Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: Drummer and composer Stuart Copeland has one of the more
Speaker 2: fascinating bios in modern music. His father was a founding
Speaker 2: member of the CIA, and his mom worked in British intelligence.
Speaker 2: He grew up the youngest of four kids, living for
Speaker 2: a time in the hills outside of Beirut before attending
Speaker 2: boarding schools in England. After playing in the successful UK
Speaker 2: prog rock band Curved Air in the mid seventies, Stuart
Speaker 2: started a new band called The Police with bassist and
Speaker 2: lead singer Sting and eventually guitarist Andy Summers. Over the
Speaker 2: next decade, the Police would go on to become one
Speaker 2: of the top selling rock bands of all time, selling
Speaker 2: over seventy five million records. Last year, Stuart released the
Speaker 2: book Stuart Copeland's Police Diaries, which includes his personal notes
Speaker 2: dating back to the band's formation in nineteen seventy six
Speaker 2: through seventy eight, when they started to take off. On
Speaker 2: today's episode, Bruce Heln talks to Stuart Copeland about the
Speaker 2: first time he saw Sting play and how he was
Speaker 2: able to successfully lure him into his then non existent band.
Speaker 2: Stuart also explains why he and Sting eventually had a
Speaker 2: musical falling out, and how the Arabic rhythms he heard
Speaker 2: growing up in Lebanon influenced his highly lauded drumming style.
Speaker 2: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 2: I'm justin Mitchman. Here's Bruce Heln's conversation with Stuart Copeland.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for doing this. You're always
Speaker 3: doing something. One of the latest things you've done is
Speaker 3: Stuart Copeland's Police Diaries, and I'd like to start by
Speaker 3: talking about that. It's this incredible chronicle of three years
Speaker 3: in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Yes, the years of the CUSP.
Speaker 3: How did the book come about? What was it like
Speaker 3: doing it?
Speaker 1: Well, I had the diaries already, sort of like when
Speaker 1: I made my film. I had the film already that
Speaker 1: was sitting in shoe boxes until they invented computers where
Speaker 1: I could digitize them all. The books was not the
Speaker 1: same problem. But I've got these diaries sitting in a
Speaker 1: drawer over there, and they're tiny little books, so they
Speaker 1: don't take up too much space. I still got them,
Speaker 1: and I'm not quite sure where the idea came from
Speaker 1: to turn them into kind of more like a scrapbook
Speaker 1: than a book book. But looking at these notes, how
Speaker 1: much we got paid, what clubs we played, just the
Speaker 1: statistics of the day got me thinking and philosophizing. So
Speaker 1: I ended up writing a lot of modern commentary to
Speaker 1: go with those historical notes.
Speaker 3: But they're precisely the right kind of diaries that most
Speaker 3: people don't keep. People often write about their feelings, which
Speaker 3: you don't care about twenty years later, but you want
Speaker 3: to know how much you got paid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I got both of those diaries. I've got my
Speaker 1: secret innermost thoughts, which are not pretty. I could only
Speaker 1: stand to look at them forty years later, and they
Speaker 1: take on a and comedic element forty years later. But
Speaker 1: it's all my secret, grandiose schemes, gloating over this grievance,
Speaker 1: nurturing you know, I don't need these guys. I had
Speaker 1: a hit with Clark Kent, but while the police was
Speaker 1: still starving and going nowhere, out of the blue, I
Speaker 1: recorded some songs my gosh darn self, and by some miracle,
Speaker 1: BBC Radio One picked it up, put it on the playlist,
Speaker 1: and there I am, under the name of Clark Kent,
Speaker 1: having a hit. And I can say, looking at what
Speaker 1: my thinking was at the time, I don't need these
Speaker 1: guys that Clark Kent disappeared in the nick of time.
Speaker 3: But they were very game. They appeared with you on
Speaker 3: top of the pops Sting and Andy Summers.
Speaker 1: Sting was very supportive. Of course, we know why because
Speaker 1: he was in the process of taking over the Police,
Speaker 1: and that just made his job a lot easier to
Speaker 1: keep me busy and distracted with Clark Kent and my
Speaker 1: dumb song. Okay, there's where you could take your dumb songs. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: the Police's mine. And by the way, that was good
Speaker 1: news for me. Weirdly, actually not weirdly at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's a logic to it that at a certain point
Speaker 1: I can see the setlists at a certain point, they're
Speaker 1: in his handwriting, and you could see his maneuvering to
Speaker 1: take over the band. And nothing could have made me
Speaker 1: happier because my thought at the time was keeping him
Speaker 1: in the band, and to the extent that he took
Speaker 1: an interest in the band was the extent that I
Speaker 1: could feel secure in keeping him in the band. So
Speaker 1: I was real happy when he took on leadership position,
Speaker 1: when he took the initiative, when he stepped forward, even
Speaker 1: when it was my band, and he was doing it
Speaker 1: kind of because I pushed him into it. As soon
Speaker 1: as we walked on stage. He was in charge, he
Speaker 1: was on the mic. He would take no prisoners. If
Speaker 1: he's walking on stage, it is his sacred duty to
Speaker 1: burn the house down. And so that was always fine
Speaker 1: on stage, but off stage, everybody London was whispering in
Speaker 1: his ear. And so as he asserted himself more and more,
Speaker 1: I felt more and more secure that the band would survive.
Speaker 3: And you didn't have insecurity about the writing because you'd
Speaker 3: written so many songs.
Speaker 1: No, not at all, because his songs every time he
Speaker 1: brought one in was an upgrade. Wow, let's play that.
Speaker 1: And my songs were pretty much not because I had
Speaker 1: an achy breaky heart and needed to unload my feelings
Speaker 1: upon the world. No, they were just songs of utility,
Speaker 1: something we could play in those punk clubs, you know,
Speaker 1: basslines with the yelling to fill the punk brief. And
Speaker 1: so I didn't have any thoughts of myself as a songwriter.
Speaker 1: So when he brought songs in, I was always very happy.
Speaker 1: They were always an upgrade.
Speaker 3: Looking back now, though you didn't think of yourself as
Speaker 3: a songwriter then you've written just a staggering amount of music.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but not so much songs. I've had success in
Speaker 1: almost every known form of music up for songs. You know.
Speaker 1: My first success, I suppose on my own, was with
Speaker 1: a song Don't Care, under the name of Clark Kent,
Speaker 1: and that was pretty much it for my songwriting. Then
Speaker 1: with film, composing, with opera, with symphonic works, in every
Speaker 1: other known form of music, ethnic stuff, global stuff, and
Speaker 1: so on. I've had a heck of a party. That
Speaker 1: song thing not my strongest suit.
Speaker 3: I guess that's an interesting question. What makes either a
Speaker 3: good song or a good song writer?
Speaker 1: Then, well, giving a darn about the lyrics? For one,
Speaker 1: me in the car, driving along, slapping the steering wheel.
Speaker 1: It's the baseline, it's the riff, it's the drums. Somebody's
Speaker 1: singing something somewhere, but I never paid attention. I never
Speaker 1: sang in the shower, I never sing in the car.
Speaker 1: I'm not so much of a song I don't. I
Speaker 1: listened to the musical textures. That's what catches my ear,
Speaker 1: and by the way, that goes for police songs too.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what the hell he was singing about,
Speaker 1: you know, all I ever saw was the back of
Speaker 1: his head, preferably, and I don't know what he was
Speaker 1: thinking about. And it wasn't until I did my Police
Speaker 1: Deranged for Orchestra that I took those songs and I
Speaker 1: had to analyze them and orchestrate them and figure out
Speaker 1: the vocal harmonies for my three singers and so on,
Speaker 1: that I realized, Damn, those lyrics are pretty smart. Damn
Speaker 1: should have paid attention. At the time, I was just
Speaker 1: banging shit. I didn't need to pay attention. That was
Speaker 1: his gig. It wasn't until years later that I discovered
Speaker 1: and don't tell him I said this, that guy's kind
Speaker 1: of a genius with the words.
Speaker 3: Yeah. One thing I loved about the book is it
Speaker 3: does go from the sort of slow death of your
Speaker 3: band Curved Air, through the birth of the Police. But
Speaker 3: it's really also this document about what happened when punk
Speaker 3: rock hit. Yes, because you were a little older, you
Speaker 3: weren't punk rock wasn't your first go at the music business?
