[SPEAKER_00]: consequence podcast network.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, this is Stuart Kulfing, giving you the story behind the song or consequence.
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome listeners to the story behind this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Peter Chate of Deep Cuts Media.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well dear listeners, we've reached a end of season four of the story behind this song.
[SPEAKER_00]: I've been doing this for four years now and have had the great privilege of interviewing over fifty iconic and legendary artists all along the way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And today's season four finale episode is no different.
[SPEAKER_00]: I revisit my interview with Stewart Copeland, drummer of the police, a band that sold over seventy-five million albums, but shockingly called it quits in nineteen eighty-four after only five albums and when their star was still on the rise.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, we talk about rock sand, the police's iconic breakout song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Roxanne, you don't need to put on the red light!
[SPEAKER_00]: Who doesn't know those immortal words in my singing of them?
[SPEAKER_00]: No one, but Roxanne almost didn't make any sound at all when it was first released.
[SPEAKER_00]: It only broke out when the police's record label released it a second time, one year later.
[SPEAKER_00]: My interview with the hyperkinetic and endlessly entertaining Copeland is full of surprises.
[SPEAKER_00]: Why does the beginning of Roxanne feature that piano mistake followed by Sting's laughter?
[SPEAKER_00]: How did Copeland come to the unpleasant conclusion, as he calls it, that Sting is a fucking genius?
[SPEAKER_00]: Will the band ever get back together to play their hits?
[SPEAKER_00]: Just listen, and all of your questions will be answered in this special episode, which is still one of my personal favorites.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's take another dive deep into the story behind the police's enduring classic, Roxanne.
[SPEAKER_00]: So Stuart formed the band in the band sold over seventy five million albums.
[SPEAKER_00]: The debut album outlandest to more came out forty five years ago, so it's celebrating a big anniversary this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: Of course, inducted into the rocket role Hall of Fame in twenty twenty three, you were a solo artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: heart Kent you have another band Gizmodrome and you just won in a a recent Grammy award for that band.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was that band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Two Grammys.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two Grammys in two years.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the last year we got the Grammy for a new age album.
[SPEAKER_01]: And this year the same record.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: got a Grammy for best immersive mix.
[SPEAKER_01]: So how does that happen that it's two years?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the first album came out, won it's award.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then we did another version of the album, which was an immersive mix.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then what hey, hey, cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Put the put that up the following year and got ourselves another plaque.
[SPEAKER_01]: The gift that keeps on giving.
[SPEAKER_01]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I discovered it was an incredible talent, this guy Ricky Cage.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, over there in Bangalore, India.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, man, my new musical love of my life, the guy it's so incredibly talented over there, and he assembles these incredible musicians, and which resulted in that album.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, very good, and also film scoring, you've scored multiple films, Golden Globe nomination, Opera's
[SPEAKER_01]: books and a new book's gonna be coming out videos of course soundtrack to the blackberry that's that's a very obscure brag by the way if you'll indulge me for just a second for a film composer hired again the one upman ship is how many how much were you paid per note in whoever get has the highest turn note payment is top dog and for that one it's five notes blackberry paid me for their branding their logo yeah yeah audio logo
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm, I'm, I'm, I want to three, four, five.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's five notes and divide the fee.
[SPEAKER_01]: They pay cash money.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't pay royalty.
[SPEAKER_01]: They pay cash money by out.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they get, they own it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They can do anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They want with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: They don't got the pay, you know, royalty that cash money.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that cash money divided by five notes did, in fact, put one of my kids through private school for a year for each note.
[SPEAKER_01]: about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I need that kind of work.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's great work.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get a little background Stuart of you and just how you became a drummer in the first place.
[SPEAKER_00]: But you do much more than just drum.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I said, you have Clark Kent, you sing, you play multiple instruments.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how did you begin to focus on drumming as a young lad?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I think buddy of mine had a brochure from Slingerland, drum company with all, you know, each page was the first page of a drum set.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Look at that.
[SPEAKER_01]: The next page is the of slightly bigger drum set with like two Tom does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Whoa.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the center fold out was like a double bass drum kit with four Tom Tom's and oh my god for a twelve year old.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was just like, you know, the pages got stuck together, of course, you know, but you know.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the main thing was that I got me, you know, and I was banging on stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And my father, who was a musician himself, but my older siblings, none of them could play an instrument.
