“Don’t worry, you’re not missing much,” I tell Stewart Copeland in the opening seconds of the interview, when Zoom throws a tantrum and won’t let him see my face. «Okay», he replies, «but you are Italian, and how can I understand what you are saying to me if I don’t see you waving your hands?».
We have a good laugh and, when the video finally starts, I notice him walking non-stop inside the Sacred Grove, his recording studio in Los Angeles. He must have put his cell phone on one of those selfie sticks, because the frontal shot is perfect, yet I really don’t think there’s a cameraman filming it. He will continue pacing throughout the interview, only stopping when it’s time to say goodbye.
The opportunity to chat with the drummer of the Police is Police Deranged for Orchestraalbum released in recent days in which, forty years after the release of Synchronicity, their latest album, Copeland tackles some of the most famous pieces of the band he founded together with Sting in the studio and live. Big hits like Roxanne, Don’t Stand So Close to Me And Message in a Bottle are “de-arranged” and performed by a symphony orchestra and a rock band which, in addition to the drummer himself, includes Armand Sabal Lecco (bass), Rusty Anderson (guitar) and Amy Keys, Carmel Helene and Ashley Támar (vocals) . A project that is also being developed live, with concerts that will soon also touch Italy: July 12 in Udine, 14 in Perugia, 16 in Trento, 24 in Gardone Riviera, 25 in Florence and 27 in Taormina.
“I’ve been doing concerts with orchestras for decades now,” he says. «They suggested that I focus on hits rather than just soundtracks or other compositions that I have been commissioned to do. I started with some instrumental versions of obscure Police songs and the response from the audience was so enthusiastic that I decided to base an entire show on the band’s successes. Old songs, with their history, have the power to move. We live for this on stage. The fact that the audience knows those songs and has grown up with them greatly adds to their impact. That’s why I do them. For this project I picked up the master tapes of the recordings and, through the various tracks of the original sessions, I realized that at the time we had kept aside many ideas that we hadn’t used: for example guitar solos or bass lines that I used for this new album and that will also be heard live».
In each of the six Italian cities touched by the tour, a different symphony orchestra will be on stage together with Copeland and his band. All musicians who have not yet had the opportunity to try the pieces together with the bandleader. “This is the miracle of the orchestra,” explains Copeland without stopping his rapid walk. «In Udine, for example, I will meet the musicians at two in the afternoon. We’ll rehearse for two hours, two and a half hours, and then we’ll be ready for that night’s live. The reason they are able to do this is that I put everything on sheet music. Each musician knows what he has to play and how he has to play it because he finds the articulation and dynamics on the page. These musicians can read music and perform it perfectly. Another very positive thing is that, when these orchestras go on stage, they will have performed the songs no more than a couple of times, during rehearsals, and therefore everything will still be very fresh and you will perceive the emotion that comes from this freshness . It’s different than when a band rehearses for six weeks before going on tour.”
Lives with orchestra have become a musical genre in itself for years. The Who have just passed through Florence, for example. “I’ve seen them do it Tommy at the Royal Albert Hall and it was great, although obviously Zak Starkey wasn’t worth Keith Moon. There are also shows of this type that I didn’t like, but I won’t name names». At this point we get curious and we insist. «Ok, ok: the Sex Pistols orchestral tour was bad!», He says and in front of our amazed face he stops for a moment and concludes: «I just made it up». Compared to the Who and other bands who reinterpret their repertoire in a symphonic key, he clarifies that «in general I take more freedom, more impunity, because I feel a sense of ownership of the material. I push things forward: it’s not alone Roxannebut it is Roxanne with all the improvisation we used to do on stage. The Police albums came from the work of Sting, Andy and myself. Here are my visions of these songs, in my own style.”
