say at the beginning of a long awaited
reunion of a very tension filled band, I have to
say yeah. And it goes without saying that, like this
Police reunion tour and ended up unfolding pretty much as
you expect. I mean, behind the scenes, a lot of sniping,
a lot of I think Andy Summers and Stuart Copeland
being alienated by Sting being a taskmaster, you know, being

(50:30):
a control freak essentially, which I think those were qualities
that manifested themselves towards the ends of the of the Police.
But then you add, you know, twenty years of being
a solo artist, and I'm sure it just made it
worse because, like when Sting is in his own bands,
there's no question that he's the leader, but like in
the Police, you know, in his own mind, if he
felt like Sting feels like, oh, I'm the leader, I'm

(50:50):
sure you know, Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers weren't necessarily
looking at him like that. You know. There's a great
Rolling Stone story that was written about the tour preparations
for the reunion, and like David Frick writes about how
he saw Sting and Andy Summers argue about the guitar
lick and walking in your footsteps for like a half hour,
like he just kept telling, kept telling, Yeah, it's like

(51:13):
over and over again, it's like, no, you're not getting
it quite right, over and over again and again. This
is the guy who played on the original record, so
you think that he probably has a good idea of
how to play it. But still, you know Sting as
a perfectionist and putting Andy Summers through the ringer. And
yet this tour ends up being like one of the
biggest earning tours of all time. It's a huge success. Again,

(51:34):
they're playing stadiums again all over the world. And I'm
sure that, like for as annoying as Sting was like
for Copeland and Summers, they must have hoped that, like
they were going to keep this going, either stay on
the road or maybe even make a record. But Sting
made that clear that that was not going to happen.
Have you seen that interview that the police did on

(51:55):
that Elvis Costello show spectacle? Oh? I saw it, And
then I saw the backstage footage in the Andy Summers
video where Sting it's it's it's it's just it's it's horrible.
Sting is out with Elvis Costello first and they're talking
and Elvis asks him, like, you know, how much long
do you want to do this? Basically, and Sting, very

(52:16):
as diplomatically as he can, says that he doesn't really
want to be in a band anymore. And then they
cut to Andy and Stewart backstage waiting to come out
and join him on stage, watching this on the monitors,
and you see them stoically react to the news. I'm
I'm sure it wasn't news to them, but just just
confronting the fact that this was done and he does

(52:37):
want to be with it's awful, and like, again, I
understand things perspective, because I'm sure from his point of view,
he's like, I already have a great career, you know,
on my own, I can go tour, I can sing
Police songs on my own, and I can make a
lot of money. Although I don't think he could have
played stadiums the way that the police did the Police, certainly,
I think I think in the same way that like
Simon and Garfunkele in some way is still more famous

(53:00):
than Paul Simon, even though Paul Simon's had a great
solo career. I still feel like the Police are more
famous than staying as a solo artist, just because of
classic rock radio. Like you hear Police songs all the
time in a way that you don't necessarily hear Sting
songs on the radio unless you're like at the dentist
office or you know, grocery store or something. But yeah,
it's just brutal to see that laid out for those

(53:22):
guys and to see how it ends. And yet you
talked about this in the introduction. For all of the
rancor that's existed between these guys, they seem like they're
friendly now, like like the recent stories about them coming together,
like they go to each other's shows or you know,
exhibits or whatever. They still support each other and it
seems like they're friends or maybe they're friend of me is.
I don't know how to classify it, but they're each

(53:45):
other's lives and it seems like they do like each other.
I think for the most part. Yeah, it seems like
they like each other in every other situation except for
playing music. And maybe there is a bit of a
friend of me component involved too. I mean there's when
Sting and was doing shows with Shaggy, which I still
don't really understand too much of uh A phrase I
didn't think I would say, um. And they did a

(54:06):
show in l a. Uh Stewart Andy got seats right
up front, and Stewart would say, yeah, we sat in
the audience so that we could make snide comments and
watch him from the front, so he could see us,
like being like the Statler and Waldorf, the guy old
guys from the Muppets, like up in the balcony. And
so yeah, there's a little bit of like, you know, teasing,
I think, good natured friend of me teasing. But yeah, overall,

(54:27):
I think it's probably one of the best ways that
a few this intense could have been resolved. Yeah, it's
like if your friends can't laugh at your collaboration with Shaggy,
I mean, like, do you really have any friends? I mean,
that's the sign of true love. I think we're gonna
take a quick break and get a word from our
sponsor before we get to more rivals. All right, now,

(54:56):
just a part of our episode where we give the
pro side of each part of the revelry. Let's talk
about Sting first. I mean, look, Sting obviously from Roxan on.
He wrote the biggest songs in this band. You know,
he was the figurehead, He was the good looking guy
out front. He was a really good singer, and as
we've reiterated in this episode, I think that for all

(55:16):
of his abrasiveness, he did have the right instincts in
the Police. You know, I am a person who I
think I tend to prefer the first three records. I
like the energy of you know, Zignata Mundata and Regrettada Blanc.
I like the interplay of the musicians, but you can't
false sting for taking them in this more. I guess
produced direction when he was coming up with songs you know,

(55:40):
of the caliber of Every Breath You Take and every
little thing she does his magic. I mean, he was
coming up with great pop songs and he had a
way that he wanted to realize them. And he was
right to say that Stewart Copeland doesn't need to show
off on a song like Every Breath You Take. The
song itself was strong enough. So even though I think
that ultimately destroyed the band, was good for his art

(56:01):
and looking back on it now, the songs are wouldn't
matter about the Police, and it's why people still care
about this band. Yeah, I mean you just think about
what would have happened if they just continued down the
Stewart route and been kind of almost like a clash clone,
fake punky band. I mean, it's just amazing to think
what their reputation would have been if if it that
had been the way that they went and just more
more songs that Stewart would have written, uh, instead of

(56:24):
you know, Sting's musical depth and lyrical substance. Uh, he's
a killer songwriter and lyricist, not to mention an amazing basis.
I feel like I've got a shout at his bass playing.
I mean, he's an incredible instrumentalist. Who really I think
that his jazz leanings really added something new and kind
of created this new subgenre to the punk rock format.

