Stewart Copeland Reflects On The Police's Punk Beginnings

I was trying to think of getting a band together and I had to named the police I wrote a manifesto we don't care about that we just want to meet him laughable really in 1976 I was playing in a prog rock band called curve dare and I've kind of hushed that up because of the punk thing but now prog rock is back I was in a prog rock band called curve dare I had boots up to here hair down to here and it was all prog rock and one night we had a night off in a northern town far away from London actually too far to drive back that night so we spent the night and the next night saw a band called last exit who were pretty slick jazz band but jazz didn't impress me the bass player did on bass was a bass player who could sing and apart from the fact that there was a rather obvious noticeable golden shaft of light coming from heaven upon his magnificent brow that guy's a rock star and he's playing this jazz band meanwhile I had been hearing rumbling up from the gutters of London this punk movement which is all about not long hair not peace and love about anger and I was kind of angry myself at the time disaffected youth and so I was trying to think of getting a band together and I had a name the police I wrote a manifesto we don't care about that we just want to make you know laughable really but there was this guy who could both sing and play bass and obviously the man for me he had charisma out to here none of us realized how he could sing until later message in a bottle has a lot of the favourite ingredients of the police it has a driving beat it's one of the aggressive ones it has that arpeggiated guitar figure which Andy you know sting was really good at writing and Andy just would kill those things and embellish them and build them they're a little and eternal they're not any guitarists can play that most guitarists kind of strum a chord but Andy can finger pick that stuff with high energy through a big amp and that was kind of a new thing it also had the the reggae ish beat you know for in the floor with that that cross stick it had all these elements that are sort of signature elements of the band that I guess it kind of all comes together in that one too Nigel gray was our producer for the first three albums and he was most he had a great sound he knew where to put the microphones which is pretty much all we needed with Hugh Padgham as well who did the later albums he was really good at putting the microphones he suddenly our sound just got much more spectacular you know just because he really knew how to get a great sound out of the drum set in particular but Nigel gray had another factor which is his bedside manner and he we were all young and codependent at the time and he kind of got to know us all and he could keep us playing nicely because we had although we loved each other dearly and admire each other and realized what we all brought to the party it was not an easy fit you know that I've often described the police as like a Prada suit made out of barbed wire it's really we're really happy with the result it we get there through pain and module Gray was very good at keeping us playing nicely one of our first releases not our first record but our first with a real record company was rocks and we had already released fallout on my label illegal records but it sank without a trace actually no it didn't sink without a trace we made money out we only sold 5,000 copies but we saw every penny of those because it was sting and I and Henry putting singles into the sleeves me on the phone selling those boxes of records every dollar or pound sterling that came in it was ours so even though it didn't chart we actually made money and split money up for us that's a hit but then we signed with a real record company and for which you now have to sell a lot of records for it to be worth everyone's while and Roxanne was our first attempt sank without a trace then we released can't stand losing you sank without a trace there so lonely sank without a trace but this record company would not give up they were intent on they just believed and so they went around again released Roxanne again and those same three records released them all again this time they started to tickle the BBC and Punk had opened people's minds to the idea that you don't have to sound like Electric Light Orchestra or any of the you know or Abba or any of the huge successful commercial acts of the day you can change it up and still be popular and I think that opened the way for us to do things slightly differently and be accepted by the general world at large strange thing about the songwriting was that every time sting would pull a song out we all go wow cool I got let's start playing that and every time Andy or I brought out a song it was uh okay how much times we have to spend on this and by the way this was an opinion shared by Andy and myself I got the song which I wrote but that one sting wrote god it's still going around my head this let's play that that's not to say that we didn't come up with stuff you know I've had a very rich career after the police composing stuff but in the context of the police those songs were just so strong that we all wanted to play those instead there were some songs that I wrote they were just too dumb first thing to sing even when we were way back at the beginning I'd written them in college and so on and one of them I went down to Nigel gray studio and recorded a handful of songs and I played the guitar myself played the drums even sang the thing and for some strange reason the BBC decided to play it I got on the BBC Radio 1 playlist and started to have a hit not a huge hit but a hit for me walking the streets of London with my collar up that was a hit and not only that but we got on Top of the Pops which in those days in England was the show you show up on Top of the Pops national TV your records go up ten places in the chart and I didn't want to appear ID although I'd played all the instruments as solo I thought it was lame one person on the stage I'm a band guy so I got Andy sting and actually our true manager Kim Turner to be the band and we were all in math because the point of Clark Kent was that the mask reveals the true identity and I had a mask the police at the time was dead in the water this is before we had any hits this is pre police even though we had the band we were starving and the reason for the disguise was because we were not only dead in the water we were reviled as fakes which was true we were charlatans carpetbaggers capitalizing on our superior musicality are three or four extra years of experience when all the other punk bands didn't know how to book a truck didn't know how to get to the gate they they were completely amateurs but we were like sharks and them in the pond and but we were busted by the journalists police extremely uncool so I had a mask nobody knew who it was they heard the American accent and they think well it must be somebody maybe it's David Bowie maybe it's you know Frank's I betcha it's Frank Zappa and so all this buzz started going up and I did interviews with Melody Maker and so on with a mask you know Brezhnev mask or whatever mess we when we went on Top of the Pops we were all in masks including the manager my brother miles it was also wearing a pig mask and we went down there and played Top of the Pops in masks it's there on YouTube you can look up and look it up you know don't care BBC Top of the Pops and that that's sting wearing a gorilla mask I think Andy's Brezhnev on drums as the original curved air drummer Florian cooking to miksa and a guitarist was another thing was our tour manager Kim Turner that's me on bass we were very fortunate that we had the inner fortitude to part ways right when everything was going our way because it was very tough it was a very tough environment it's a strange dichotomy that we could feel the power of the music that we were making together we'd fight our way to get to the result but then we'd be very pleased with the result and playing to those audiences was really kind of a thrill but just the environment was so tortuous and we all had dreams we all had a little exposure to life outside the band I had gone off and I'd scored a film for Francis Coppola Rumble fish and outside of the band environment oh the music was flowing the birds are singing the butterflies are flapping their beautiful wings the sky is blue outside of police world and so the world outside the band became very tempting and the world inside the band was tortuous and as the band grew we kept making these steps when we would go from clubs to theatres there's kind of a gap there going 200 people to 2,000 people can we do it and we booked that first theater and good we can do it we'd sell the place out and be fine then the next step is from theatres to arena is actually kind of a big step because you're going from maximum of three to four thousand people to eighteen thousand can we do it and the promoter the the manager everybody's worried is this going to work let's try I think we're ready let's try it and it worked where he played Madison Square Garden was our first Arena and it worked it was a weird different environment for us okay the next step is can you take 18,000 and turn it into 80,000 okay now you're in the Beatles country I hope we got that and it seemed to work out okay and we got there but we sat there at that position for two albums ghost in the Machine and synchronous we're just going around around playing the stadiums and there was kind of no more up to go and there was like I say a lot of tension and the group was very tortuous so if that's the point we thought this is going really well this is a good time to cut and run which we did show businesses like that you got to take the bit between your teeth and alright you [Music]

Channel: uDiscover Music

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Keywords: music, the police stewart copeland interview, stewart copeland, drummer, stewart copeland punk, classic artists, rock, interview, stewart copeland 2019, Ghost In The Machine, the police drummer, the police interview, punk, music interview, stewart copeland interview, udiscovermusic.com, the police band, stewart copeland message in a bottle, every breath you take, udiscover interview, reggae, udiscover, the police, sting, udiscover music

Id: XOK_jD9Dtt8

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 02 2019