Speaker 3: What did it feel like in London? Then?
Speaker 1: Very exciting because for the likes of Stingo and I,
Speaker 1: who were born in the fifties early fifties, we were
Speaker 1: too young to be hit. The hippie thing had come
Speaker 1: and gone. If we could feel the entropy of that world,
Speaker 1: the prog world, and this new thing. We were older
Speaker 1: than the Damned and the Clash and the pistols, you know,
Speaker 1: and we'd been professionals. We actually knew how to play
Speaker 1: our instruments and were professional musicians. Where a lot of
Speaker 1: the charm of punk was the naivete and the Clash
Speaker 1: were the These knives who knew three chords but had
Speaker 1: great attitude, great look and just instinctively were great musicians
Speaker 1: without a lot of musical vocabulary, and that kind of
Speaker 1: distilled the excitement of that punk sound. But we knew better,
Speaker 1: we knew more. We had a larger musical vocabulary in
Speaker 1: which we had to hide at first, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: until we started unhiding that musicality. Like when Andy joined,
Speaker 1: we couldn't hide it anymore. And that's when Stings started
Speaker 1: writing the big songs, and we just had to live
Speaker 1: up to the fact that we actually knew one or
Speaker 1: two things about music. But that cusp to which you
Speaker 1: were was an interesting time. Think. In nineteen seventy six
Speaker 1: there was an oil crisis which raised the price of
Speaker 1: vinyl drastically that was the talk at the time. Suddenly
Speaker 1: records became Suddenly the music industry had the stuffing knocked
Speaker 1: out of it by supply chain issues kind of thing,
Speaker 1: and also just the feeling that everyone had seen it done.
Speaker 1: It had all been seen and done where it needs
Speaker 1: something new, folks. And then one of the sex pistols
Speaker 1: I think is either Paul Cook or Jonesy said fuck
Speaker 1: on National TV and a whole new world opened up.
Speaker 3: Was it at all threatening to you as someone who
Speaker 3: loved music and valued music. Your two bandmates are both
Speaker 3: excellent musicians, and suddenly the airwaves are dominated by people
Speaker 3: who can't really play well.
Speaker 1: Actually know, the airwaves were not dominated because the BBC
Speaker 1: didn't play them. They were still playing old wave, they
Speaker 1: were still playing progue, well not even prog, they were
Speaker 1: playing pop music. And what was so appealing about the
Speaker 1: punk scene was that it didn't rely on you know,
Speaker 1: radio play. It was word of mouth, it was the fanzines,
Speaker 1: it was just the scene being on the scene. You
Speaker 1: could do it your damn self. And he didn't need
Speaker 1: a record company. And one of the things I noticed
Speaker 1: reading my diaries when I went from a prog band,
Speaker 1: which was you know, it had been successful long before
Speaker 1: my time. I was the last rat to jump aboard
Speaker 1: the sinking ship. But it was playing big places for
Speaker 1: good money. We had a road crew, we had a
Speaker 1: special car for you know, we were living high on
Speaker 1: the hog, on the dregs of the prog rock industry.
Speaker 1: I never see any complaint going from three roadies in
Speaker 1: a fancy car to no roadies and we're riding down
Speaker 1: in a truck and literally we played Torquy. We slept
Speaker 1: in a farm shed like Jesus in a manger, But
Speaker 1: not any complaint. It was because this is my band
Speaker 1: and it was doing We're doing it for ourselves. You know,
Speaker 1: we get paid thirty quid. It would go into our
Speaker 1: pockets right away rather than getting sucked up by the machine.
Speaker 1: And so even though we were on much reduced circumstances,
Speaker 1: just the feeling that we were in charge of our
Speaker 1: destiny made up for that. But you know, the old
Speaker 1: scene was going out and the new scene was the
Speaker 1: new wave was coming in, and we would be on
Speaker 1: the front of that way rather than swirling in the
Speaker 1: SuDS on the back side. But then down in those
Speaker 1: punk clubs, it was all going on. It was exciting
Speaker 1: and we could be boss of it. And when Sting
Speaker 1: and I went down to the Roxy Club first open,
Speaker 1: we looked around at all the minnows, which as sharks
Speaker 1: we could consume.
Speaker 3: Did you always feel the band had a destiny?
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh absolutely. I think I'm pretty sure that every
Speaker 1: band thinks that world domination is their rightful destiny.
Speaker 3: Did anything surprise you going through the diaries, Well.
Speaker 1: A few things. One was how much of a slog
Speaker 1: it was, I mean, looking through these pages, here, wake up,
Speaker 1: you know, go down to Ealing, pick up the truck,
Speaker 1: drive the truck over to the other end of London,
Speaker 1: pick up the gear, drive over to pick up Andy,
Speaker 1: drive to the rehearsal. Rehearsal all day, try and book
Speaker 1: some dates, drop the gear off that you know, just endless,
Speaker 1: endless hustle. Then hoover the apartment. Then have an Indian meal.
Speaker 1: Every Indian meal is carefully documented, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: But the largest thing that surprised me looking back with
Speaker 1: all that struggle and toil was that we didn't have songs. Remembering,
Speaker 1: we didn't have rock sand, we didn't have a message
Speaker 1: in a bottle, we didn't have every breath you take.
Speaker 1: We didn't have anything but dead end job, these dumb
Speaker 1: songs that I had written, so we knew that we
Speaker 1: were in the right musical company. We're playing with the
Speaker 1: right players. This is the band. Even though we didn't
Speaker 1: have those brilliant songs. We had crap songs, but just
Speaker 1: the musicianship of our partners in crime, that's what kept
Speaker 1: us together. And then one day we ran into Andy
Speaker 1: Summers and Sting's ears pricked up and he started writing
Speaker 1: those songs, which I'll have to ask him about this,
Speaker 1: but you know, you'll have to ask him about this,
Speaker 1: But I don't think he had much of an inkling
Speaker 1: himself that he could write those hits, because he saw
Speaker 1: himself as a jazz musician, which is kind of the
Speaker 1: antithesis of pop songs. So I think he was just
Speaker 1: as surprised as us that he just had this knack.
Speaker 1: He just, you know, he what he learned from punk,
Speaker 1: which was the distillation of the musical material into verse chorus,
Speaker 1: verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus out done very simple formula
Speaker 1: from the Beatles, you know, through all pop music. And
Speaker 1: I think that distillation, combined with Andy's expanded harmonic musical vocabulary.
Speaker 1: That's when nuclear fusion happened.
Speaker 3: Was there a moment where you saw that. Was there
Speaker 3: one song that you thought, wait a second, this could
Speaker 3: be it?
Speaker 1: There were moments and songs. Born in the fifties was
Speaker 1: the first song he brought in, well, not even one
Speaker 1: of his big ones, but it was such a cool song,
Speaker 1: thinking yeah, let's play. But it didn't dawn on me
Speaker 1: that somebody else was writing songs. I just never crossed
Speaker 1: my mind. That's a cool song. Let's play. It can't
Speaker 1: stand Losing You was the first one, or maybe Roxane
Speaker 1: was the first sort of reggae ish one that we attempted,
Speaker 1: and it worked out really well that we really were
Speaker 1: very pleased with ourselves. Well this is darn clever. This
Speaker 1: will bring world domination within our grasp, and we loved it.
Speaker 1: But the more inspiring moments were moments rather than songs,
Speaker 1: and for instance, one of those would be when we
Speaker 1: went to Germany. There's the whole Andy the Courtship of
Speaker 1: Andy Summers part of the book. But he joined canned
Speaker 1: all of his other gigs, but he had one gig
Speaker 1: left over in Germany. There was this German composer called
Speaker 1: Eberhart Schener, who had this multi media show involving lasers,
Speaker 1: ballet dancing, a jazz saxophonist, all these different elements, and
Speaker 1: Andy Summers and and got me the job. Say any night,
Speaker 1: go over to Germany. And we convinced that this is
Speaker 1: a great show. What you need just one last element,
Speaker 1: you need punk band. And we got this bass player
Speaker 1: over in London, so we brought the bass player over.
Speaker 1: So we're all rehearsing for this show. And one night
Speaker 1: I think it was actually live on stage because we
Speaker 1: were unrehearsed and we you know a lot of it.
