Police, The

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Police, The

Police, The , incorporated elements of reggae, pop, punk, and jazz, and featured the intelligently crafted songs and charismatic stage presence of lead singer Sting. Membership : Sting (Gordon Sumner), lead voc, bs. (b. Wallsend, Northumberland, England, Oct. 2, 1951); Andy Summers (Andrew Somers), lead gtr. (b. Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, England, Dec. 31, 1942); Stewart Copeland, drm., pere, voc. (b. Alexandria, Va., July 16, 1952).

The first British New Wave act to score a hit in America, with 1979’s “Roxanne,” the Police were initially rivaled by only Blondie in terms of commercial success for a New Wave act. After becoming one of the leading rock bands in the world, the Police dissolved in 1983. Sting became a highly successful solo artist and a somewhat less successful film actor. Guitarist Andy Summers became one of the pioneers in the development of guitar synthesizers, while drummer Stewart Copeland pursued soundtrack and television work in the 1980s and 1990s.

Stewart Copeland grew up in the Middle East as the son of the head of the Central Intelligence Agency’s operations in the region. In 1966 the Copeland family moved to England, where Stewart attended the prestigious Millfield school in Somerset. In 1971 he returned to the United States to attend the Univ. of Calif, at Berkeley. He moved back to England at the behest of his promoter, brother Miles, in 1974 and joined the progressive-rock group Curved Air in the band’s final years, as a percussionist. In late 1975 Copeland attended a performance in Newcastle by the local band Lost Exit, which included singer-bassist Sting. Born Gordon Sumner, Sting had been a semiprofessional musician around Newcastle since age 17 and had attempted music full-time in London in the early 1970s. He returned to Newcastle in 1975 and taught school for two years. By late 1976 both Curved Air and Lost Exit had broken up, and Copeland and Sting formed the Police with guitarist Henry Padovani. The group recorded the song “Fall Out” for Miles Copeland’s Illegal Records label, but the single failed to sell.

Andy Summers soon replaced Henry Padovani in the Police. Summers had taken up guitar at age 14 and started playing professionally at 16, in bands such as Soft Machine and the Animals in the late 1960s. He studied classical composition and guitar at the Univ. of Calif, between 1969 and 1973 and returned to England to play with bands led by Kevin Coyne and Kevin Ayers. He met Stewart Copeland and Sting in 1977 while playing with the group Strontium 90. Signed to A&M Records, the Police recorded their debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, in 1978. The group financed their own tour of America in late 1978 before the record was released in this country. They achieved belated British hits with “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand LosingYou,” and “Roxanne” became a moderate American hit in early 1979. The album, which favored reggae rhythms and the catchy songwriting of Sting, stayed on the charts for more than a year.

The Police conducted their first British tour in summer 1979, and recorded Regatta de Blanc that year. It included “The Bed’s Too Big without You,” “Bring on the Night,” and the British top hits “Walking on the Moon” and “Message in a Bottle,” the latter a minor American hit. The record stayed on the American album charts for nearly two years, securing their position in this country as one of the most exciting and creative bands in contemporary music.

Notorious for their unconventional business practices under Miles Copeland, the Police established themselves with an international audience by performing in Third World cities such as Cairo, Bangkok, Athens, and Bombay in 1980. Their diverse, engaging Zenyatta Mondatta album yielded two near-smash American hits, “Do Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” and “Don’t Stand So Close to Me”; it also contained Sum-mers’s instrumental “Behind My Camel” and Sting’s “Driven to Tears” and “Shadows in the Rain.” Touring diligently to sustain their enormous popularity, the Police next recorded the concept album Ghost in the Machine, featuring Sting’s most intelligent, incisive lyrics to date. It produced the smash hit “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” the near-smash “Spirits in the Material World,” and the moderate hit “Secret Journey,” as well as “Hungry for You” and “One World (Not Three).”

By the time the Police took a break from touring and recording in 1982, they had conducted 20 tours overall, including three major world tours. During the hiatus, Andy Summers explored the guitar synthesizer with former King Crimson guitarist and electronics wizard Robert Fripp on the I Advance Masked album for A&M. Sting starred in the disturbing movie Brimstone and Treacle, and Stewart Copeland composed the score for the Francis Ford Coppola movie Rumblefish.

Reconvening in 1983, the Police recorded the carefully crafted, compelling, and profound album Synchronicity, their masterpiece. The album includes “Walking in Your Footsteps” and yielded the top hit “Every Breath You Take,” the smash hits “King of Pain” and “Wrapped Around Your Finger,” and the major hit “Synchronicity II,” all written by Sting. Following their stadium tour in support of Synchronicity, the Police announced they were taking a respite from touring and recording as the members pursued various outside projects.

Andy Summers rejoined Robert Fripp for another album of instrumentais, Bewitched, that contained a Dream Side and a Dance Side. He later recorded one side of the soundtrack to the 1986 movie Down and Out in Beverly Hills and the soundtrack to My Weekend at Bernie’s. In the late 1980s and 1990s he recorded several solo albums.