Speaking of Sting and Andy Summers, will they have listened to this new album? “I don’t know if they’ve listened to it, but I’m aware of its release. Sting encouraged me a lot, he likes it when they make his songs. I didn’t send him the audio files but I did send him a copy of this,” Copeland says as he starts leafing through a huge book. Inside, he explains, there are all the transcriptions of the parts of the songs. “His sight must have gone along with it but it affected him a lot.” Who knows, maybe he will come to see one of the concerts, since he is often in Italy. “Certain! He lives near Florence, and since we’re going to play right there… ».
If one of the goals of the new album is to bring the music of the Police to today’s audience, Copeland says he can’t identify the trio’s influences in his colleagues from 2023. “If anything, I notice the differences,” he explains. «But it has always been like this: when I heard, for example, that Men At Work resembled the Police, I noticed the differences and not the similarities. Maybe I’m not the best person to make these comparisons.’
Ever since they were in business, the Police have always been told that they were a unique band. Were there any contemporaries they felt they had an affinity with? “The B-52’s, the Damned, the Talking Heads and the Blondies,” he replies in that order. “There were really big bands at that time but I didn’t find them particularly affinities with the Police, even if there were some ideas that I stole from all of them: that’s what musicians do. Then these ideas cannot be identified because I hid them intelligently. We all inspired each other, even though none of them did our weird reggae and we’ve never done anything resembling the B-52’s.”
A big fan of The Police was Taylor Hawkins. His memoir of Stewart Copeland posted on the pages of Rolling Stone it was very touching. Inevitable to ask him what he thinks of the choice of Josh Freese as his replacement in the Foo Fighters. “Taylor came here to the Sacred Grove and hit the drums right here, like Neil Peart,” he says as he shows the drums and seats that the Foo Fighters and Rush drummers sat on. “We had some good jams, including with Stanley Clarke and others. You can search them on YouTube, they’re free, we didn’t do it for commercial purposes. Josh Freese is a whole new Foo. I really liked the way they sounded with Taylor and they’re a different group now. Musically it is the perfect choice. He surprised me because I thought they were going to cast a whole new character that no one knew about, whereas Josh is known to have played with loads of musicians from heavy metal bands to Devo. But then I realized they took it to do something different. When Andy Summers came into The Police, he had played with everybody, but he wanted to be in the band, be on the record covers. For Josh it’s the same thing, the Foo Fighters didn’t want a session man, but one who was a member of the band. He has all the characteristics to be what they were looking for: he definitely knows how to play as a musician, he knows how to behave, he’s a great person, and I’m very happy to see him play with them ».
This fall, Stewart Copeland will also publish The Police Diaries, a large book made up of excerpts from his diaries written between 1976 and 1979, with anecdotes, scans, photographs and other materials relating to the years before the great success of the Police. “I found that material and took one out coffee table book in which you will be able to see my bad handwriting, my scribbles, but also all the receipts from the studios and clubs where we played, how much they paid us, how many people there were, whether we played well or badly. I chose to tell the Police’s “hungry years” because they seemed to me the most important part of the story. Later, when we became a successful group, the arenas and stadiums all looked a bit the same to me. In the beginning, when it was the two of us and Henry Padovani, Sting and I had a rough time, but we bonded with each other. And we still didn’t have pieces like Roxannenot to mention Every Breath You Take. On the other hand we had my bad songs. When Andy then came along, who had played with Kevin Coyne, Joan Armatrading, Kevin Ayers and others, I asked him: “Why did you leave a more or less secure career to be part of a fake punk band that won’t go anywhere Nowhere?”. And he, remembering another one with whom he had played, replied: “I don’t know, what are you saying? Should I have stopped at Neil Sedaka?”
«Then it’s not that things went well with Andy right away. The first glimmer of success was when I released a few songs under the pseudonym Clark Kent, in fact I never miss an opportunity to remind Andy and Sting that the first time they saw them on television was when we went to Top of the Pops to sing Don’t Care. Sting had a gorilla mask on. In short: at the beginning they were my backing band».