(56:45):
He just this is really distinctive sound of the Police
that I think is traced to him. And uh, yeah,
I think that. You know, he's obviously one of the
best selling artists of all time, and later on with
the solo work, really elevated world music to a mainstream
Western audience. And uh, and he plays a mean luke too.
I mean, what are the Loot players can you name

(57:05):
their staying And you know, I'm sure that we'll get
an email from like a loot expert who will list
of many loot players, but Sting is the only loot
player I could think of. Um, if we go to
the pro Stewart Copeland slash Andy Summerside. You know, And
I said this earlier, but I really believe it that,
like for all of stings solo success, I think ultimately
people look at the Police a little bit more fondly.

(57:28):
And I think the Police are ultimately a little bit
more famous than Sting. You know, Sting can obviously go
out and do whatever he wants. He can play big shows,
but when he's with the police, he's playing stadiums, you know,
And and that is the difference. And it's not just
the fact that he wrote big songs for the police.
I think Stuart Copeland and Andie Summers they gave his
songs a framework that just made them sound more exciting.

(57:51):
You know. I think Sting on his own he could
still write good songs, but like they didn't have the
energy and the tension and the friction that the best
police music has. And I think for that reason, you
really have to give those other guys their props also,
you know, just on a one to one level, I
think Stewart Copeland is a great drummer. I think he's
like one of the great rock drummers of all time.

(58:11):
And Andy Summers to me, is a really unheralded guitar player.
You know, he's not a guy who's going to show
off how fast he can play, although I think he
was capable of playing a lot more notes than he
actually played in the Police. You know, he's going to
serve the song, but at the same time, he's gonna
do something interesting with his guitar sounds that you're not
going to get from any other guitar player. And I

(58:31):
have to say that Andy Subbers to me, you know,
for a guy who isn't listed often among the greatest
guitar players ever, I think he really does have a
distinctive feel in tone that when you hear it, you
identify it with the Police, and you know, if he
weren't there, it just wouldn't have been the band that
they were. So yeah, I think as a band, they
were a band. It wasn't just it wasn't just a

(58:52):
backing group for sting in his songs. Yeah, I think
you're exactly right. And for all the frustration with Stings
sort of taking the lion's share of limelight and the
record real estate, I think that the other guys understood
that his songs were objectively better than their's, and the
argument seemed more about like how to make those songs
better and musical minutia rather than you know, why can't

(59:13):
we do more of my songs, which, in retrospect I'm
sort of surprised wasn't a bigger factor, given you know,
how the band started out as Stuart's enterprise, Like, I
feel like they were all very open to giving Sting
his space, and the fights became more about how to
best serve him and be allowed to sort of add
input to those. So yeah, I'm impressed by how good
natured the others were by the sort of abrupt and

(59:34):
extreme shift in the power dynamics, and Stewart later say,
you know, there's nothing more natural for me in the
world than standing next to a brighter source of light.
I don't mind, it just better be pretty fucking shine.
I think that's a very that's very generous. So when
we look at all these guys together, you know, I
touched on this at the beginning of the episode, but
just how unusual it was for these three guys to

(59:55):
form a band, how they were very different people in
some cases, you know, different generation. On paper, it did
make sense at all, and yet when you brought them together,
it created a sound that was incredibly popular. Again, like
I think the Police, to some degree, they don't get
there do as much as they deserve nowadays, but like
if you go on any classic rock radio station, you're
gonna hear several Police songs over the course of the day,

(01:00:18):
and it just really speaks to the unique chemistry that
exists in bands that, like people that don't seem like
they belong together, sometimes you put them in the same
space and sparks fly everywhere and it creates something really
combustible but also appealing and attractive. And to me, that's
the Police story in the nutshell. Yeah, you know, it's
a tired trope of the show, but without the differences

(01:00:41):
that ultimately drove them apart, we would have never had
the music that made them great. And there was interviews
to Copeland gave right after their reunion tour wrapped, and
he was basically marveling at how different. He and Sting
are spiritually musically in their approach to making songs and
just just miles apart and just fundamentally different people at

(01:01:01):
every level. He said that we might as well come
from different planets where different rules of physics supply, but
at the end of the day, they can still come
together and make songs that make people cry, and that's
something to be celebrated despite their differences. Well, Jordan, this
is always the hardest part of the episode. You know
when we have to leave because I can't stand losing
the Jordan's Stephen. Every little pun you make is magic. Man.

(01:01:26):
I think that is now our time to get out
of here. And on that note, so thank you all
for listening to this episode of Rivals. We'll be back
with more beefs and feeds and long simmering resentments next week.
Rivals is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive
producers are Shawn Tyitone and Noel Brown. The supervising producers

(01:01:48):
are Taylor Koin and Tristan McNeil. The producer is Joel
hat Stat. I'm Jordan's run Talk, I'm Stephen Hyden. If
you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us
a review. For more podcast for My Heart Radio, visit
the I Heart Video app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you
listen to your favorite shows. H