A generation ago, an adored and revered band chose to burn out rather than fade away.  The 1983 breakup of The Police was a mystery and a disappointment to their fans who looked to the band’s fusion of multicultural sounds and musical proficiency on songs like "Roxanne," "Message in a Bottle," and the great paranoia anthem, "Every Breath You Take," as an oasis in the pastel, plastic 1980s sonic landscape. 

Guitarist Andy Summers documents the interrupted rise of the band in Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving The Police, and chatted with us about what exactly happened, what it took to reunite, and how Sting “wasn’t a team player.”

AS:  There’s a very interesting thing that has to happen between the book and a film, as I discovered and learned along the way.  Of course, as the writer, you become very attached to your writing, and it was like you kill off your darlings, ‘Oh God, no, you’re not going to put that in? You’re killing me. It hurts.’  There was quite a lot of pain with this, you know.  It’s remarkable how this came about, but I did learn that you cannot photograph every page of the book; it has to become a flowing film.  It’s a different thing.  The film is not the book, it’s a film based on the book.  The book has got a lot more layers to it.  I advise you to read the book, if you want to really know me.

LMD:  I felt like it’s actually a fairly warts and all document…

AS:  Yeah, it’s pretty honest.

LMD:  However, you’re not just telling your story; you’re dealing with the lives of the two other people in your band.  Did you discuss the film and what would be included with Sting and Stewart Copeland beforehand?

AS:  No, not really, I didn’t talk to them about it as we were doing it.  Obviously, they had to sign off on it.  They had to say okay.  We’re very respectful of each other like this; we don’t stop each other doing stuff, but I had to actually formally get the go-ahead.  Stewart was very supportive and kind.  At the time, I don’t know what Sting was doing, I think he was in Canada, and I was going to go and take it to him and show it to him in his hotel, wherever he was, but I didn’t get that far.  It got sent to his manager, she signed off on it for him, but they know about it.  In fact, I got a very sweet email from Sting this morning, saying, “Good luck, mate.”  So it was really nice. They’re supportive, as we’ve always supported each other, and will continue to do so.

Yeah, the film has got some sort of real honesty in it, but I think that’s what makes it compelling, because obviously, what are you gonna be, just three sweet, mellow guys in the film?  No, it’s got to have some pain and it, and that’s part of being in a band. Alright, and now you grow up, get used to it.

LMD:  I think towards the end of The Police’s run, fans knew that there were tensions; that so much was leveled on, ‘Will Sting go solo?’  One of the film’s surprises was finding out that that worry had existed within the band from as early as the second album.

AS:  Yeah, I think I actually said that in the book.  I said I think I knew from the second album, how long this is going to last?  This won’t last, he’s going to go off. And somewhere probably around the second album, we were becoming so big so fast, that he got singled out pretty quickly, you know?  And then he went and made Quadrophenia, and he was still in the biggest band in the world; he couldn’t really leave, and we played the whole thing out.  You know, it’s interesting, actually, formally, we had a five album contract with A&M; we fulfilled the contract. {Laughs} We did the contract, now we’re done.  Which is ridiculous, of course, really, cos we could’ve renegotiated for incredible sums of money, probably.

LMD:  Having said that, was the fulfilment of that five album contract the impetus for ending The Police?  One of the things that’s a little bit vague in the film is what exactly the breaking point was that ended the group?

AS:  Nothing really happened that was like, ‘Oh, that’s it, I’m never playing with you again!’  There was no incident.  It was just like we got to the fifth album, and the truth is - and we’ve all said this before - I think Sting really wanted to be on his own.  He wanted to prove it solo.  Which, you know, is a classic thing with singers - white male singers - they all do it, don’t they?  They all do it.  Apart from U2, the only ones who never did it.  Everyone else does it.  It’s sort of amazing, actually.  It’s almost a cliché.  What you should do is go and do your solo and come back, and sell out to another 80,000 people every night.  That’s what you should do, but of course it doesn’t always go like that, because it gets to be about other stuff, as well.

You know, when you think about that breakup in 1983, it’s kind of an incredibly brilliant move to go off at the top and just leave everyone in shock.*Makes bug-eyed, open-mouthed shocked face*  At the same time, it’s, ‘You’re idiots! Why are you stopping?’  We could’ve gone on forever.  We had it, no one was going to get past us.  But it’s possible that it left that incredible seed of want in there, because when we came back to our reunion tour, it was one of the biggest tours of all time.  Look what it did?  Phenomenal.

LMD:  I’m curious why you said right before the reunion concert at Dodgers Stadium, “This is the biggest show of our lives.”

AS:  Yeah, I don’t know why said that.  No, it wasn’t.  Cos we played the US Festival and that was 200,000.  That was bigger.  No, we shouldn’t have put that in the film.  Edit!

LMD:  I wished a little more time had been spent on how you created that signature guitar sound that everyone immediately identifies with Andy Summers of The Police.

AS:  Well, it’s in the book.  I develop it quite a bit in the book.  People ask about it and I developed the story of how it all really came about in rehearsal.  I can give you the breakdown of that a little bit, if you like. Cos there we were in the middle of the whole crazy punk scene, and we were supposed to be a punk band, but obviously we all had something other than punk in our musical oeuvre, if you like, and that really started to come out in the rehearsals, as we started to practice and tried to come up with songs when we didn’t have any songs.  And so, now I was in the band, and the palette changed; the guitar palette changed completely, and Sting’s ear started to open. 