Speaker 1: We didn't know what was supposed to happen next. And
Speaker 1: one of the elements was jazz singer Lady and she
Speaker 1: was sort of the Shah day of her day and
Speaker 1: sang flat and liked it that way. You know, she
Speaker 1: had the one shoulder down the jazz attitude and sneered
Speaker 1: at us punk rockers. And one day she made the
Speaker 1: mistake of walking away from the microphone, and young Stingo
Speaker 1: walks up to the microphone and starts this keening wailing.
Speaker 1: I don't know how to describe it, just yodeling. Anybody
Speaker 1: whoever came to a police show knows exactly what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about. You know, when Sting goes off, he just
Speaker 1: starts some repetitive vocalization combined with the bassline that we'd
Speaker 1: never heard before. Then he just goes off and it
Speaker 1: comes to him and every heart is broken. The birds
Speaker 1: stop their song just like Andy and Iron. The shadows
Speaker 1: next him, going holy gopher fuck, where did that come from?
Speaker 1: And he just like he takes flight right there in
Speaker 1: front of us, and we're going, Jesus Christ. We'd only
Speaker 1: ever heard him yelling, you know, because that was his
Speaker 1: brief in the punk band. But to just hear him
Speaker 1: soaring with that kind of melodic invention, None of that
Speaker 1: would have been allowed in London. We would have been
Speaker 1: torn apart by the New Musical Express and by Melody
Speaker 1: Maker and so on for such musicality. And our next
Speaker 1: time was when we went over to America, where people
Speaker 1: didn't know any better. They didn't know that it was
Speaker 1: supposed to be crap music only is allowed, and so
Speaker 1: we would stretch our scant material into three sets, which
Speaker 1: involved a lot of jamming and improvisation, and that again
Speaker 1: is where we discovered each other. Damn that Andy's got
Speaker 1: some chops on him. You know, I'd only ever heard
Speaker 1: him god, you know, but now he's playing with all
Speaker 1: that virtuositic you know, that stuff he can do with
Speaker 1: his fingers, arpeggiated things, these sound clouds and so on,
Speaker 1: and so we kind of discovered ourselves at these crucial moments.
Speaker 3: Is that when you really heard that kind of police
Speaker 3: sound for the first time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was when Stings got licensed to actually sing,
Speaker 1: and when Andy he had another factor, which is that
Speaker 1: his gear was I think he had a music Man amp,
Speaker 1: which is a very clean amplifier, perfect for air conditioned
Speaker 1: studio session recording, but not to move air at a
Speaker 1: punk club. But he developed his pedals, his effects into
Speaker 1: a manageable, portable foot board. We called it the fred
Speaker 1: Astaire with all of his effects and gismatronics, his delay
Speaker 1: lines and echo n and he developed this style of
Speaker 1: guitar playing which was not about wiggling his fingers but
Speaker 1: about creating a soundscape song as like walking on the Moon.
Speaker 1: There's no Fiddley Eric Clapton on there. It's just an
Speaker 1: entire orchestral world of sound that Andy started creating. So
Speaker 1: the discovery of Stings singing and his songwriting and Andy's
Speaker 1: huge sound vocabulary as well as harmonic vocabulary. That's when
Speaker 1: the police sound began to emerge.
Speaker 3: Now you're this guy that doesn't like jazz or didn't like.
Speaker 1: That I'm I'm just at the back of the stage
Speaker 1: banging shit.
Speaker 3: But suddenly you've got a jazz bass player, and you've
Speaker 3: got Andy who loves using chord extensions and you know,
Speaker 3: sharp thirteenths and he'll take the third out of the
Speaker 3: chord to create all this. Were you thinking, this isn't
Speaker 3: why I got in this or did you just love
Speaker 3: the effect?
Speaker 1: No, it was why I got into it, because somewhere
Speaker 1: beneath the machiavellian game plan of a punk band to
Speaker 1: play in the punk scene, there was still this inner, deeper,
Speaker 1: lurking musicality that could not be suppressed, which just woke
Speaker 1: up to that cool shit that Andy and Sting were
Speaker 1: coming up with. And in fact, I saw that moment
Speaker 1: with Sting driving home from our first session with Andy,
Speaker 1: where we were the hired rhythm section on someone else's
Speaker 1: album and Andy was the hired guitar player. That's where
Speaker 1: we met Andy. Andy walks in the room. We'd all
Speaker 1: heard about him by reputation. Wow, you know we got
Speaker 1: this is some big brass we got going here. And
Speaker 1: we just spent a day playing actual music. It wasn't
Speaker 1: hit music, but it was real music, and we just
Speaker 1: felt so fulfilled. And driving home that night, Stingo is
Speaker 1: seething and he's just saying, Man, I love Henry, our guitarist,
Speaker 1: who only knew three chords. We could play them really well.
Speaker 1: I had the vibe, he had the right shades and
Speaker 1: the upturned leather jacket collar and everything. He was perfect.
Speaker 1: In fact, he was the nearly genuine punk in the band.
Speaker 1: But that musicality thing is things is just going gosh,
Speaker 1: you know, music got it forgotten? What is like to
Speaker 1: be playing music? We got to get you know, that
Speaker 1: guy in the band. I'm saying, dude, we can't afford him.
Speaker 1: There's no way. Why would he he joined. You know,
Speaker 1: even if he says he's going to join, they'll quit
Speaker 1: a week later when he sees the shit we have
Speaker 1: to put up with. And this thing is going. God,
Speaker 1: you know, you're a better guitar player than Henry Pottervani
Speaker 1: and your crap. And I think, really, God, out of
Speaker 1: the blue, this unexpected Accolade, and then over the next
Speaker 1: few weeks this dance began where you know, we're sort
Speaker 1: of in touch. You know that Mike Hollett, a guy
Speaker 1: played in a band called Gong, which I'm sure no
Speaker 1: one in America has heard of, big in Europe, and
Speaker 1: it was his solo album. He was a bass player.
Speaker 1: Why did he want a bass player? God only knows. Anyhow,
Speaker 1: he woke up twenty years later saying, my gosh, my
Speaker 1: solo album that I made twenty years ago. The band
Speaker 1: is the Police. So he called this all up and said, hey,
Speaker 1: do you mind if I release I'm sure, man, you
Speaker 1: paid us fifty quit it's your record, And so he
Speaker 1: released it under the name Police Academy. It's an interesting record.
Speaker 1: You hear the same three guys what they sounded like
Speaker 1: an album or two later. You know, the material is
Speaker 1: not that great, but the playing sure is.
Speaker 3: So did Andy ever say why he joined the band?
Speaker 1: I asked him. He said, like I said, I don't know,
Speaker 1: what were you thinking? And I asked myself as well,
Speaker 1: how was I able to hold on to Sting in
Speaker 1: that world? I just we knew, you know, from the
Speaker 1: first time we played together. You know, he came down
Speaker 1: to London. He called me from a phone booth on
Speaker 1: the street outside my apartment and he came on up.
Speaker 1: We just plugged in and started playing and that was
Speaker 1: the rest is history. We just knew that this is
Speaker 1: the right musical company.
Speaker 3: What's that first session?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: What happened?
Speaker 1: Well? I saw him up in Newcastle. I was playing
Speaker 1: with the old with curved air and my prog rock
Speaker 1: band with long hair and flouncy clothes. On a night
Speaker 1: off in Newcastle, the local journalist Bill Suckcliffe took us
Speaker 1: to see the local hero band, kind of a jazz band,
Speaker 1: sort of not that too distant from Return to Forever
Speaker 1: or something like that, these kind of progressive jazz crossover
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And I wasn't didn't that much care
Speaker 1: for the music. But the bass player could play bass
Speaker 1: and sing. And I was looking for either guitarists who
Speaker 1: could sing or a bass player who could sing one
Speaker 1: of it because I can't I'm breathing too hard banging
Speaker 1: on drums. And I could see, Yeah, he can sing
Speaker 1: and play bass. That's cool. And look behind him, Yep,
Speaker 1: that's a nice big old Fender basement amp he's got there,
Speaker 1: So he's got an amp, too cool, But that wasn't
Speaker 1: what really did it. What really did it for me
Speaker 1: was that golden ray of celestial light coming down from
Speaker 1: the heavens, alighting upon his magnificent brow. And I looked
Speaker 1: up there at that guy on stage with his pretty
Speaker 1: serviceable amp can sing and play bass, and saw that
Speaker 1: is a meal ticket.
