The first Police album I ever heard was
Outlandos d’Amour,
at my buddy Mike’s place. I heard it once. I’m pretty sure it belonged to one
of his three sisters - most likely Leslie, because she was scary and cool and
smoked cigarettes. Of course I liked “Roxanne" and "Message in a Bottle." Who didn’t? But the punk‑ish
reggae thing never really landed with me. Sting’s habit of tossing in those yo‑yo‑yo
yodels irritated me then and honestly are still irksome. Oddly enough, though,
I loved “Be My Girl - Sally” from the debut, and staying true to my contrarian
streak, I also really liked “Mother” from
Synchronicity, which ended up
being the first Police album I actually bought. I suppose this is my way of
saying I was not, am not, and likely never will be a dyed‑in‑the‑wool fan of
The Police - so take everything that follows as confirmation of my suspect
credentials.
The first time I remember hearing anything from
Zenyatta
Mondatta, I was on a basketball road trip and one of the guys had hauled
along a fairly substantial ghetto blaster. Blasting out of it was “Don’t Stand
So Close to Me,” and I remember thinking,
What a stupid song. That
opinion only hardened once “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” hit the airwaves.
Still, the band was hard to avoid, and through sheer cultural osmosis they
slowly got under my skin. Over time, songs that once annoyed the hell out of me
somehow grabbed a front‑row seat on the nostalgia bus. Sure, there are moments
when my knee‑jerk teenage reaction still flares up, but it’s quickly smothered
by decades of revisionist history insisting this was, in fact, good stuff.
GOOOOOOD stuff. Can’t really argue with history.
Over the years I picked up
Message in a Box, their
genuinely impressive box set, and their less impressive 1995
Live! album.
At least that’s how I remember them. I suppose this is my way of saying I own
the material, even if I haven’t always spent quality time with it. Yes, I’m
aware this sort of contradicts the “good stuff” argument (see suspect
credentials above). I’m happy to blame faulty memory and my ongoing habit of
rewriting history to suit my personal narrative. These days I own two Police
records on vinyl:
Synchronicity and
Zenyatta Mondatta. I was
genuinely excited when I found
Zenyatta. So many of its tracks have
become classics - or at least deeply familiar, despite the fact that it only
spawned two singles back in the day. “Driven to Tears” still features one of my
favourite cacophonic guitar solos, "When The World Is Running Down, You
Make The Best Of What's Still Around" may have one of the longest titles
ever committed to vinyl, and somehow even “De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da” has worked
its way into the cultural furniture.
What really grabbed me as I spent time with the album were the deeper
tracks and the band dynamics. As a trio, Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart
Copeland seemed to be completely interdependent - or at least that’s what I
choose to believe. Andy Summers, in particular, is an astonishingly creative
and versatile guitarist, and I’d argue that without his textures and phrasing,
many of these songs would be perfectly ordinary. Stewart, meanwhile, seemed to
drive everything forward through sheer force of will. Yet when you look at the
songwriting credits, it’s Sting’s name that dominates. In a band of equals, one
was clearly more equal than the others.
Maybe that’s why it feels fitting that Summers’ instrumental
“Behind My Camel” won the Grammy, Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance.
Reportedly Sting hated it so much he refused to play on it. Oddly it beat out
Rush's "YYZ." It was their second such award as a year earlier they'd
taken the little statue for "Reggatta de Blanc."
Zenyatta Mondatta was their third album, and in many
ways it was more of the same - but when it isn’t broken, why fix it?
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