Suddenly, it didn’t have to be the fast and furious shouted vocal, cos he could sing, and he was lyrical, and he had a lot of songs in a big book that he sort of seemed to say that he’d just written for our band even though they been around for a while. {Laughs} Yeah.  He had this huge hardbound book, and he would be like looking in the Bible and he’d pull something out.

But I was able to bring something to him that the other guitar player hadn’t, and suddenly we started reacting to one another.  Also, with the credo that we didn’t want to sound really at all like anyone else; that was including other punk bands, but we had enough musical ammunition of our own, that we didn’t have to.  I started playing with an echo player.  I stopped playing these big power chords; I was playing these sort of fragmented chords with echo in the chorus and the echoplex rhythm, and Stewart started playing off that.  Sting started to incorporate the bass line and his vocals were, like, way over the top.  Suddenly we were getting this thing that we almost didn’t realize that we had until other people started pointing it out to us.  ‘Oh yeah, yeah, we have a thing. Oh yes, that thing, right.’  We started to recognize our own stuff and that we had a style.  This sort of came out of negation; we don’t want to do this and we don’t want to do that, we don’t want to sound like this, and we don’t want to look like that.  Can we unify it, become a thing?  We dyed our hair blonde, so on and so forth, and that’s how it was born.

LMD:  There’s an excellent piece of early interview footage of Sting telling off a reporter, “You’re trying to break us up,” and sounding very concrete about his allegiance to The Police, but shortly after that scene, you say, “Sting wasn’t a team player.”  What did you mean by that?

AS:  Well, I think, you know, I say that a kind way - not being a team player - because some people aren’t.  I don’t know that I am, particularly.  I like to run the team, basically, but in our band, we had three guys trying to run the team. {Laughs}  There we were, everybody wanted to be the team leader; but I wasn’t really about tell Stewart about drumming, or Sting about singing, but I certainly wouldn’t have any of them tell me about guitar playing, either. 

So, it was sort of a tense dynamic, but out of that, of course, you’ve got the incredible spark that makes a great band, cos you can’t really have a great rock band without that.  Not necessarily tension, but that sort of spark of personality clash; you need it, you need it.  So, when I say he’s not a team player, I mean let me say he’s gifted enough to be completely able do it solo.  He’s a very gifted musician.  And absolutely, of course he can be in a team; we all can when we have to play our parts, but some of us can go it alone.  I could be making records on my own, or directing musicians for years; I always led my own bands for years now, ever since The Police.

LMD:  You’ve gone on to make about a dozen solo albums and made some great film scores. What perspective did your time away give you when the three of you were back together as The Police?

AS:  Hm, it’s interesting.  Well, you know, of course I’ve made a lot of records and got into a lot of quite complex music.  In a sense - putting it in sort of crude musical terms - you’re sort of honing your chops all the time, I just got better and better as a player, and I would play more complex stuff.  I was always good, but the time I got to The Police, I’d been a music major in college; I played loads of classical guitar and jazz.  I was a pretty full player and I continued straight on with it. 

Well, actually, you know what, what is weird - I will say this - after The Police, I sort of stopped practicing.  I played, I toured, I made records, but like the thing with the guitar and practicing all day - not all day, but always into it, into it - it stopped for a while.  I think the whole success, incredibly, took it away from me: Like I’d made it as a guitar player the whole way, and I’d stopped sort of pursuing it for a while.  And then one day - the reason I got back to it was I did a tour with Larry Coryell, the jazz guitar great - and Larry came to LA and we started rehearsing together, and his thing for the guitar, it just completely inspired me again, and I started really playing again.  It was a weird thing.  And then I went straight back in and I never stopped ever since, and I’m happily back to it.

So, like you were asking about going back into the tour -  I’d had all this musical experience in between; I’d played at Carnegie {Hall}, I’d done so much stuff all over the world - so the way I always look at these things is I’ve played in the toilets of the world and the stadiums of the world. {Laughs}  I’ve done them all.  It’s just another gig, you know, I’m not gonna get thrown by it.  Stuff happens.  Life happens around you when you do these shows and you never know where it’s going to go, how you’re gonna get on the stage, how you’re gonna get off? 

You learn through experience to roll with the punches.  You learn certain devices of protection; personal protection, both physically and mentally to make sure that you’re gonna get there and you’re gonna stand there, and it’s going to be okay, so there’s a set up.  That’s an experience to some extent, which I’ve learned over the years; I’ve been in so many situations.  So, in a way, I was able to take on The Police tour cos I had a lot of help to handle it; the psychological thing about the three of us being back together - ‘Okay, don’t lose it, you know? Let’s just be very centered on this. Cos this is a volatile situation and we don’t want to blow this, this is sort of the opportunity of a lifetime. Don’t blow it. Don’t let any of us blow it apart. Let’s hold it together.’  And we did.

LMD:  What would you like Can’t Stand Losing You to say to audiences who are longtime fans and viewers who might be either unfamiliar or possibly not yet born when The Police broke up?

AS:  The central message of the book was, look, what it’s all about, apart from the fame, the money, the women, you know, all of this stuff, is really the guitar.  That’s the thing I always come back to.  I always come back to.  Whatever happens, I’ve still got this bit of wood between my hands and I’m gonna just relate to it.  That’s the thing!  It’s always been the thing; the music, and really, the instrument.  Playing the instrument and trying to play it as well as possible.  It never left.

~ The Lady Miz Diva

March 18^th, 2015