Police

"To warm up the evening, boys, we're gonna play a punk song… which, like all punk music, is a load of rubbish!". With words of this ilk, Sting used to rile up and provoke the crowd of multicolored mohawks at the early Police shows.

Legend or truth as it may be, this little 1977 anecdote conceals a couple of truths that only seem to contradict each other.

One, that the Police owe something to the climate of musical renewal (read: the punk movement in the broad sense) that exploded in the second half of the '70s. They owe it in their direct, immediate, straightforward musical attitude, in that hunger for unadorned sonic freshness that seemed to have captured the attention of musicians looking toward the "new".

But there's also a second truth: the distance, at times abysmal, separating the Police sound — so full of great taste and musical substance — from the raw roughness and sonic poverty of punk.

Police are probably, along with U2, the most successful band to emerge from the new wave movement. The reason behind this exceptional appeal to audiences can be traced back to a handful of factors. The aim of this profile, focused on their second LP "Reggatta de blanc", released in 1979 and probably the most significant album in the band's entire discography, is precisely to identify and analyze these aspects.

Three blond old-timers

To start from the top, they had three peroxide-blond heads, apparently the result of a shampoo advertising campaign. But the Police were, thankfully, much more than that: musicians of real substance, each bringing different experiences and attitudes to the table.

To begin with, Stewart Copeland (drums), despite being a great admirer of punk, had played, right up until his fateful meeting with Sting in 1977, in nothing less than a well-regarded progressive outfit, Curved Air, devoted to a blend of rock and classical music and heading, after the glories of the early '70s, towards an inexorable decline.

Sting (vocals and bass), for his part, alongside working as a teacher, nursed an unbridled passion for jazz (amply demonstrated, incidentally, in his later solo career) and stood out for his unusual charisma fronting, with little success, a faint-hearted band called Last Exit.

Andy Summers (guitar), meanwhile, was a respected and, let's be honest, seasoned session player. Already a comrade-in-arms of Eric Burdon since the '60s, the guitarist, born in 1942, arrived at his big break with the Police after turning 35.

The band members' average age, quite high for an up-and-coming English band of that era, is certainly one key to understanding the class of a sound that had already exploded in full maturity on their debut record, the splendid "Outlandos d'Amour" from 1978, of which "Reggatta de blanc" represents a kind of confirmation and further consolidation, following a line of expressive continuity.

Ragga-licious rhythm!

The Police are sometimes remembered for having invented the so-called "reggae-rock", a musical formula inspired by the rhythms and sounds of Jamaican music.

In truth, there are really very few songs that can rightfully claim that label, even though they include some of the band's finest songs ("Bring On The Night" above all).

Rather, in a broader sense, the band's sound reveals a tendency towards the offbeat accents of drummer Stewart Copeland, the group's true engine, blessed with such a distinctive natural talent that his touch alone on the drums stamped a trademark on the band's entire sound.

Guiding all that sonic substance are Sting's voice and bass: a voice that's warm, seductive and just as recognisable, easily picked out whenever it has lent itself to outside collaborations over the years; a bass that's always right on the money, precise, aggressive and driving, a fitting complement to the rhythm section powered by Copeland.

As for Sting, the band's undisputed leader, it's worth remembering his modest acting career, kicked off by the legendary Who, who, in the wake of the overwhelming success of "Outlandos d'Amour", recruited him for a role in the film "Quadrophenia".

The sole harmonic instrumentalist, Andy Summers contributes to the wonder of the Police sound with guitar flourishes drenched in effects that would influence a whole generation of musicians. Tasteful and never overdone, Summers is the great weaver of the band's sonic fabric.

A matter of feeling…

Starting from the example of Copeland's "touch", it's possible to extend the concept by saying that the Police can boast an incredible knack for creating atmospheres, or as they say in the trade, an extremely distinctive and instantly recognisable "musical sound".

The overall impression, listening to the band's grooves, is that it all happens with minimal effort, through a magical alchemy of sounds rarely so well interwoven and blended together in the history of rock.

Some Police songs, such as "Reggatta de blanc" or "Deathwish", to give two examples from the album under discussion here, are pure sonic devices designed to unleash the trio's incredible chemistry.

Hit Parade

Another characteristic and quality (and rightly so!) of Sting and co. was their great gift for crafting successful "hits". How many other beloved rock bands have managed, in such a short time, to break so forcefully and so often into the clubs and FM radio playlists? "Roxanne", "So Lonely", "Can't Stand Losing You", "Message In A Bottle", "Walking On The Moon", "Bring On The Night" are the titles that, over the span of two albums and two seasons, accompanied kids across half the world and, in the years and decades that followed, became fixed in the collective imagination of rock.

Reggatta de blanc: the songs

The album's opener immediately delivers a gem, that "Message In A Bottle" which is perhaps the band's most famous song and certainly one of their finest. What can you say about a song that, 25 years on, hasn't lost a shred of its shine? The "SOS" sent out by Sting is still picked up with enthusiasm today, and plenty of small arrangement touches still amaze, like the simple incisiveness of Summers' guitar phrasing and Copeland's offbeats, brilliant here in the track's finale but truly the leitmotif of the whole album.

"Reggatta de blanc" opens with a flurry of drum hits, the proverbial rim-shots of rock's greatest snare. As the tribal chaos builds, Sting's voice comes rushing in with an oddball stadium chant. Immediacy, freshness, sonic invention: these are the qualities that ooze from the record's grooves. The ending is still rhythmically torrential, with Summers' crooked guitar salvos.

"It's All Right For You" is a fine, direct rock track with almost punk overtones, where the Police sound explodes in all its bluntness and tightness. Was this perhaps the kind of "rubbish" Sting used to talk about at his concerts?

"Bring On The Night" is a song of such beauty and harmony that it could dispassionately be recommended as essential listening for any musician wanting to make good music.

The unison guitar-and-bass attack at the 27-second mark of the track (to be precise, as someone would say) is absolutely memorable: how often have instruments locked together so perfectly, so well-dosed, as in this song? The reggae-inspired groove explodes in all its dynamism in the chorus: so let the dancing begin!

As mentioned, "Contact" comes across as a sonic device propped up by the musicians' chemistry. The song itself has little to say, but it's carried by a frantic, incisive rhythmic pattern built on "stolen" offbeats.

Another absolute classic from the band is "Walking On The Moon", a timeless song with a hypnotic charm, with Sting's bass holding everything together with just a handful of notes. This hit is proof that sometimes, to make great music, compositional and performative essentialism is the winning key.

Summers' chords on the downbeat, for instance, rise and spread out crystal-clear, with the naturalness and harmony of concentric ripples spreading out from the point where a stone has dropped into a still pool of water. Ohm.

If the scant three minutes of "On Any Other Day" bring us back to a direct, fizzy rock sound packed with choruses, the following "The Bed's Too Big Without You" gets us back on the dancefloor, with the more typically reggae cadences that made the band's fortune.

The closing tracks mark a slight dip in quality, which had been frighteningly high up to this point in the album. "Deatwish" is defined by a murky low synth note that seems to keep the song from ever taking off. Piano instead makes an appearance on "Does Everyone Stare?", an eccentric and hard-to-read episode.

More defined is the explosive finale of "No Time This Time", where the Police's rock energy can burst out freely.

Police: whoever doesn't listen to them should be locked up straight away!

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06/11/2006