Speaker 3: But you still you had to have that moment where
Speaker 3: you played together for the first time.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, So I call up the journalist Phil Suckliffe
Speaker 1: and I say that bass player Sting, we were introduced,
Speaker 1: but he was staring off into space. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he even saw me. I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: can say about Stingo that success never changed him. You know,
Speaker 1: he was the lion king from birth. But I sure
Speaker 1: saw him. Anyways, I call up the journalists and say,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm telling him, I got the scene going
Speaker 1: on in London. It's all going great and with this
Speaker 1: whole punk thing, London is explaining and right there the
Speaker 1: temperature drops thirty degrees Punk because you see, in those days,
Speaker 1: Punk was the barbarians at the gates. They were the
Speaker 1: enemy of all that is decent. They were, as you say,
Speaker 1: tearing down all known values of art, creativity and musicality.
Speaker 1: They were the enemy. And here as I talking about
Speaker 1: yanking the star from their local hero band down to
Speaker 1: London to play punk and he refused to give me
Speaker 1: his number. Oh man, So I hung up, and I'm
Speaker 1: a little disappointed. I'm walking around and then I came
Speaker 1: up with a much better idea much more persuasive argument
Speaker 1: to tell Phil, and I called him back and the
Speaker 1: argument went along the lines of give me his fucking number, asshole.
Speaker 1: And I called him back with this winning argument, but
Speaker 1: he didn't pick up. His girlfriend did, and she says, oh, hello,
Speaker 1: is there anything I can do? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know that bass player sting guy I was looking
Speaker 1: trying to get his number. Yeah, hang on a tick
Speaker 1: and she goes off to get his phone book and okay,
Speaker 1: here it is seven three to two four nine one
Speaker 1: eight five three four, And one minute later, I'm on
Speaker 1: the phone and that gravelly voice with which we are
Speaker 1: so familiar these days is saying these fateful words. Keep talking,
Speaker 1: And that was an answer to my question to him. Look,
Speaker 1: I'm calling from London. Phil Suckcliffe gave me your number,
Speaker 1: and I've got this thing going on, and it only
Speaker 1: involves you, not your band, to which he responded, keep talking.
Speaker 1: And right there I knew that he was a free agent. Yes, yes, okay,
Speaker 1: and I subjected him to my torrent of grandiose schemes
Speaker 1: and convincing certitude that we're going to be I got
Speaker 1: it all going on. I got a scene down here,
Speaker 1: I got connections, and he wanted to move down to
Speaker 1: the big city. He'd outgrown Newcastle and this is the
Speaker 1: only person he knew in London who was offering him something.
Speaker 1: So he said, okay, I got your number. I'll give
Speaker 1: you a call. Not long after, maybe two three weeks later,
Speaker 1: I get a call and he's down on the street
Speaker 1: outside my place, in a phone booth, and I said,
Speaker 1: come on up, and he comes up, and I put
Speaker 1: a bass into his hands and we let rip, and
Speaker 1: we surge high to the stars. We dig deep to
Speaker 1: the bowels of the earth. We pushed forward like an
Speaker 1: invading army, We withdraw into poignant sensitivities, and it just
Speaker 1: goes every which way, just like it was just the
Speaker 1: most amazing afternoon of playing the most amazing music that
Speaker 1: either of us had ever participated in. And okay, we
Speaker 1: got a band. Here and I told him I do
Speaker 1: have a guitarist. I had to find a guitarist to
Speaker 1: make good on that promise, and so I introduced him
Speaker 1: to Henry Pottervanni. Now Henry Pottervanni was a chum of mine,
Speaker 1: recent chum of mine. He would recently become a bonafid
Speaker 1: he punk by dropping acid and cutting his hair. And
Speaker 1: I had to show him EA and D chords and
Speaker 1: also G so that when we're in the bandroom and
Speaker 1: I said okay, Henry, I said A, and then it
Speaker 1: goes to D, he would know what the hell I
Speaker 1: was talking about. Stings saw through that in a heartbeat,
Speaker 1: and once again I'm amazed that he didn't fall for it,
Speaker 1: but he put up with it, and that amazes me.
Speaker 1: Almost half a century later.
Speaker 2: After this quick break, we'll be back with more from
Speaker 2: Bruce Headlam and Stuart Copeland. We're back with Bruce Headlam
Speaker 2: and Stuart Copeland.
Speaker 3: I think, like a lot of fans, I knew your
Speaker 3: father was somehow involved in the CIA, not realizing that
Speaker 3: your father was one of the founders of the CIA.
Speaker 3: He was a legitimately big deal.
Speaker 1: But a great jazz trumpeter too.
Speaker 3: Also a great Jazz Trumpeter. Now you didn't know he
Speaker 3: was in the CIA at that point, well, growing up,
Speaker 3: not when I was growing.
Speaker 1: Up, but when I was in college he wrote his
Speaker 1: first book and there it was on the liner notes,
Speaker 1: Dad Gosh, And the book came out during the time
Speaker 1: of the Chilean crisis, when the CIA was involved in
Speaker 1: very dirty stuff, and so the CIA was a bad
Speaker 1: word at the time. But I understood what my father's
Speaker 1: work in the Middle East was all about, which was
Speaker 1: keeping the oil flowing to the West rather than north
Speaker 1: to the Soviet Union, because there was a war going on.
Speaker 1: There was a Cold War going on, and it was
Speaker 1: critical for American interests, and my father was doing his
Speaker 1: patriotic duty to manipulate local politics for the betterment of
Speaker 1: the American economy, to feed our factories. And the Ruskies.
Speaker 1: Their job was to tear down our systems, our relationships
Speaker 1: with the Saudi Arabian oil fields and the Gulf States.
Speaker 1: Their job was to shake it up and make it
Speaker 1: unstable so as to foil our global dominance. So my
Speaker 1: daddy played his part in those local politics. And as
Speaker 1: an apologist for my father's work, I can say that
Speaker 1: that world was run by monarchs or other forms of
Speaker 1: dictator That was their political system, and for them democracy
Speaker 1: was a very strange idea because of their tribal rivalries.
Speaker 1: For them, democracy was exactly like two wolves in a
Speaker 1: sheep voting on the dinner menu.
Speaker 3: Now, your mother was in Was she in British intelligence?
Speaker 1: Yes? During the war, not quite as sexy as the CIA.
Speaker 1: She was at a desk in London analyzing train schedules,
Speaker 1: radio and just basically figuring out where the British raf
Speaker 1: should bomb, where the German resources were being transported to
Speaker 1: and from, and so it's kind of desk work. But technically, yeah,
Speaker 1: my mommy and daddy were both spies.
Speaker 3: They sound like difficult parents to fool in case you
Speaker 3: were trying to get away with anything.
Speaker 1: Well, no, when I came along, I'm the fourth child,
Speaker 1: and I now recognize the father of seven that by
Speaker 1: the time you get to the fourth child, willful blindness
Speaker 1: is an asset. I don't know if you have children,
Speaker 1: any of your listeners who have children out there, there's
Speaker 1: sometimes when you're just having a nice time and the
Speaker 1: child does something bad and you've got to pull out
Speaker 1: the daddy voice, and it's just gonna pop the bubble.
Speaker 1: We were all having such a nice, cozy time. So
Speaker 1: I think I will just somehow fail to observe that
Speaker 1: transgression so that we can continue this evening in a
Speaker 1: nice way. And I think I got away with stuff
Speaker 1: because they were lazy, And also they fought. My older brother,
Speaker 1: Ian was the black sheep of the family. He was
Speaker 1: the motorcycle thief of the family, so they were worn
Speaker 1: out by battling with him. And all I wanted was
Speaker 1: just to be a good kid.
Speaker 3: And I totally forgot. Your dad was good friends with
Speaker 3: Kim Philby, one of the most famous of the Cambridge Five,
Speaker 3: one of the most famous double agents of all time.
Speaker 1: Yes, they were suspecting it, but they couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: His best friend. We were parallel families. They had kids
Speaker 1: the same age as our family. Young Harry was my age.
Speaker 1: We were chums and we would go on to archaeological sites.
