{"id":27494,"date":"2024-11-01T00:11:23","date_gmt":"2024-11-01T07:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/?p=27494"},"modified":"2024-10-29T12:06:16","modified_gmt":"2024-10-29T19:06:16","slug":"the-police-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sandiegotroubadour.com\/the-police-part-4\/","title":{"rendered":"The Police, Part 4"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Police was a band that exploded onstage and imploded in the studio.
\n<\/em>\u2013\u2013Stewart Copeland (via YouTube interview)<\/p>\n

\n
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The Police<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

AIR Studios Montserrat must have provided a good enough experience\u2013\u2013and Hugh Padgham a sufficient collaborative result\u2013\u2013to inspire the band\u2019s return with him to record what would end up being their fifth and final studio album in December of 1982. However, one would think that with the intense friction threatening the structural integrity of the entire enterprise from within, and with the trio incapable of ameliorating the wounds or even maintaining the brittle d\u00e9tente, the band would blame and subsequently choose to change their surroundings instead of returning to the acrimonious scene of previous ego crimes. But since The Police were such a volatile creative force, it follows\u2013and experience shows\u2013that they knew to leave well enough alone and stay loyal to a proven studio paradigm as a stable, isolated port in the chaotic music industry storm, and to rely on a familiar anchor in the tumultuous sea of mutual hostility (the band\u2013and A&M\u2013were probably too lazy to investigate other options anyway). Besides, they had enjoyed enough success with Ghost in the Machine<\/em>\u2013\u2013though not enough to precipitate their dissolution\u2014to sustain group cohesion on the corroborative Montserrat isle long enough to reach the pop music summit.<\/p>\n

Andy Summers paints a poignant portrait of the band\u2019s emotional state in his excellent 2006 memoir, One Train Later<\/em>:<\/p>\n

[Chapter 25] It seems as though Sting is at the North Pole, I am at the South Pole, and Stewart is in the tropics. We are the emotional opposites of when we recorded Outlandos<\/em>. Arriving to record another album suddenly wipes the glass clear and we stare at one another as if in assessment. In the shocking calm of the studio, without the blanket of touring, the need to make it to the next gig. The mud drops to the bottom of the glass and we eye each other like strangers.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve changed. Sting, after a year of celebrity highlights\u2013\u2013his high-profile court case against Virgin [to rectify the aforementioned publishing share disparity], his movie appearance in Brimstone and Treacle<\/em> [he would film his scenes for David Lynch\u2019s Dune<\/em> the following year] and endless appearances in the press\u2013\u2013is now someone else. It changes you, how could it not? The inevitable corrosion is eating its way through the tenuous threads that have held us together so far. But whatever monster lies beneath the surface goes unremarked.<\/p>\n

We strap on the band persona; we still have a goal, still have fire, still have desire, still want a number one record in the United States. We begin tentatively at first, mostly listening to the new batch of songs that Sting has conjured up\u2026 As usual, there is some good material but it needs the Police signature, needs to be toughened, and we get to work.<\/p>\n

[Chapter 19] I have wondered ever since we completed Regatta de Blanc<\/em> how long Sting would play this game, because it doesn\u2019t seem natural to him. He is not a team player, doesn\u2019t really want to share credit, and makes comments in the press to that effect, as if foreshadowing the ultimate event. I understand, and it feels like a small interior abrasion that is quiescent at the moment but may one day become a wound that will hold the residual pain of being deserted by someone you love. In the classic distortion that always happens with bands, we might already be reaching the point where we think we don\u2019t need one another, can go it alone, pull apart like the Beatles. It seems that each one of us really would like to run the whole show or be out on his own. Stewart, brash and outspoken, bulldozes his way through things, Copeland-style, but achieves his goals. If left to our own devices, Sting and I would probably get too subtle, too esoteric; Stewart counters all that and gives things a fuck-you rock-and-roll edge.<\/p>\n

[Chapter 25] In the studio the tension is so high that you can hear it twanging like an out-of-tune piano. As a group we seem to swing between high emotional intensity and sophomoric fraternity with frightening ease, almost like a group version of bipolar disorder. The best result is that when \u201cit\u201d happens, we can play with an empathy that is hard to imagine achieving with other people. But making albums is a brutal affair: you are forced to stand down, moodily let go of an idea, play someone else\u2019s idea, watch all your cherished licks go out of the window\u2013\u2013often accompanied by boos and jeers. It\u2019s painful because none of us likes being told what to do or being controlled in any way. In truth, we are like children locked in a house with big shiny machines and a handful of explosives. But from the pain comes the growth\u2013\u2013and that, we tell ourselves or one another after having just trashed some musical effort, is what it is all about.<\/p>\n

