Song Roulette
A Vulture series in which artists share the stories and strategy behind their lead singles.
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Sting,Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers were restless, prone to quarreling when the instruments came out.
Even worse, they could barely make progress on new songs.
(It helped that Martin owned the studio they were recording at.)
I thought,Of course hes going to help us.
It was like Tarzan hacking his way through the jungle.
Over a cup of tea, Martin embraced the role of a rock admiral.
He knew how to guide things, Summers recalled.
I said, Were not getting along very well or able to put things together.
He gave me some comforting advice and said, Youve got it in you.
Go back, and I think its all going to work.
Amazingly, it did.
Sting was laying down some bass grooves.
Copeland was minding his business on the drums.
Summers had the time to hone new guitar licks.
Maybe they could finally bang out another hit?
Suddenly we were very polite with one another and accommodating.
We went from one end of the spectrum to the other, he explained.
We worked it all out and we didnt have much of a problem after that.
I was just about to write to the accountant in London and go, Should we talk about this?
Because even if its half a dime for every play, its got to be a lot of money.
Roxanne,OutlandosdAmour(1978)
.The Song
.
We went to play in Paris and had no money whatsoever.
The three of us ended up in some very dodgy youth hostel.
We were going to do a show, but no one had told us the gig was canceled.
The names were on the door, but the place was locked up.
We had nothing to survive with.
So that was depressing.
Youd see people lined up around the block to go into a brothel.
That was the reality in those days.
We decided to get back to London as soon as possible.
Sting stayed with me and my wife in our flat.
One night, we heard him strumming and singing a song.
The lyrics became Roxanne.
And I went, Yeah, but its a Brazilian bossa nova.
What is he thinking?
We went back to rehearsing because no one would give us a gig anywhere.
Were practicing in a gay hairdressers flat in North London.
He had a basement, which was full of wet cement and concrete.
I remember it clearly.
We were trying to come up with punk songs because its what we were doing at the time.
Stewart said, Why dont you do that Roxanne thing?
Sting was still playing it like a bossa nova and it wasnt the mood of London in those days.
So we started working on it.
Stewart said, We cant do it like that.
Its got to be rock.
We can put the bass drum in that.
Okay, that sounds kind of pretty.
Thats how we turned it into the rock sound that became the famous song.
We were recording at this little studio called Surrey Sound and still poverty-stricken.
They would let us play there for nothing.
Miles Copeland, Stewarts brother, would pop in sometimes.
He wasnt even managing us.
He hated us, really.
I think he hated me in particular.
We sat down on the couch on this one night and played what we accomplished so far.
We were really scared to play him Roxanne.
But at the end, we played it.
Miles stood up and went, Thats the one.
We were absolutely shocked.
We thought there was no way he was going to like it.
He took it to A&M and they gave us a record deal.
.The Payoff
It was kind of a flop.
The only thing that came out of it was one journalist wrote, Watch this band.
This is a bit special.
These guys have got something.
It wasnt a hit, but it had a double life.
And now its one of the immortal songs of all time.
Before that, A&M got to know us and realized we werent complete knobs.
They said, All right, it didnt quite work.
Well give you another shot.
Have you got anything else?
So the next single was Cant Stand Losing You.
We had a semi hit with that, but we were still struggling.
No one would give us gigs.
We were sort of a suspect band.
The last-ditch attempt to stay together was to fly to America and play at CBGBs.
It was a dump, but everybody wanted to play there.
We only had six songs.
In Boston, theres a guy called Oedipus he was a very popular DJ.
He was playing Roxanne around the clock.
He was the guy that set it on fire.
But when we went back to London, there was nothing else and no opportunities.
We had to break up again.
But Stewarts brother came through and said, Theres an opening gig available.
There was a comedy pop band called Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias.
It was about 50 shows and they were going to tour all over Britain.
We said were grateful for anything.
So we drove down to our first gig at the University of Bath.
It turned out this hall held about a thousand people, and it was a thousand punks going mad.
We were thinking,Jesus, the Albertos are so hip.
Look at this audience.No, they were there for us.
They were jumping, pogo-ing, and thrashing up against the stage.
The girls were screaming.
Man, we were on fire.
From then on, we started the great ascent.
MessageinaBottle,ReggattadeBlanc(1979)
We were back at Surrey Sound.
The band was still getting to know one another, although we got along quite well.
Everything was very tentative, like, Hey, man, you play this.
Sting is quite inward.
Ill show it to you.
Slowly the melody and the lyrics emerged.
For me it was the best drum tracks Stewart ever laid down.
And Sting has no problem singing harmony with himself.
Hes totally got the ears and voice for it.
We did Message in a Bottle and felt triumphant.
Another part of the equation was that A&M was starting to smell something.
Basically the guys in record companies dont know shit about music.
Thats the grim truth.
They sat on the couch and we said, Well, weve got this one that we just finished.
It was Message in a Bottle.
They knew it was going to be a gigantic worldwide hit.
