Rock icon Stewart Copeland describes when he had the greatest ‘urge’ to kill Sting
It’s not the gold records, or the sold-out arenas all over the world, or the Hall of Fame, or the money, The Police’s greatest achievement was leaving the stage when they were at their best.
Blame, or credit, Sting for that. The Police have reunited a few times since they broke up in 1984, after which they never again recorded new music, a detail that adds to their mystique. A mystique that is aided by the stories that the three men who comprised the band — Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland — could not get along even as their band became one of the most successful in the history of rock music.
All three have enjoyed enduring careers, and, good or bad, when you think of one you think of the other two. You think of The Police.
Rather than run from it, Copeland hugs his past as much as he enjoys his present. He continues to play with new sounds, and writes new music.
If someone wants to talk about The Police, he’s happy to do that, too.
“It was only eight years of my 74 years; I’ve got plenty other stories to tell, which I will be telling there in your area, and I don’t care,” Copeland said in a recent interview with the Star-Telegram. “It was a fun time. There are a lot of fun things that happened. I’m not jealous of my previous success. I embrace it with love, and I enjoy what I’m doing now.
“I don’t care about looking over my shoulder. ‘Nostalgia’ is not a bad word for me. Folks like to hear about it. I got no problem with that at all.”
Copeland will be at The Kessler Theater in Dallas for a two-night run on his “Have I Said Too Much-The Police, Hollywood, and other adventures” tour; it’s a moderated discussion that covers his Hall of Fame career. The shows are June 11 and 12.
He talked to the Star-Telegram about anything.
Star-Telegram: You are one of few drummers who is a household name. Why do you think that happened?
Stewart Copeland: Ego, pushiness, general not taking no for an answer; banging my own drum, so to speak, or tooting my own horn or other self-aggrandizing activities that have brought attention to my humble, worthless self.
It’s weird how that works; Mitch Mitchell, who was my icon, hallowed be his name, is not a household name, because in front of him was Jimi Hendrix.
So hardly anyone noticed that that was the greatest rock drummer of all time, and including, I’m sorry, drummers out there, including John Bonham, Keith Moon, even my good buddy Neil Peart. Mitchell was the greatest drummer of all time. Write that down, learn it, print it onto your heart. But he’s not a household name.
S-T: What would you have done had this profession not worked to the level that you needed to sustain a lifestyle that was good for you?
SC: Music did not pay the bills in the early years of The Police. We were starving, and I supplemented my meager Police income. We got paid 20 quid for a show, seven pounds for the PA, another five for the truck, and then the rest, 10 quid to split between three guys. I supplemented the income by writing reviews of musical instruments for music publications.
I never thought I was going to be a musician. In college, I published a magazine, I was a DJ for a college radio station, KALX. We had 10 watts broadcasting to four blocks of Berkeley, California. I had a lot of jobs. I was tour manager; I was a roadie. I wrote for (the band) ‘Wishbone Ash,’ but that didn’t work out too well. Music kept calling me back.
S-T: You wrote the score for the Academy Award-winning film ‘Wall Street’ directed by Oliver Stone. He’s famously particular; did you butt heads?
SC: We didn’t butt heads, he just drove me a little nuts, the opposite of Francis Coppola. I’m gonna talk a little smack here, because I love them both. They’re both amazing filmmakers, but with two very different styles.
Francis gets a guy with whom he is copacetic, we’re on the same wavelength, go for it, and it gives you a lot of rope with which to hang yourself; considering when I did (”Rumble Fish,” released in 1983), it was my first film score, and I didn’t know how you do it. I immediately set about trying to hang myself, and just did it, and I got a Grammy nomination, and Golden Globe nomination.
Oliver Stone needs to know every note, what its meaning is. And since I’m a bulls--- artist, I could tell him, ‘This note here denotes the angst that she feels when she sees him. But this note here tells you that she loves him in spite of his weaknesses. This note down here tells you that she is a lying b---,’ and as long as I could come up with BS like that, he said, ‘Oh, OK.’
Directors, where the rubber hits the road, they have this fear of music as being this sacred, weird place that only the anointed ones can go and play in; they have a strange, which is undeserved by the way, respect for musicians, because they have this mystical power to direct the emotions of the audience in a way that all those actors, all those set builders, all those lighting guys can’t do.
S-T: Are there parallels between the paranoia about technology invading music today compared to 1985 with synthesizers?
SC: It’s a K-shaped thing, for the creative people AI will be an unbelievable tool. For the employees, such as my previous career as a film composer, we are screwed. The artists will be fine, but the guys who do commercial music, film music, advertising music, jingles, and everything, they will be replaced. I’m sure they already are replaced by AI. It’s cheap, it sounds great. Nobody cares if it’s unique or original or has any kind of personality.
S-T: A few days before this interview, Sting is in town performing. On stage is one drummer and one guitarist. Nothing else; 11 of the 21 songs were from The Police.
SC: That’s a majority.
S-T: I know there’s more to it, but why not ...
SC: Because he gets those other two guys back, and he’s got songs, he wrote great songs, and by the way, those 10 songs that were not Police songs? Great songs. I’m sure the audience loved him, but he writes songs, and he wants his musicians to serve those songs. He’s telling a story about something; I never realized it until I did my orchestrations of Police songs.
‘Message in a Bottle?’ Apparently some guy on an island, who knew? That’s his purpose here on the planet as a musician. Mine? Not so much. I’m here to bang stuff.
