Can masterpieces destroy their creators? History tells us yes: in the moment of maximum tension, when everything seems to fall apart and to all intents and purposes it does, the artist brings out a work that is like a desperate attempt to save himself, or at least to save something of himself as the boat sinks. Among the albums there has never been a more shining example of Synchronicity of the Police, who turns 40 today.
Released on June 17, 1983, it is the last album by the Police before the dissolution, the one that seems to have drained all the creative force of the trio. Also in the subsequent reunions (and we are not talking so much about those of the 2000s, but about the 1986 one for the collection Every Breath You Take: The Singles which should have yielded an unreleased album and which instead only saw a faded new version of Don’t Stand So Close to Me) the three seem to be psychologically blocked. And yes that Synchronicity arises from the tension towards psychology. Sting was an avid reader of Arthur Koestler, author of The roots of the casea book of parapsychology which resumed the Jungian concept of synchronicity (that is the theory according to which apparently random contemporary events are connected through their meaning) inviting science not to underestimate paranormal facts and coincidences, but to study them in order to treat “magic” as a resource.
The bassist/vocalist had already written under Koestler’s influence. Ghost in the Machinethe previous disc, was precisely a title paraphrased from one of his books, in Italian The ghost inside the car. Synchronicity turns out to be the second chapter of a trilogy probably missed, even from the sound point of view. Not even The Dream of the Blue TurtlesSting’s first solo album, with the title still evoking the Jungian dream space, could be a continuation, even if it symbolically comes out on the same day of the year as Synchronicityon June 17, 1985.
The Dream, a record with strong jazz influences, should have been heavily synth funk, under the aegis of William Orbit’s Torch Song. Those sessions were discarded and are still closed in a drawer today. Sting therefore decided not to evolve the experience Synchronicity which is, in the history of the Police, undoubtedly the most electronic, synthetic, artificial record and ultimately the most suitable to project itself into the 2000s.
In striking contrast with the location of the recordings, namely George Martin’s Air Studios on the splendid island of Montserrat, a true natural paradise, the Police reduce the heat of their reggae influences and accelerate the cold artificiality of electronics. It’s not the first time they’ve recorded there, too Ghosts had been conceived in that fairy-tale place, but Synchronicity is studded with a massive and unprecedented use of synthesizers, in particular of Oberheim which is programmed by Sting himself, which is counterpointed by Andy Summers’ guitar, also processed through a Roland GR300 guitar synth and various effects, while Stewart Copeland collaborates on the rhythm of the sequencers.
The three implement a sort of turnover in the use of synthesizers, liquidating the individual contributions in a collective “all noises by The Police” in the credits of the album. But that the Police are a collective, well, that’s not true anymore. In fact, the three get along only when they have lunch or talk bullshit. When it comes to music, darkness falls. They are three heads that over the years have developed their own aesthetics, their own idea of how to make music and paradoxically this artistic maturity is confined within the cages of compromise in a band. Reason for which Synchronicity it is also the most edited album in the history of the Police: most of the pieces are assembled by cutting and sewing different sessions, looking for the best parts. The three play at the same time but in different environments, officially for reasons of sound devised by Hugh Padgham, actually to avoid further brawls and allow them to concentrate only on the pieces. Once recorded they are reluctant to listen to them again, taking turns to be alone with the sound engineer while the others enjoy themselves on the island.
Striking is the story of Every Breath You Takewhich initially seemed impossible to close, with Sting and Copeland almost coming to blows and the producer coming out of it by sewing a whole series of overdubs and abandoning the idea of recording it live in the studio. The band, primarily Sting, feel they are at the center of a cosmic breakup and know that probably that would have been the last album by the Police. Everyone was amazed by the fact that, listening to it again, the record was really strong despite the premises. Not only that: it cannot be called entirely a commercial record: side A is in fact highly experimental, while side B, despite the pop appeal, is studded with dark, disturbing themes.
We start with the first part of Synchronicity, with a propulsive sequence and in its vaguely Afrofuturist polyrhythm, we enter the Jungian concept of synchronicity but also of the collective unconscious, the “spiritus mundi” that binds human beings and makes them act as moved by paranormal, archetypal forces. The fact that humanity does not delve into its unconscious resources causes monsters. Walking in Your Footsteps compare humans to dinosaurs: they believe they own the world, but they are only headed for extinction. The bogeyman of the nuclear holocaust forms the backdrop to this piece studded with electronic percussion and once again we look to Africa, borrowing its lullabies. At one point the piece unfolds in a contrast between prehistory and technological future through the free twists of Andy Summers, who with his aleatory guitar recalls Adrian Belew’s attitude. Oh My God it’s a sort of blasphemy towards the creator’s indifference towards human misery put into song, and – compared to the previous track – it returns to a more traditional form, with only a substantial ambient patina offered by Summers’ synth guitar. Only towards the end Copeland on drums and Sting on sax do their utmost in a sort of “English free jazz punk”, as Battiato would say.