[SPEAKER_01]: They didn't have the bug, the gene.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when I started banging stuff, he immediately, first of all, he rented me a drum set just to see what would happen.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was kind of a late developer.
[SPEAKER_01]: All my friends were shaving and
[SPEAKER_01]: bulking up and I was still just a little pip squeak.
[SPEAKER_01]: And but as soon as I hit those drums, I became an eight hundred pound silver pack gorilla swinging through the trees mother fucker.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love even though I was twelve and it's still skinny little kid.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can bang in those drums and suddenly be ten times bigger.
[SPEAKER_01]: God, that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's an adult masculinity.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's what drew me to the drums.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then and then
[SPEAKER_01]: The night I was playing at the American Embassy Beach Club in Beirut, Lebanon, and there, we were playing James Brown, and there, right in front of me, was Jennifer Roberts, who was like, fifteen.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, fifteen-year-old to a girl, to a twelve-year-old boy, that is just heaven-revealed.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there she was, her body being moved to my rhythm.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm making her move her hips like that.
[SPEAKER_01]: That there,
[SPEAKER_01]: deepened the connection with music.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It has that in, in, by the way, as an adult, looking at what music does, which is what no other art form does.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Music is the only art form that will physically use syrup, motor control of your body.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, literature doesn't do that movies poetry.
[SPEAKER_01]: Nothing does that, but music will actually take your hips and cause them to maneuver, to move in a suggestive fashion.
[SPEAKER_00]: A med to that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, for those of you who are listening to the podcast and not watching, Stuart is endlessly moving, walking around while I sit here, sedentary.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I'm, I also applaud that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm walking around the sacred grove.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here it is folks.
[SPEAKER_01]: The sacred grove.
[SPEAKER_01]: Wow.
[SPEAKER_01]: My fancy friends come to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: How many drum sets do you have in there?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, just just one at the moment, but I, you know, Neil Pert came over and I and Danny Carrey Bose, so I'd have two drums that but also got in percussion, ringback there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've got the, I've got the largest collection of the cheapest instruments money can buy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they certainly worked for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I got my, I got all the guitars, like a trombone.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got clarinet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got Tim Pani.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's all wired for sin.
[SPEAKER_01]: The whole studio is plugged in and ready to go.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that when my chuckle buddies come over,
[SPEAKER_01]: We just jam and it's all in record.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's that's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: You need to put out an album or just put some of that music out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe you are already just.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it is out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Notice some of the jam sessions.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, yeah, the jam sessions are on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's looked for, you know, Neil Pirate at the Sacred Grove or Taylor Hawkins at the Sacred Grove or Snoop Dogg or Ben Harper or Stanley Clark or, you know, my friends can, and by the way, I've got movie cameras around as well that I just turned them on.
[SPEAKER_01]: They got six hours of memory.
[SPEAKER_01]: I just flipped them on and the guys forget about them until next day I come in all hungover.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I cut the tracks to videos, which are up on YouTube.
[SPEAKER_01]: Check them out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Three for all the people to enjoy.
[SPEAKER_01]: See that's what commercial agenda or anything.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're just up there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Stewart, you have a pretty good life.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't you?
[SPEAKER_00]: I love it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm very lucky and very grateful.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, we're very grateful as fans.
[SPEAKER_00]: I want to get into your style a little bit.
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you create this very unique style that makes you one of the greatest drummers in the world and this like that as a drummer myself, the syncopation that you have and how are you able to move your limbs in different speeds and all that sort of how did that come to be?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well,
[SPEAKER_01]: The limbs part is, I was studied by UCLA study group for studying creativity.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they put me in a MRI just to see what's going on in my brain when I think up a tune and everything.
[SPEAKER_01]: And one of the things they've found is the connection between my two lobes, the something that's maximus,
[SPEAKER_01]: connects the two loves, is very thin in my case.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got a migdola, the size of watermelons, but the connecting thing and what that means is the two lobes of my brain are less connected than most people.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know if that's because when I was sixteen, I was separating, learning separation of the different limbs or whether it's an effect of what I did or whether I was born that way, which made it easier for me to do this, who knows?
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's that,
[SPEAKER_01]: limb independence.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the cultural stuff, where that comes from, my secret sauce is that it's Arabic.
[SPEAKER_01]: I grew up, my formative year is musically, we're in Lebanon, in the middle of the Middle East, surrounded by Arabian culture.