S-T: Go to the start of your career; did you have a moment, or moments, where you thought, ‘I can’t believe I’m actually here doing this.’ Or that you were on stage with a certain performer?
SC: Being on stage with Stanley Clarke, legendary jazz musician, and I don’t even like jazz, but it’s Stanley Clark. And with Sting, too. I am thinking, ‘I am in this music that is transcendent.’ I am an audience for this. I’m not just doing it, I am also transported by it. When Sting goes off in those vocal improvisations ... man. It just gets me.
Another one is at the Grammys. Backstage at the Grammys is the best party in show business. I’m backstage, and I see the almighty Buddy Rich in the flesh. He’s sort of walking in my general direction, and I’m trying to position myself in the general direction he’s walking. And then I realized he’s walking to me, and he’s holding a piece of paper. ‘Sign this,’ he commands. ‘It’s for my daughter,’ and I look, there’s his daughter, Cathy, peeking out from behind him. And I gave Buddy Rich my damned autograph.
S-T: Roger Waters told ‘60 Minutes’ that he was tired of talking about Pink Floyd. That he couldn’t figure out why people wanted to keep talking about it.
SC: Because, Roger, they don’t give a crap about what you’re doing now.
S-T: You were part of a trend that took their music and produced the same songs as orchestral. It worked. Pink Floyd’s worked. Are there any Police tracks that as orchestral songs bombed?
SC: ‘Tea In the Sahara’ is one of my favorite songs, but it just didn’t light up the audience. I thought my orchestral version of it, including Sting’s crap oboe solo, and I’m only calling it ‘crap’ technically because it totally worked. That sucker picks up the oboe double reed instrument, or one of the really obscure, difficult instruments to get any kind of sound of, but he picks up anything and something beautiful comes out of it.
He goes in front of an audience, and he pulls out his new toy, and he hits three notes on it. The place goes wild because he’s amused.
S-T: Andy Summers said in an interview that you were very cognizant of ‘branding’ for The Police. He didn’t mean it in a bad way.
SC: Yeah, he didn’t mean that in a good way. (Sting and Summers) both blasted me for this because we were the first punk band. I’d say, ‘Come on, Andy, cut your hair!’ Which was a big deal then. We were carpetbaggers, because (punk) was an easier scene to get into. It was a smaller pond. We had to pretend to be punks.
S-T: Sting told Howard Stern that one of the challenges to remaining in a band was that you have to stay with that sound. Do you buy that?
SC: No. I think what he meant is you have to stay with those musicians, and those musicians have complications, and can be difficult; it’s why he switches up his band occasionally, because rock and roll is very collaborative.
So old Sting-o has a very clear idea of how his song should be performed. And by the way, he’s pretty good at arranging. I hate to say it, and don’t tell him I said this for God’s sake, but even he has good ideas for what the drummer should be doing.
S-T: Was he right?
SC: That’s when I had the urge to kill him the most, is when he was right. Rock is a collaboration, so the musicians that you are playing with will affect your musical creation, and in his case he is all seeing, all knowing, all wise, omnipotent, full-rounded musician, and he doesn’t want to collaborate or negotiate.
S-T: What gives you greater joy — creating a music soundtrack, opera, converting old music that you created 30 years ago into orchestra, or a three-minute and 32-second song that is a collaborative effort with bandmates?
SC: Three minute song? Nah. I live to write opera, although I know that I’m considered insane, and that nobody wants to hear any God — opera. They’d rather watch a movie or see a rock band, but I don’t care. I’m 74, I’ve earned it, I can do what I want.
S-T: Part of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s process was blowing stuff up. It was, ‘Let’s see if this works.’ How much of what you created is ‘blowing stuff up?’
SC: That’s what it was. I would give Andy the most credit for that. Andy was our ‘average monitor,’ our average cop guy. He’d say, ‘That’s average. Dig deeper.’ That was usually Andy agitating. We thought we were pretty clever; ‘This is pretty good.’ Andy would say, ‘Not good enough.’ And it was Andy who pushed us into more extreme versions of things.
S-T: Most random place you have been recognized?
SC: Using the restroom at an airport. We were one of the first bands to actually play in Hong Kong, in India; Mumbai, or Bombay, it was called at the time.
S-T: Favorite book?
SC: I don’t get around to fiction that much, because I’m looking not so much to lose myself in an adventure as much as to educate myself. Some of my favorite books, ‘Guns, Germs, and Steel.’ Anything by Tom Wolfe, ‘Bonfire of the Vanities.’
S-T: Favorite song?
SC: ‘Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes’ by Paul Simon, who I’m not even a big fan of, but that song — I get emotionally overwhelmed by it. It’s too beautiful. It just gets me. There’s lots of music I can’t listen to, because it makes me too emotional.
‘Wake Up Little Susie’ (by the Everly Brothers) is another; ‘Green Onions’ by Booker T and MGs. If that song comes on the radio, all activity must stop for the duration of that tune. Anything by Jimi Hendrix.
S-T: In a cage match, who wins, Sting or Stuart Copeland?
SC: Me. He’s a couple of months older than me, that old bastard. He’s September, and I’m July. He lied to me about (his age) those first couple of years. The punk scene was all about young, young, young. Because I was the tour manager in the early days, it wasn’t until we were going through customs I got all three of our passports, and then, ‘Wait a minute’ ...”
S-T: I could do this all day. You’ll be glad to know that since I was a kid I bought all the records, attended the concerts, bought the T-shirts, posters, given you my money ...
SC: Thank you, and, by the way, you’re not getting it back.