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Synchronicity, The Police’s final album.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Hugh Padgham unwittingly reinforced The Police\u2019s in-progress disintegration by setting them up in three different rooms to record their parts\u2013\u2013with Sting appropriately situated in the control room\u2013\u2013in order to attain the otherwise strived-for studio ideal of \u201cperfect separation.\u201d The irony, though, is that this sequestration may have also been Padgham\u2019s only recourse in terms of mitigating the malaise, at least while the tape was rolling. At one point, Summers recalls the tension becoming so unbearable that it stopped the band in its tracks, rendering them totally unable to continue, almost putting an end to everything right then and there on that island. Summers was subsequently sent off to seek the wisdom and guidance of renowned studio owner George Martin, who told them via Andy to simply buck up and get on with it (not dissimilar to the encouragement he gave to the Beatles for Abbey Road<\/em>), which they somehow managed to do, as if Martin had waved his hand and dispelled the bad juju like some kind of music business wizard (or as Summers himself stated, like Obi-Wan Kenobi). They reconvened with a revived interpersonal courtesy to finish the album, which by then they must have all at least subliminally realized would\u2013and needed to\u2013be their last.<\/p>\n

Again, Sting had done his homework, with some songs demoed and many new books read, including Carl Jung\u2019s autobiography and the volume bearing the same name, which expounds on the concept of synchronicity\u2013\u2013aka coincidence\u2013\u2013that would inspire the album\u2019s appellation and two of its songs\u2019 lyrical concentration (Arthur Koestler\u2013\u2013and specifically his 1972 book The Roots of Coincidence<\/em>\u2013\u2013again figures prominently as well). Jungian psychology became a shared interest with Summers, who had actually undergone that therapy and now related his experiences\u2013\u2013and also recommended another song-inspiring book: Paul Bowles\u2019s The Sheltering Sky<\/em>, the story-within-the-story of which inspired \u201cTea in the Sahara\u201d\u2013to the band\u2019s premier songwriter.<\/p>\n

\u201cSynchronicity I,\u201d as it did for the supporting tour\u2019s shows, kicks off the proceedings with fast-paced brio. An uptempo percussion loop (courtesy of an Oberheim DSX sequencer) in triple meter and C Dorian modality, provided by Sting and not Copeland as one might assume, is joined by the latter\u2019s ride cymbal bell accenting various offbeats (mostly the third of four sixteenth notes) in a shimmering flurry before dropping into a rhythm that would signify the last echo of punk in The Police\u2019s music, now blending with the album\u2013\u2013and classic-rock-radio-dominating dentist-office fusion Sting would subsequently pursue as a solo artist. Summers plucks and strums away on a 12-string electric guitar for the first and only time while Sting chunks out unwavering sixteenth notes on the tonic with his bass as he sings about as poetically as anyone ever could (though he seems to be the only one to have made the attempt thus far!) about the butterfly effect and the collective unconscious:<\/p>\n

With one breath
\n<\/em>With one flow
\n<\/em>You will know
\n<\/em>Synchronicity
\n<\/em>A star-fall
\n<\/em>A phone call
\n<\/em>It joins all
\n<\/em>Synchronicity<\/em><\/p>\n

A connecting principle
\n<\/em>Linked to the invisible
\n<\/em>Almost imperceptible
\n<\/em>Something inexpressible
\n<\/em>Science insusceptible
\n<\/em>Logic so inflexible
\n<\/em>Causally connectible
\n<\/em>Nothing is invincible<\/em><\/p>\n

If we share this nightmare
\n<\/em>We can dream
\n<\/em>Spiritus mundi
\n<\/em>If you act as you think
\n<\/em>The missing link
\n<\/em>Synchronicity<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

We know you
\n<\/em>They know me
\n<\/em>Extrasensory
\n<\/em>Synchronicity<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s so deep, it\u2019s so wide
\n<\/em>Your inside
\n<\/em>Synchronicity
\n<\/em>Effect without a cause
\n<\/em>Sub-atomic laws
\n<\/em>Scientific pause
\n<\/em>Synchronicity<\/em><\/p>\n

Another sequenced percussion loop presides over the following \u201cWalking in Your Footsteps,\u201d where Sting directly, ingeniously addresses our dinosaur predecessors in recognition of the mounting possibility of our own mass extinction. The main difference with mankind, of course, is that we will most likely bring it upon ourselves, whether ironically through the excessive burning of fossil fuels\u2013\u2013the physical remains of the very subject to which he sings\u2013\u2013or through the mutually assured destruction of nuclear conflict. In the early eighties, the escalating cold war still held sway through that paranoiac fear, and it manifested in many of the contemporary bands\u2019 lyrics, including these:<\/p>\n