Speaker 1: We would go off into the desert to visit the
Speaker 1: cract Chevalier Castle in Syria, or up to Tabarja Castle
Speaker 1: on the coast, you know, up the Biblos. So it
Speaker 1: blew his mind and broke his heart. When Kim Philby
Speaker 1: was exposed.
Speaker 3: Did he talk about it a lot.
Speaker 1: No I read about it in his book. At the time,
Speaker 1: it was very mysterious that Harry's dad just disappeared one night,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, the grups were all in a
Speaker 1: state of agitation. We didn't really understand what was going
Speaker 1: on because we lived just outside of Beirut, in the
Speaker 1: hills above Beyrout, and they were escaping attention just by
Speaker 1: holding up in our place. And then it came out
Speaker 1: that he had jumped on a Greek ship and defected
Speaker 1: to Russia. And then I never saw him again. To
Speaker 1: this day, I have not been able to find my
Speaker 1: old friend. Harry Philby just vanished off the face of
Speaker 1: the earth. I can't find him. If i'd google him,
Speaker 1: I get the dad who was also h Philby, and
Speaker 1: I'm sure we regarded as kind of a joke in
Speaker 1: our family cia Daddy, but for them it was utterly devastating.
Speaker 1: He was in a boarding school in England, kicked out.
Speaker 1: Just the family was just trashed. I can hardly imagine
Speaker 1: how devastating it was for his family.
Speaker 3: And his family didn't join him. I think Eleanor went
Speaker 3: over to Russia for a while, but they didn't actually
Speaker 3: join him.
Speaker 1: There. No, they didn't. One of the sons visited him
Speaker 1: there eldest, who I didn't know that well, and he
Speaker 1: was remarried. I don't know whether he had an affair
Speaker 1: going on the side all the while, but he was
Speaker 1: never reconciled with his wife, Eleanor, who was an American.
Speaker 1: Actually she was quite fierce. It was Dad Philby, who
Speaker 1: was the jovial boozer, who was the fun one. He
Speaker 1: was the easier of the two parents. But as my
Speaker 1: mother used to say, you can always tell the spy.
Speaker 1: They're the one talking the most bullshit. They're just talking
Speaker 1: about trivial bullshit stuff life of the party. Apparently drunk
Speaker 1: all the time. Couldn't possibly be a spy. He has
Speaker 1: nothing with gravitas going on in his head.
Speaker 3: You mentioned the mother was the fierce one in your family.
Speaker 3: You are a fierce character. We talked about how much No.
Speaker 1: I was the good kid at the bottom. I was
Speaker 1: the fourth of four, and like any youngest in any family,
Speaker 1: I'm the cheerful one.
Speaker 3: But you also have thrown yourselves at so many new projects.
Speaker 3: You make a film, you wrote an opera, which.
Speaker 1: Excuse me, I've written seven operas. Thank you.
Speaker 3: Seven operas, ballets, you write an extraordinary amount of film music.
Speaker 3: All these things you didn't know how to do when
Speaker 3: you started.
Speaker 1: Well, except that I had the wherewithal I had the
Speaker 1: material to work with. I had the clay, which seventy
Speaker 1: years of life gave me the experience to work up
Speaker 1: the skills to go with that clay, to go with
Speaker 1: that gift. And when I was in college, I studied
Speaker 1: music theory and so on until I went to UC
Speaker 1: Berkeley and couldn't get into the music department there, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't learn that technique, you know, the advanced
Speaker 1: technique of music theory, until years later. But that didn't matter.
Speaker 1: I didn't need that music school education. I had the music.
Speaker 1: I just had the instinct. That was a gift. God
Speaker 1: knows from where, but I had that gift. And just
Speaker 1: as a punchline to that story, I'm going back to
Speaker 1: Juilliard to teach after years of learning on the job.
Speaker 1: I suppose I was paid for most of my music education.
Speaker 3: But you even say in your book you have to
Speaker 3: be willing to throw yourself off the cliff.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, it's much easier for me than it is
Speaker 1: for that skiing hot dogger. When I throw myself off
Speaker 1: the cliff. There are no hard rocks beneath me. If
Speaker 1: I screw it up, it's only music. Nobody's gonna die,
Speaker 1: nobody's even gonna experience pain except for the bandmates momentarily.
Speaker 3: There are a lot of creative people who don't have
Speaker 3: that attitude, though, for whom like taking on adventures like
Speaker 3: that would be terrifying.
Speaker 1: And I don't know that that's a matter of fear
Speaker 1: as a failure of imagination. I do look askance at
Speaker 1: my peers who just play guitar, or just play drums,
Speaker 1: or just play bass, and that's their entire musical career
Speaker 1: on one instrument. My God, got four strings on that bass,
Speaker 1: you know. I can't even conceive of just sticking with
Speaker 1: one instrument the way most of my peers do.
Speaker 3: I do want to talk about your drum playing a
Speaker 3: little because your dad encourage you to, or you started
Speaker 3: on the trombone, right.
Speaker 1: My first music, I guess, was on the piano. My
Speaker 1: sister teaching me how to play piano and actually how
Speaker 1: to read the dots and then try bone lessons. Because
Speaker 1: trombone is a very easy brass instrument to play. Trumpet
Speaker 1: takes an actual ombusure, whereas trombone with that huge mouthpiece.
Speaker 1: Any damn fool can get a sound out of it,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't. When I was seven, I couldn't reach
Speaker 1: the extended positions. But it didn't last. As soon as
Speaker 1: I discovered banging stuff, that just took over my life.
Speaker 3: Could you bang stuff in a very distinctive way? Certainly
Speaker 3: your stuff with the police was very distinctive. I recently,
Speaker 3: when I was preparing for this, I just saw a
Speaker 3: clip of you conducting and I thought it looked strange,
Speaker 3: and then I realized something, you're left handed, which I
Speaker 3: didn't know.
Speaker 1: That's wrong.
Speaker 3: You're not left handed.
Speaker 1: It's right that I am left handed, but it's wrong
Speaker 1: to be conducting with the left hand. And by the way,
Speaker 1: using a drumstick as the baton, Well, that's so they
Speaker 1: can see the damn thing.
Speaker 3: Well, they seem to be able to follow you. That's
Speaker 3: the important part.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, ye, Well, the rhythm's good. My conducting is
Speaker 1: show business. I did not go to conducting school, but
Speaker 1: I have a life time in show business and I
Speaker 1: learned a lot there and I am actually in the
Speaker 1: conducting school of Mickey Mouse. It's all about the show,
Speaker 1: and I do the cues as well. I did take
Speaker 1: a course in conducting, so I know the conductor's actual job,
Speaker 1: which is pretty simple really in concept, but very difficult
Speaker 1: in practice with really complicated music, which is that you
Speaker 1: know there's something in you don't see much in rock
Speaker 1: and roll, which is the word tacit, which is where
Speaker 1: the flute player he's tacit, which means he doesn't play,
Speaker 1: don't play for sixteen bars, thirty two bars, because in
Speaker 1: orchestral you don't use all the instruments all the time.
Speaker 1: In a rock band, guitarist, bassed, drums, you don't stop
Speaker 1: if the bass player stops. It's a special effect. No,
Speaker 1: you play from the beginning of the song through to
Speaker 1: the end of the song. There's no such thing as tacit.
Speaker 1: But in an orchestra, the bassoon is sitting down, he's
Speaker 1: staring off into space for thirty two bars. He's not
Speaker 1: counting thirty two bars as they go by. That's what
Speaker 1: the conductor is for the conductors. All the parts. Okay,
Speaker 1: mister bassoon, your part's coming up. It's coming okay now,
Speaker 1: And so the bassoon can launch into his bar three
Speaker 1: hundred and forty seven with confidence because he hasn't been
Speaker 1: counting for thirty two bars. And so the conductor gives
Speaker 1: the cues. He also gives the emotional attitude. And there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of things that are not so discernible to
Speaker 1: the audience which the conductor provides, and I provide all
Speaker 1: those while putting on a show.
Speaker 3: How did being left handed affect your drumming? Do you think?
