Tom Dunne: Re-release of Synchronicity a reminder of the glory days of Sting and The Police

Sting may have eventually fallen out with his bandmates in The Police, but the talented trio were an impressive force in the 1970s and '80s

 The Police in 1979: Stewart Copeland, Sting (Gordon Sumner) and Andy Summers. Picture: Evening Standard/Getty Images

Sting is a very handsome man. I met him in 2002 for a TV show. There was an audible intake of breath when he entered the room. He seemed cast from different materials to the rest of us. The light shimmered upon him.

He was not modest, however. I was interviewing him about song writing. Most song writers are incredibly modest. They generally exude an air of gratitude and a joking “don’t ask me to do it again” because it can be an elusive gift.

One minute everything you write says “hit” and the next it doesn’t. The coin that has served you well suddenly starts coming up “miss”. And then it won’t stop. People become aware the good stuff can show up randomly. But not Sting.

He had won an Ivor Novello award, and I was asking him about it in a “did it build confidence” kind of way. Sting wasn’t having it. Sting didn’t need an award to confirm what he already knew. Sting could write a tune.

Must be interesting to be in a band with somebody like that, I mused quietly. Must be interesting to try and get one of your songs progressed or a few of your ideas incorporated into something he has started. Interesting? Frustrating? Maddening?

The full extent of how maddening it was is laid bare on the new Synchronicity re-issue. It was The Police’s fifth and last album. It would yield ten million sales and three Grammys, but it would end them.

On the subsequent world tour, onstage at Shea Stadium, Sting concluded it was over.

The drummer, Stuart Copeland, nursing a fractured rib from a pre-gig fight, probably agreed. It was now not so much quit while you’re ahead as quit while you could still walk.

When Sting joined The Police, he was, musically, a novice by comparison to the others. Copeland had been in the prog rock group Curved Air. They were the type of band punks hated for their show off levels of musicianship. Why play one note where 20 would do?

Guitarist Andy Summers’ CV was even more impressive. Jazz influenced, like all the best session players, he had been playing at virtuoso level for years. He had belatedly studied classical guitar in California and had toured with Soft Machine, Joan Armatrading and Neil Sedaka.

Copeland and Summers were seasoned professionals at the top of their game. Sting was a schoolteacher. And before that had been a builder’s labourer, bus conductor and tax officer. He played jazz, but only in the evening and at weekends.

But what Sting could do, that Andy and Stuart could not, was write hit singles. The Police were a singles band and songs like Roxanne and Message in a Bottle were soon lifting them into the upper reaches of charts the world over.

At first this wasn’t a major issue. Sting’s early ideas benefitted from his band mates’ input. But by Synchronicity he was less and less inclined to listen. He wanted full creative control. As they headed into Air studios in Monserrat in December 1982, trouble was brewing.

You can hear the extent of that trouble on Every Breath You Take. The new box set includes Sting’s early home demo of the track. It is wonderfully complete. But you can’t help but imagine that Copeland and Summers must have wondered “what can I bring to this?” 

Copeland, in particular, tried to introduce something a bit more virtuosic on the drumming but time and time again it was pulled back to something closer to the metronomic demo tape. Tensions reached boiling point.

It became so bad that Sir George Martin, who also lived on the island, was asked to mediate. Wisely, he refused, telling them, whilst possibly quoting a Beatles lyric, that he was confident that they could “work it out”. Amazingly, they did.

The Police put their differences aside long enough to do a nine-month tour, win three Grammys and sell ten million records. But by Shea Stadium the fact that one of them had a cracked rib on stage tells you all you needed to know.

Sting’s first solo outing in 1985, The Dream of the Blue Turtles, picked up where The Police had left off. It contained numerous hit singles, went triple platinum and was Grammy nominated for Album of the Year. He had utterly outgrown his mentors.

 The re-issue of Synchronicity captures the last days of a great band. The songs are monumental. But the egos are, fittingly, visible from space.