Fifty million years ago
\n<\/em>You walked upon the planet so
\n<\/em>Lord of all that you could see
\n<\/em>Just a little bit like me<\/em><\/p>\n

Walking in your footsteps<\/em><\/p>\n

Hey Mr. Dinosaur
\n<\/em>You really couldn\u2019t ask for more
\n<\/em>You were God\u2019s favorite creature
\n<\/em>But you didn\u2019t have a future<\/em><\/p>\n

Walking in your footsteps<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Hey mighty brontosaurus
\n<\/em>Don\u2019t you have a lesson for us
\n<\/em>You thought your rule would always last
\n<\/em>There were no lessons in your past
\n<\/em>You were built three stories high
\n<\/em>They say you would not hurt a fly
\n<\/em>If we explode the atom bomb
\n<\/em>Would they say that we were dumb?<\/em><\/p>\n

We\u2019re walking in your footsteps<\/em><\/p>\n

They say the meek shall inherit the earth<\/em><\/p>\n

Sting sings the first two verses down in the middle C area and jumps up an octave from the long last verse on, an exciting dynamic shift over Copeland\u2019s stick-click-augmented but otherwise static backing track that gives the cut a likeminded primordial, tribal world music feel (reinforced by Sting\u2019s pan pipes and Summers\u2019s overdriven volume swells of vibe-abetting chords and notes).<\/p>\n

The following verse was one of two that ended up being cut from the final version to conserve vinyl space but found its way into the live rendition:<\/p>\n

They say it\u2019s our distinction
\n<\/em>To laugh at our extinction
\n<\/em>But you really have to think hard
\n<\/em>When you\u2019re walking in your graveyard
\n<\/em>Fifty million years ago
\n<\/em>They walked upon the planet so
\n<\/em>They live in a museum
\n<\/em>It\u2019s the only place you\u2019ll see \u2018em<\/em><\/p>\n

It\u2019s difficult to sing of the Judeo-Christian God without coming off as either overly pious or atheistically dismissive, but Sting manages an agnostic balance of sentiments on Synchronicity\u2019s<\/em> third track, the OMG-preempting, simultaneously beseeching and admonishing \u201cO My God,\u201d where he confronts a more familiar deity\u2019s hypocrisies while at once wishing He were closer, more evident:<\/p>\n

Everyone I know is lonely
\n<\/em>With God so far away
\n<\/em>And my heart belongs to no one
\n<\/em>So now sometimes I pray
\n<\/em>Take the space between us
\n<\/em>And fill it up some way
\n<\/em>Take this space between us
\n<\/em>And fill it up, fill it up<\/em><\/p>\n

Oh my God you take the biscuit
\n<\/em>Treating me this way
\n<\/em>Expecting me to treat you well
\n<\/em>No matter what you say
\n<\/em>I cannot turn the other cheek
\n<\/em>It\u2019s black and bruised and torn
\n<\/em>I\u2019ve been waiting
\n<\/em>Since the day that I was born<\/em>\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Fat man in his garden
\n<\/em>Thin man at his gate
\n<\/em>My God you must be sleeping
\n<\/em>Wake up\u2013it\u2019s much too late<\/em><\/p>\n

Sting\u2019s voice, a quirky and distinctive instrument in itself, helped set The Police apart even more. Possessed of a high range and reedy timbre, which was actually quite similar to the alto saxophone he fetishized, his voice cut through the minimalistic yet busy band mix and couldn\u2019t help but draw attention to the unconventional words he sang, not to mention the frontman himself. His Saxon roots had him gravelly and hoarse down in the lower reaches, but clear and piercing up high, where he spent much of his time. In this light, key modulations\u2013\u2013and genre modifications\u2013\u2013for many of the songs on the 2007- 2008 reunion tour, though perhaps disappointing to the purists, were a prudent necessity, and actually took strategic advantage of his aged and worn voice\u2019s augmented low end.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s virtually impossible to continue singing as he did in The Police, and the same holds true for any other male singer regularly residing in those rarified rafters, but Sting sounded in peak shape on the reunion tour, and even managed to show off some new tricks in the process (somewhere along the line he had learned breath support and sustain; listen to that tour\u2019s half-step-lowered version of \u201cWalking on the Moon,\u201d whether on Certifiable<\/em> or YouTube, where he hits the line, \u201cWalking back from your<\/u> house\u201d out of the park on a nightly basis with an average hold of at least 10 seconds at G#4 on the indicated word), though he never really did come around to vibrato.<\/p>\n