Speaker 1: Possibly? It gave me a slightly different vocabulary. I maintain
Speaker 1: that on most instruments, both hands are working. Whether it's
Speaker 1: the violin, you know, the right hand is doing the boeing,
Speaker 1: but the left hand is doing some complicated stuff. Same
Speaker 1: with the guitar or any any instrument, now maybe brass instruments,
Speaker 1: the left hand is at your side while the three
Speaker 1: fingers are doing all the work. As far as dexterity.
Speaker 1: With drums, both hands and both feet are working. Doesn't
Speaker 1: matter what you're left handed or right hand, it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's all working. But perhaps left handedness, like with Ringo Starr,
Speaker 1: for instance, just gave me a different approach to using
Speaker 1: the instrument, navigating around the instrument, using the toms, the
Speaker 1: high hat, my kit. Like Ringo is set up normal,
Speaker 1: I right handed, the same way a right handed person
Speaker 1: would play it, because it's very, very impractical to rearrange
Speaker 1: the drums so the high hat is on the other side,
Speaker 1: and it just means that you never get to jam
Speaker 1: with the band because moving the drums around in that
Speaker 1: way is utterly disruptive. So I tell all your listeners,
Speaker 1: any left handed want to be drummers out there, play
Speaker 1: a right handed kit. Don't be messing around with trying
Speaker 1: to change the kit. Change yourself. And the same goes
Speaker 1: with guitar. I think Jimmy Hendrix just turned the guitar
Speaker 1: upside down, but it was a regular guitar. Make it
Speaker 1: easy to play other people's instruments basically, So left handing
Speaker 1: might have changed my vocabulary slightly, but I think actually
Speaker 1: there were there were other factors. It was that Arabic influence.
Speaker 1: I think it was a big part of it.
Speaker 3: The Arabic influence being the beat you were using.
Speaker 1: Yes, the rhythm, the fundamental rhythmic structure of Arabic music
Speaker 1: balladi or country. Arabic music shares some features with reggae,
Speaker 1: believe it or not. On the other side of the planet,
Speaker 1: no cultural cross pollination. They're just coincidence that both forms
Speaker 1: of music emphasized the third beat of the bar, and
Speaker 1: they hide one of the bar one two three four,
Speaker 1: one two three four. Rock megas ooh dah, ooh dah
Speaker 1: one two three four, backbeat on two and you know
Speaker 1: the downbeat one two three four, whereas reggae and Arabic
Speaker 1: music is on three one two three four, two three
Speaker 1: four nothing two three four two three four. And then
Speaker 1: those up chicks that hold it together check check check,
Speaker 1: oh check, which turned into my secret sauce when it
Speaker 1: came to introducing reggae rhythms or reggae ish rhythms to
Speaker 1: rock music. And I think it was the class who
Speaker 1: did it first, attempting skinny white guys trying to play reggae.
Speaker 1: And the reason they did that another sidebar story about
Speaker 1: how Don Letz brought dub music into the punk clubs.
Speaker 1: It was the only acceptably hostile form of chill music,
Speaker 1: but Clash for the first to attempt playing reggae with
Speaker 1: their white sensibilities, and they did it pretty effectively. But
Speaker 1: it was just a whole lot easier for me because
Speaker 1: it was already that formula was already there in my DNA,
Speaker 1: so I didn't need to listen closely to what the
Speaker 1: reggae cats were doing in Kingston, Jamaica. I just got, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: you can do that, and I just came up with
Speaker 1: my Arabic vocabulary, which most of the world saw as
Speaker 1: being reggae.
Speaker 3: Interesting and in Arabic music, is there any stress on
Speaker 3: the one or is it just on the three?
Speaker 1: It's just they hide it. It's a gap, it's a void,
Speaker 1: it's a pit that you fall into, and then they
Speaker 1: land hard on beat three.
Speaker 3: Well that's interesting because another thing I've noticed and you're
Speaker 3: playing is if you're playing a crash, you often do
Speaker 3: it on the fourth beat or even four and a
Speaker 3: half in the wrong place, not the wrong place if
Speaker 3: it works. But yeah, I think Invisible Sun would be
Speaker 3: a good example of that.
Speaker 1: You know, I guess, to the annoyance of my bandmates,
Speaker 1: I would resist the straight backbeat. And I'm sure Stingo
Speaker 1: writing his song you can care whether it's a downbeat
Speaker 1: or a backbeat or whatever it is, as long as
Speaker 1: you can hear as darn lyric And so it was
Speaker 1: probably a distraction. Why can't they just play a backbeat? Well,
Speaker 1: because I don't want to. I want to look for
Speaker 1: something else somewhere, making it interesting or difficult. That was
Speaker 1: a Freudian slip, interesting or different.
Speaker 3: I meant to say, let you take that up with
Speaker 3: your therapist.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Really, it's just an avoid and so of standard.
Speaker 1: And that's as far as you know. There's no more
Speaker 1: detail to the brief than that. Just okay, what else
Speaker 1: is there?
Speaker 2: After this last break, we'll be back with more from
Speaker 2: Stuart Copeland. We're back with the rest of Bruce Heellim's
Speaker 2: conversation with Stuart Copeland.
Speaker 3: So how did you arrange the songs? He brought them in?
Speaker 3: They could have been done very conventionally. You come in,
Speaker 3: you're often turning the beat around on these things. A
Speaker 3: lot of high hat like I bring on the night.
Speaker 1: Well, I would say, I'm guessing you'll have to ask them.
Speaker 1: But I think as we were excited when Sting brought
Speaker 1: in a song. He was excited when I'd fuck up
Speaker 1: the rhythm because you know, we were co dependent at
Speaker 1: the time, and he was real pleased that we'd take
Speaker 1: an interest in his song. Of course, later after he'd
Speaker 1: written twenty hits, you know, he was less concerned whether
Speaker 1: we liked the song or not it's a hit because
Speaker 1: he wrote it. And as he got more and more
Speaker 1: in control of his medium and became a better and
Speaker 1: better songwriter, he had less and less patience for collaboration.
Speaker 1: And we understand that now, and I'm very grateful that
Speaker 1: we got five albums out of that son of a bitch,
Speaker 1: because it became more and more difficult for him to
Speaker 1: compromise and collaborate because his musical ideas and I understand
Speaker 1: this as an orchestral composer, the musical ideas are fully
Speaker 1: formed in his mind. And by the way, he knows
Speaker 1: a thing or two about where to put the drums
Speaker 1: and how to use the drums. And you know, the
Speaker 1: times when it was most urgent that I throttle and
Speaker 1: kill him was when he was right. But in the
Speaker 1: early days he was very pleased that we took an interest.
Speaker 1: And if I came up with some wild offbeat rhythm,
Speaker 1: all he had with the chords. He didn't have that
Speaker 1: fully developed concept of what the music should be. So
Speaker 1: I think in the same way that we left on
Speaker 1: every one of his songs as he pulled them out,
Speaker 1: they left on every one of my strange rhythms as
Speaker 1: I pulled those out. And also Andy got much love
Speaker 1: from his bandmates when he came up with a guitar
Speaker 1: part that was unique.
Speaker 3: You just mentioned that he was usually right, staying that
Speaker 3: he knew a thing or two about drums.
Speaker 1: No, no, well, he was often right, let's call it
Speaker 1: often right. What he was wrong about was the effect
Speaker 1: that had on his two bandmates for him to be implacable,
Speaker 1: and he you know, I would describe it as a
Speaker 1: form of aspergers, and I mean that as a compliment
Speaker 1: that he's just music is so important to him, it
Speaker 1: just makes him feel sick to get it wrong. And
Speaker 1: I'm grateful that he was able to put up with
Speaker 1: these intrusions on his pure concept. But he did put
Speaker 1: up with it, and it got more and more difficult,
Speaker 1: which is why there was friction in the band. And finally,
Speaker 1: you know, if you love somebody, set them free, and
Speaker 1: off he went.
Speaker 3: And immediately played with jazz players who you can't really control,
Speaker 3: which I thought was a very odd choice.
Speaker 1: Good point, and never thought like that. He left the
Speaker 1: frying pan and into the fire of jazz musicians who
Speaker 1: didn't hold him in such reverence, which annoyed me. Once again,
Speaker 1: he was back in the supplicant position of gosh, you
Speaker 1: like my songs, you'll play with me the skinny white Kid.
Speaker 1: My goodness, I am so honored play what you like.