We werent a punk band.
We found a very definite style.
It was both rough and polished, in the very general sense.
Stewart had a very distinctive drum style.
I had so much on the guitar because I had been playing a bit longer than them.
And Sting is a naturally great musician.
We both loved Brazilian music and grew up with jazz.
We came from a similar background, which was almost anything but just straight-ahead pop music.
We had all this stuff we could swap together and had a very strong musical partnership.
We knew what each other was talking about.
And then Stewart was this offsetting drummer that counteracted these tendencies.
So it wasnt a normal rock band.
The chemistry between us was so strong.
We were cute guys.
We were nice looking guys.
Everybody went mad because we were completely sellable as a pop unit.
If the three of us were together and we turned up anywhere, a huge crowd would appear.
It was one of those moments, and we were at the forefront of it.
They wanted to be with us, talk to us, and give us their money.
DontStandSoClosetoMe,ZenyattaMondatta(1980)
We were very literate and college educated.
We were all voracious readers.
The lyrics for this comes from one of the first lines ofLolita.
There were sort of temptations there and lines that shouldnt have been crossed.
Its not pushing anything too much, but it had a catchy chorus.
The guitar lick was sort of a ripoff of Buffalo Springfields For What Its Worth.
Ill admit its not really original.
Stewart liked to frequently point out, You press this button and it goes,Whoosh.
You press that one,Whoosh.
We talked about it, and that was a clear winner.
It was a strong pop song with a big, hooky structure.
But cracking America took three whole tours.
We worked very hard in the U.S., state to state, show to show.
Gradually, the shows got bigger and bigger.
We were the kings in the U.K., and our manager had us touring America.
So we were No.
1 in the U.K. with a million singles sold of Dont Stand So Close to Me.
Everybody was going mad for us.
It was ridiculous irony and probably terrible management, but thats what we were doing.
It eventually panned out.
InvisibleSun,GhostintheMachine(1981)
Were serious people.
Im certainly one who goes to the dark side.
Dark music is better than light music thats my statement.
This was a song that had a nice little guitar riff and atmosphere.
I wanted to keep synthesizers out of the band altogether, because we were great guitarists.
We dont want a bloody synthesizer.
It was the spiritual idea that theres an invisible sun.
It worked as a pop song because it had a strong melody with a hook.
There was a significant disagreement aboutGhost in the Machine.
A song that I wrote, Omegaman, should have been the lead single.
Thats what A&M wanted.
Now you get into the politics of the band.
He made a big deal out of it.
So instead of Omegaman being the lead single, it got switched to Invisible Sun.
My song never got released as a single.
I think it wouldve been a huge hit.
It was disappointing because I was pleased with it.
I did a great guitar break in the middle.
I can comment very broadly that being in a band is difficult.
People always write about the Police and go, Oh, they hated each others guts.
No, we didnt.
There was a lot of humor and a lot of fun.
When youre in a band, especially when youre young and on the road, youre like a gang.
You go around and develop codes and tribal words, because thats who you are.
Like, Oh, they hated each other.
They slammed their doors shut at night and hurled obscenities.
They dont know what theyre talking about.
So yeah, it was disappointing about Omegaman, but we moved on.
It was very controversial.
The major television show in England that you had to get on to be successful wasTop of the Pops.
Because the song was about the Troubles in Northern Ireland and politically focused, they wouldnt play it.
People didnt go, Oh, thank God.
Youve written a song about the Troubles.
Youve brought it to the surface.
Right now, I suppose the equivalent would be if you wrote a pop song about the Gaza Strip.
Youre going into a difficult area.
Certainly at that time, it was Northern Ireland with more problems.
It had what we call a checkered career.
We dealt with Auntie BBC and they wouldnt play the video, either.
The world has changed, not for the better.
EveryBreathYouTake,Synchronicity(1983)
Sting had had it at this point.
One day he was like, Weve done what we signed up for.
He wanted out and to be on his own.
Hes a pretty introverted guy whos also a control freak.
Why did it go to No.
Because I wrote the guitar line for Every Breath You Take, which transformed it.
We had the songs and were working away at stuff, but there was a grudging and difficult atmosphere.
It was absolutely a non-Police song, because the Police sound was defined by the guitar.
This demo had these shrieking, big synthesizer parts on it.
We said, We have to make it our own.
Its got to sound like us.
They were fighting about where the kick drum and the bass should go.
I was just waiting.
Did you guys sort this bloody thing out?
I went in and the famous guitar line came to me very quickly.
They were all watching through the window at me standing alone in the studio.
When I finished the guitar line all in one go, they all stood up and cheered.
Miles came into the studio and said, I want to take that to the radio now.
Thats going to go to No.
We didnt even wait for the album to come out.
That was indeed our first No.
1 song in America.
It went straight to No.
1 in nearly every country.
We were bigger than the world at that point.
It was all there.
A lot of songs are very worthy, but I think this one cut through because of its simplicity.