About this, Mother is one of the most shocking tracks on the disc, an obsessive and paranoid piece by Andy Summers to which he lends his schizophrenic voice, within an Oedipal picture to the Psycho. It is the most extreme piece of the disc and represents a rather explicit and grotesque connection with the no wave. According to Andy Summers, the point of reference is Captain Beefheart, but in his Middle Eastern trend it is impossible not to see the New York rock avant-garde made up of limitless crossbreeding. A kind of warning to those who think that the Police are exclusively chart stuff, with his black humor he introduces Miss Gradenkothe only number written by Copeland, musically closer to the “classic” Police, despite the bizarreness that distinguishes the drummer’s songs: an anti-totalitarian text that apparently refers to the paranoia of the Kremlin, but which actually mentions 1984 by Orwell. Love undermines every uniform and for this reason it is dangerous.
The almost comical contrast between such a burning theme and the “carefree” music (disturbed only by Summers’ avant twists) is then realigned in the most aggressive track on the record, namely Synchronicity IIwhich describes the neurotic collapse of a man frustrated by family, work, social pressure that occurs at the same time as a monster rises from a lake (obviously that of Loch Ness), between Jung and The second coming by Yeats, in which the end of a civilization gives way to something new, wild and unstoppable. An almost noise rock track, in which Andy Summers goes all out in walls of recorded feedback without even listening to a note.
Side B is basically a collection of singles. It starts with Every Breath You Takemistaken by all for a love song, with Summers’ famous guitar riff produced by playing with an eraser between the strings to obtain a “soft” and peculiar blocked sound. King of Pain is the projecting of the human psychological state into the world of symbolisms, a black spot on the sun becomes the soul of Sting, exhausted after the end of his first marriage, and in general that of everyone as they are incapable of emancipating us from pain, a piece in odor world which wouldn’t have looked bad on a Peter Gabriel record. Wrapped Around Your Finger it is an evanescent electronic reggae, with an alchemical text, full of mythological and literary references, about turning the tables on whoever ruled the game up to that moment (the reference to Sting’s autobiographical moment with his wife is clear).
Tea in the Sahara is the song that closes the album. Inspired by The tea in the desert by Paul Bowles (from which Bertolucci later made his film), tells of these sisters who wait forever for an Arab prince for tea and he doesn’t show up. The prince appears to represent The Police, who are gone forever never to return as fans continue to wait for them. What to Stewart Copeland is the Police’s finest track has a diaphanous melody, a rhythmic that seems made of wind and Andy Summers’ guitar that sounds like an airy synthetic pad but is only inflated with echo and treated with a volume pedal .
If that’s true Synchronicity and the album is the most futuristic of the group, it is equally true that there are “classical” references underneath, somehow exploiting that idea of the collective unconscious in a creative/evocative sense. Oh My God contains a bass riff that practically quotes Day trippers of the Beatles, Synchronicity I seems to rework I know what by Miles Davis, Every Breath You Take is a doo-wop standard revised in a modern way, and are just some of the ideas.
The most surprising thing is that the B-sides of the singles are in all respects part of the album, discarded at the last moment only due to problems of space on vinyl (at the time the CD was in its first stirrings). They highlight how the Sting-Summers couple is capable of writing eternal things. A song like Murder by Numbersin which the dynamics of power that trains itself to be an insensitive murderer to maintain its privileges is ruthlessly revealed, according to the same authors is an integral part of Synchronicitybut it’s also a great piece stand aloneso much so that it was later remade live by Frank Zappa with Sting’s guest. Once Upon a Dream is another great song by the pair: dreamy, spacey, one of the best romantic Police numbers. Andy Summers signs alone Someone to talk towhich in its urban reggae habit is the other side of Mother (Here too Andy sings: where there was an obsession with a suffocating affective interference, here there is a solitude lived with bitter lucidity).
It would perhaps have been a crucial piece of Synchronicity (so much so that both Summers and Copeland were piqued by Sting’s refusal to sing it, perhaps because he didn’t feel up to it) demonstrating how the Police were a set of strong individual personalities, but also an entity that existed in their own right. Listening to him today, Synchronicity it sounds multifaceted and always different like the original edition of the cover, published in 36 different versions containing a vinyl that was apparently black, but which revealed its purple color when exposed to light. The moment the band dies, the success becomes disruptive. Yes, the Police had seen us long: we are all in “a sleep trance / a dream dance / a shared romance”.