Speaker 1: And they did to his benefit. I mean, his first album,
Speaker 1: I Dream of Blue Turtles was a brilliant record because
Speaker 1: he had faith in his players.
Speaker 3: They were great flairs, Kenny Kirkland, all those guys were sensational.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: It reminds me of the part in your book where
Speaker 3: You're incredibly happy where you got your first tape recorder
Speaker 3: when you could put multiple tracks on.
Speaker 1: Ah, yes, the tact.
Speaker 3: And that's when you recorded all your or did the
Speaker 3: demos for Clark Kent, Yes.
Speaker 1: And for Police too. I've always been a home recording enthusiast,
Speaker 1: and before that I had a Revox a seventy seven,
Speaker 1: and you record on the left channel, usually a drum box,
Speaker 1: which I you know, a nightclub allounge. You act to
Speaker 1: accompany the pianist in the in the bar, the piano
Speaker 1: bar let that do you know, or pop one or
Speaker 1: pop two or whatever, and then lay that down on
Speaker 1: one track. Then I feed that track onto the other
Speaker 1: track while adding a guitar, and so the drum box
Speaker 1: and my live guitar goes onto track two. Married together.
Speaker 1: Now I've got drums and guitar, I take that track,
Speaker 1: bounce it back onto track one while adding a bass guitar,
Speaker 1: and so I'd go bouncing tracks back and forth, but
Speaker 1: they would get mushier and mushier. Kids these days probably
Speaker 1: don't have a concept of signal to noise ratio, which
Speaker 1: as a byproduct of magnetic tape as opposed to digital data,
Speaker 1: and so every time you back you got tape hiss
Speaker 1: as a layman's term for signal to noise, which increases,
Speaker 1: and so the earlier tracks get mushier and mushier, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, is why on old Rolling Stones records
Speaker 1: and Beatles records the tambourine is so prominent because by
Speaker 1: the time they did that, they only had four tracks
Speaker 1: recording in the early days, and they did a lot
Speaker 1: of this bouncing of tracks. They call it when you
Speaker 1: merge tracks onto another track, then go back and forth
Speaker 1: the initial tracks that say, the drums get mushier and mushier.
Speaker 1: So to add some sparkle back into the rhythm, the
Speaker 1: last thing they add is a tambourine, which is in
Speaker 1: your face, bright fresh recording, whereas the actual live drum
Speaker 1: set has gotten a bit mushy. We digress. I got
Speaker 1: the four track machine, which meant that I now have
Speaker 1: four tracks that I could record on, which was a
Speaker 1: huge breakthrough. And I can now play guitar bassin you know,
Speaker 1: two guitars bass in drum box.
Speaker 3: And this really surprised me. In the book, maybe you
Speaker 3: were overstating the case. When you went into the studio
Speaker 3: to record your Clark Kent album, you said it was
Speaker 3: the happiest day of your creative life.
Speaker 1: Oh. Absolutely, without doubt. I've had a few happy days
Speaker 1: since then. But at the time, I was a recording enthusiast,
Speaker 1: frustrated guitarist, and I had these songs which the band
Speaker 1: were not. They did not leap on my songs, you know,
Speaker 1: because Sting had to sing them, and my puerile college
Speaker 1: kid American college kid lyrics just did not match his persona.
Speaker 1: But I do have recordings of him singing those dumb
Speaker 1: songs of mine, including the one I had a hit
Speaker 1: with called Don't Care. The lyric is something like, I
Speaker 1: am the neatest thing that ever hit down. There isn't
Speaker 1: anything that could bring me down. Don't care, did di
Speaker 1: di di di? Did? Did? Don't care? You know, Sting
Speaker 1: is a man of great genius and you know grave posture.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a great poet and to sing those
Speaker 1: I've got a recording of him singing that dumb song,
Speaker 1: which I like to remind him of occasionally.
Speaker 3: I was going to say, do you ever just leave
Speaker 3: a message on his answering machine saying I've decided to
Speaker 3: really and.
Speaker 1: You've got me busted. Well, these days we get along great.
Speaker 1: We don't have to play music together, so which means
Speaker 1: that we get along really great. And we do like
Speaker 1: to rattle each other's cage.
Speaker 3: There's some very touching things in the book. People know
Speaker 3: about you guys battling it out, but at one point
Speaker 3: you babysit for him, so he and his wife couldn't
Speaker 3: have a night.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Well, we had to keep secret from our
Speaker 1: punk scene, the fact that he was a father, he
Speaker 1: had a baby, he's married. For one thing, that's bad enough,
Speaker 1: but he actually had a wife and kid. God, I mean,
Speaker 1: Joe Strummer wouldn't have talked to us if he'd known that.
Speaker 1: But one day his wife was an actress. And here's
Speaker 1: something else that I will expose to his discomfort is
Speaker 1: that he was a model and if he went for
Speaker 1: a gig, he would get the job because he just
Speaker 1: had charisma out to hear. And so one day he
Speaker 1: was out doing a modeling job and she was out
Speaker 1: doing an acting job. And what are they going to
Speaker 1: do with her child? They must have been desperate to
Speaker 1: call me, and they dropped off young Joseph, who was
Speaker 1: old enough to crawl. He was out of his crib.
Speaker 1: But a little destruct a thought, and he was you know,
Speaker 1: for the next two hundred hours. He made my life
Speaker 1: a misery while I tried to keep him out of
Speaker 1: trouble and stop him from destroying my world. But a
Speaker 1: lifelong bond was established. That little kid left a dent
Speaker 1: in my heart which survives to this day. And now
Speaker 1: Joseph Sumner is himself a father of many, just a
Speaker 1: really one of the world's great human beings.
Speaker 3: He also called Sting at one point, one of the
Speaker 3: world's most loyal.
Speaker 1: People, true to this day. In fact, he has around
Speaker 1: him the only people he wasn't loyal to or Andy
Speaker 1: and me. Everyone else in his world is old police crew.
Speaker 1: He forms relationships and they last, and our relationship lasts.
Speaker 1: The only thing that doesn't last is our musical relationship,
Speaker 1: which is secondary. And there's a good reason for that.
Speaker 1: We are not musically birds of a feather. We make
Speaker 1: music for for reasons. Music has a different function in
Speaker 1: our lives. We go about it in different ways. And
Speaker 1: when we were young and codependent, that worked. We now
Speaker 1: understand that that clash provided the police. It gave the
Speaker 1: police its thing. But he's very loyal to me to
Speaker 1: this day in every matter except for music, and that's fine.
Speaker 1: You know, we enjoy each other's company, and I don't
Speaker 1: enjoy getting dictated to any more than he enjoys struggling
Speaker 1: with collaboration.
Speaker 3: Just raised a really interesting point. You have traveled around
Speaker 3: the world. You did a film going to Africa, kind
Speaker 3: of like one of your heroes, Ginger Baker did, and
Speaker 3: you were looking for Western music. You just said, music
Speaker 3: has a different function in your life other than it's
Speaker 3: your job, and I think you love doing it. What
Speaker 3: is music in your life? How does it function?
Speaker 1: It is a river that flows a wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning, I rush through breakfast so I can get
Speaker 1: into this room right here and make some more music.
Speaker 1: It just flows out of me like a river. And
Speaker 1: this isn't true of all musicians. Many musicians are players,
Speaker 1: and they achieve their musical nirvana just by playing their instrument,
Speaker 1: you know, and the music doesn't happen for them until
Speaker 1: they pick up their instrument and start playing it. For me,
Speaker 1: it's a river that flows. That doesn't mean that this
Speaker 1: gushing torrent of music that comes out of my brain
Speaker 1: is any good or that anyone else will like it
Speaker 1: apart from me. Fortunately enough people do so that I
Speaker 1: can earn my crust from producing this stuff. But it's
Speaker 1: a gift that comes to me. And you know, like
Speaker 1: I have musicians who are an incredible pianist, for instance,
Speaker 1: concert pianist. You know, he'll come fly into the Chicago
Speaker 1: Symphony and play rock Monona's fourth Piano Concerto and just
Speaker 1: incredible musicality in every which way except the composing part.
Speaker 1: And he will say, you know, this summer, I think
Speaker 1: I'm going to compose a pano concerto. No, you're not.