Stewart Copeland was the most prolific former member of the Police. In 1984 he traveled to Africa to record traditional native music, assembling a film documentary and album, The Rhythmatist, that featured both authentic music and his own synthesizer compositions. Throughout the rest of the 1980s and 1990s he composed and performed for the movies and television; much of this work is unavailable in a recorded format. The film scores include Out of Bounds (1986), Wall Street (1987), Talk Radio (1988), Men at Work (1990), Highlander II (1991), and Rappa Nui (1994). For television, Copeland worked on the shows The Ewoks and Droids (1985), The Equalizer (1986), and Babylon 5 (1993), among others. In 1988 he formed Animal Logic with jazz bassist Stanley Clarke and singer- songwriter Deborah Holland, recording two albums for I. R. S. His score for the half-hour ballet King Lear, featuring both orchestra and prerecorded music, was premiered by the San Francisco Ballet in 1985. In 1989 the Cleveland Opera performed Stewart Copeland’s first operatic effort, the three-hour Holy Blood and Crescent Moon, as its season opener, but the performance was not well received by classical-music critics.

Sting continued to pursue his acting career during the 1980s, securing roles in the film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune (1984), the remake of the 1935 horror classic The Bride of Frankenstein as The Bride (1985), and Stormy Monday (1988). Although Sting performed credibly, none of the films were well received by critics or audiences. By 1985 Sting had assembled several of N.Y.’s finest jazz musicians for recordings that confounded rock critics and disaffected jazz fans. With Sting playing guitar, not bass, The Dream of the Blue Turtles was recorded with saxophonist Branford Marsalis, keyboardist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Darryl Jones, and drummer Omar Hakim. Surprisingly, the album yielded four hits: the smash “If You Love Somebody Set Them Free,” the near-smash “Fortress Around Your Heart,” and the major hits “Love Is the Seventh Wave” and “Russians.” In the latter half of 1985 Sting toured with his new band, and the film Bring on the Night, an account of his early rehearsals and first concert with the band, was released. He also appeared at the Live Aid concert in 1985, and toured for Amnesty International in 1986.

In 1987 Sting returned to bass to record the double-CD set … Nothing Like the Sun with Branford Marsalis and Kenny Kirkland. The album produced a near-smash hit with “We’ll Be Together,” a major hit with “Be Still My Beating Heart,” and a minor hit with “Englishman in N.Y.” It also included the gripping “They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo),” recorded with Andy Summers, Eric Clapton, and Mark Knopfler; the ballad “Sister Moon,” and “History Will Teach Us Nothing.” In 1988 Sting toured early in the year, formed his own record company, Panagea, performed on the Amnesty International tour, and founded the environmental group Ark with David Bowie. He made his Broadway debut in the short-lived 1989 musical production The Threepenny Opera and created the Save the Rain Forest Foundation while enduring an extended period of writer’s block.

Sting returned to recording in 1991 with the brooding The Soul Cages, scoring a smash hit with “All This Time”; he toured once again. Two years later he issued his most engaging work in years, Ten Summoner’s Tales, which included “If I Ever Lose Faith in You” and “Fields of Gold,” both major hits, as well as “She’s Too Good for Me” and “Love Is Stranger than Justice.” At the end of 1993 Sting scored a top hit in conjunction with Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart on “All for Love,” from the movie The Three Musketeers. A 1994 best-of set, Fields of Gold, includes the odd “This Cowboy Song” and one other new track.

Discography

CURVED AIR : Live (1975); Airborne (1976); Midnight Wire (1975). THE POLICE : Outlandos d’Amour (1979); Regatta de Blanc (1979); Zenyatta Mondatta (1980); Ghost in the Machine (1981); Synchronicity (1983); Live (ree. 1979–1983; rel. 1995); Every Breath You Take: The Singles (1986); Message in a Box: The Complete Recordings (1993); Every Breath You Take: The Classics (1995). ANDY SUMMERS AND ROBERT FRIPP : I Advance Masked (1982); Bewitched (1984). ANDY SUMMERS : Down and Out in Beverly Hills (one side of soundtrack; 1986); XYZ (1987); Mysterious Barricades (1988); The Golden Wire (1989); Charming Snakes (1990); World Gone Strange (1991). STEWART COPELAND : The Rhythmatist (1985); Music from The Equalizer and Other Cliff Hangers (1988). STEWART COPELAND SOUNDTRACKS : Rhythmatist (1983); Out of Bounds (1986); Wall Street/Talk Radio (1989); Men at Work (1990). ANIMAL LOGIC : Animal Logic (1989); Animal Logic II (1991). STING : The Dream of the Blue Turtles (1985); Bring on the Night (1985);…Nothing Like the Sun (1987); Box Set (above three albums) (1992); The Soul Cages (1991); Ten Summoner’s Tales (1993); Fields of Gold (1994); Mercury Falling (1996).