Speaker 1: If you were going to compose a piano concerto, you
Speaker 1: would need that gene, that gushing torrent of musicality, and
Speaker 1: you would have written ten piano concerties by now. If
Speaker 1: you're going to wait till this summer. That means where
Speaker 1: are you going to get it? You know, his fingers
Speaker 1: do it. His heart plays the music with great musicality,
Speaker 1: but that composing gene is another and separate and distinct factor.
Speaker 1: So the relationship with music is that I just have
Speaker 1: this music that I want to make, and when I
Speaker 1: sit down behind the drums, I just play. It's just
Speaker 1: something I don't think about. I just do it. And
Speaker 1: to be working with a musician that has an agenda, actually,
Speaker 1: I kind of want the drums to do like this.
Speaker 1: I go ya what say what? Okay, I'll try that,
Speaker 1: And as soon as I start playing, it goes right
Speaker 1: out of my head. And the function of music for
Speaker 1: me is kind of the other way around. I am
Speaker 1: a vessel for this music that comes from my heart.
Speaker 3: But you have an incredible gift for melo. I've been
Speaker 3: listening to a lot of your music. I've been listening
Speaker 3: to the orchestral album you did. Seems almost limitless.
Speaker 1: Well the music. I've been doing this for seventy years
Speaker 1: and it hasn't quit. In fact, as I developed more skills,
Speaker 1: I've still got the same musical identity I had that
Speaker 1: I was born with the same inclination to use these
Speaker 1: intervals or those intervals melodic signature, if you like. But
Speaker 1: as the years and decades go by, I developed more skills.
Speaker 1: So where I was, you know, in the seventies, I
Speaker 1: was just limited to the chords I could play on
Speaker 1: a guitar recorded into my rebox A seventy seven. Now
Speaker 1: I have full orchestration skills and can now work with
Speaker 1: the seventy piece orchestra to take my music Internet. But
Speaker 1: it's the same music. It's the same melodic sensibility, it's
Speaker 1: the same harmon. I just gravitate towards this chord in
Speaker 1: that chord. It's the same identity. The only thing that's
Speaker 1: changed is the skill set.
Speaker 3: The technology has changed, though, it's allowed you to do
Speaker 3: that absolutely.
Speaker 1: One day they invented a computer that would do as
Speaker 1: it was told. Before that they had a drum machine
Speaker 1: which you could just set a rhythm and play along
Speaker 1: with it. Then Roland developed drum machines that you could program.
Speaker 1: Kind of complicated, but you could program into it the
Speaker 1: rhythm for the verse and then say it bar twenty
Speaker 1: five switched to this other rhythm, and you could program
Speaker 1: that other rhythm. It was kind of fiddlely, but you
Speaker 1: could do it. And then they invented the fairlight computer,
Speaker 1: where you had a visual display and you could enter
Speaker 1: the notes on a keyboard and tell it to play
Speaker 1: back exactly what I tell you in a much more
Speaker 1: comprehensive way. And that created me as a composer. It
Speaker 1: enabled me to really think of music in a broader
Speaker 1: way and have total control. And that's where my orchestral
Speaker 1: journey began.
Speaker 3: Well, there's a technological change going on right now, and
Speaker 3: I'd love to know what you think about it, which
Speaker 3: is artificial intelligence. That is a tool that a lot
Speaker 3: of musicians, perhaps a lot of music labels are going
Speaker 3: to be using. What's your view of that.
Speaker 1: I've had my career and therefore I can wish well
Speaker 1: all of those non musicians who can now make music
Speaker 1: using AI. And I say that as a drummer, which
Speaker 1: is the first instrument to get brushed aside by technology.
Speaker 1: You know how many guys does it take to screw
Speaker 1: in a light bulb? None get your drum box to
Speaker 1: do it. And it's weird that my instrument should be supplanted. Thus,
Speaker 1: because rhythm the most elemental instinctive, mammalian part of music
Speaker 1: that gets your puredenda thrusting in public. You would think
Speaker 1: that would be visceral and that a machine would be
Speaker 1: the furthest thing to be able to recreate that visceral
Speaker 1: rhythm thrusting. But no, on the disco floor, it's a
Speaker 1: machine that gets humans dancing. And another thing to think
Speaker 1: about is an artist like Moby, who's very creative and musical,
Speaker 1: but to my knowledge, he doesn't play a musical instrument.
Speaker 1: He is musical elements and creates beautiful music as a result.
Speaker 1: And Kanye and Kendrick and all these other modern musicians
Speaker 1: who don't need some band guitar, bass and drums. They
Speaker 1: create music with found sounds and so on. With musicality.
Speaker 1: They're not limited by what their fingers can do. And
Speaker 1: so the technology has set Moby and Kendrick then the
Speaker 1: rest of them, you know, set them free to create
Speaker 1: stuff with their imagination. But they don't necessarily need to
Speaker 1: have that finger twiddling piece. It's just music from whatever source.
Speaker 1: And of course people musicians of my generation despise it
Speaker 1: and are threatened by the fact that you can make
Speaker 1: music without an actual living musicians. I say who cares.
Speaker 1: It works. It moves people, you know, in the case
Speaker 1: of the drum box, gets them dancing on the dance floor.
Speaker 1: That's what we're here for.
Speaker 3: And yet you know, what those artists are doing is
Speaker 3: a kind of form of collage, putting together different elements.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, I can see what your next question is.
Speaker 1: What about when a machine does the collaging, When a
Speaker 1: machine assembles these things, a machine called AI and I
Speaker 1: have the same feeling about it now. I was at
Speaker 1: the Mediam Festival in can a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: where I was on two different panels, one of artists
Speaker 1: talking about it and the other with lawyers talking about it.
Speaker 1: And on the second panel it was the lady who
Speaker 1: runs SASSEM, the BMI of Europe and all these people
Speaker 1: who are the legal aspects of copyright and who's protected.
Speaker 1: If you merge Mick Jagger with David Bowie and you've
Speaker 1: got this sounds like both of them, But isn't either
Speaker 1: of them who owns that? You know? And so you
Speaker 1: know the legal issues and they're not my problem. And
Speaker 1: the artists were more sanguine about it because they can
Speaker 1: use it, because it gives them more tools than it
Speaker 1: takes away. And there's another aspect, which is the sense
Speaker 1: that music is evolved in Homo sapiens for the benefit
Speaker 1: of all of us. We are all You and I
Speaker 1: are both and everyone are incredibly musical. All of us
Speaker 1: are not Eric Clapton, but our species is a very
Speaker 1: musical species. We are all gifted musically. We can all
Speaker 1: sing a tune, well, most of us. We can all
Speaker 1: coordinate our body motions to fit into a rhythm. We
Speaker 1: are more musical than we think. And so a tool
Speaker 1: such as AI gives the gift of music to every man, woman,
Speaker 1: and child on the planet. That's a really good thing
Speaker 1: for non professionals. It goes back to campfire music, where
Speaker 1: before the age where of specialization, where I get to
Speaker 1: spend all my time banging stuff and getting really really
Speaker 1: good at it, and you get to just pay me
Speaker 1: money to listen to me bang and shit. AI gives
Speaker 1: you the tool to make your own music and create
Speaker 1: your own community, and you get to do it, And
Speaker 1: so for humanity, it's a blessing. For individual musicians trying
Speaker 1: to make a living at it, the same thing happened,
Speaker 1: you know, back in the days of Moby with samples
Speaker 1: and so now any damn fool can make music, which
Speaker 1: means every damn fool is making music, which means the
Speaker 1: competition is real fierce, And so I feel some sympathy
Speaker 1: for my young musicians try to create a career, and
Speaker 1: this creates an obstacle for them, but for humanity at large,
Speaker 1: it's a blessing.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm gonna keep listening to you banging shit, I
Speaker 3: think in the meantime.
Speaker 1: Cool.
Speaker 3: All right, Thank you so much, and I love the book.
Speaker 1: Cool. Glad you enjoyed it, and thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Thanks to Stewart Copeland for talking about the police's formative
Speaker 2: years and his new book, Police Diaries. You can hear
Speaker 2: all of our favorite police songs on a playlist at
Speaker 2: broken Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Speaker 2: at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you
Speaker 2: can find all of our new episodes. You can follow
Speaker 2: us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced
Speaker 2: and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from Eric
Speaker 2: Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollin. Broken
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Speaker 2: Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.