[SPEAKER_01]: And Arabic music happens to have a rhythmic foundation, which is an emphasis on the third beat in the bar.
[SPEAKER_01]: and you subtract the one, two, three, four, nothing, two, three, four, two, and so that absence of one, emphasis on three, shares a foundational structure with reggae.
[SPEAKER_01]: which also emphasizes the third beat of the bar and hides the one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so when we discovered reggae and started kind of introducing that attitude into our music, I already had it in my DNA.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could do it wrongly, not correct reggae, but kind of reggae adjacent, which was actually the influence of Arabic culture.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, that's fascinating.
[SPEAKER_00]: So much of the police's song sound is...
[SPEAKER_00]: Unlike many bands where the percussionist, the drummer is supporting the song and I'm not gonna say it's side piece to it, but not a leading actor in it, whereas with your drumming, it is such an essential part of the overall sound of the police and it sets the tone really.
[SPEAKER_01]: As he was saying all that I was thinking about how Stingo would be responding.
[SPEAKER_01]: He would be nodding his head vigorously.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, that's right.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's all kinds of banging stuff going on.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's nothing to do with a song I wrote.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, one of the nowadays we both appreciate.
[SPEAKER_00]: What that clash produced?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's magic.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things you've said before we get into the stories, that you play with impunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the word.
[SPEAKER_00]: You play with impunity.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you mean by that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, it's an excuse.
[SPEAKER_01]: I play with lack of discipline.
[SPEAKER_01]: It just seems to work better.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a terrible session musician.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm, you know, usually I had to do it back in the day to earn my living.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I'm not really good at remembering the arrangement the way you're supposed to.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they're saying, yeah, that's second chorus.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go dub a dubunk of the hunk and I'd get to that part and I'd think of some else to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I play differently every time, so I'm kind of a pain in that regard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I play just instinctively.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I dignify it by calling it impunity.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in fact, it's just I play instinctively.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not thinking, you know, when I'm composing, I think a lot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I'm creating a piece of music in my head or putting it on the page, that's a completely different animal to the guy banging stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I'm sitting on the drums banging things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not thinking at all.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm just instinctively doing what comes up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I guess we can call it impurity.
[SPEAKER_01]: That makes it sound really cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're, it does uncle.
[SPEAKER_00]: And your left hand is that right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_00]: But yet, I read that you say, I didn't even know there was a right.
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess there's a right handed drum kit because usually you have the
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I don't even recall what drums on drums you don't left out of people like Ringo it's or guitar even it's
[SPEAKER_01]: musical instruments require both hands to be very clever and left handedness or right handedness doesn't really make a difference because on the drum set both hands are working.
[SPEAKER_01]: And to try and rearrange a drum set to make it a left handed drum set means you're never ever going to get to sit in with a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: because it's just too disruptive to move the, you've got to move everything, you know, yeah, guitar, at least you can just turn it upside down like there were Hendrix didn't play any old guitar.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to re-string it or anything, but.
[SPEAKER_01]: Left hand, it makes you play differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: Certainly, we're going to start play differently.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just came a leading with a left hand cell, the right hand just creates different drums.
[SPEAKER_01]: But both hands are working on any instrument.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get back to you and forming the band back in nineteen seventy seven.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think that's when you form.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you, well, you lay out the story of how you met staying and how you met Andy and came together as the band and created your song, sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's funny.
[SPEAKER_00]: You should ask me about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so happens.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've got a book coming out.
[SPEAKER_01]: There you go.
[SPEAKER_01]: See, let's also be books.
[SPEAKER_01]: Tied up.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you very much.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was playing in a Prague rock band called Curved Air, turning up in Northern England.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a local journalist in Newcastle said, hey, you got to check out our hot local band.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were called last exit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we went to see them and they were indeed a really great band.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the band was a bass player who could sing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was looking for either.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I want a three piece band.
[SPEAKER_01]: I already had the name, the police.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I needed a three piece band where either the guitar or the bass player needs to also beat the singer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, and I could saw that guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: He could play bass and sing and he had his own amp.
[SPEAKER_01]: OK, he's in.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Qualified right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But there was another factor, which did come did play a part, which was a golden ray of celestial light descending from the heavens upon his magnificent brow.
[SPEAKER_01]: This shaft of celestial light indicated that this guy was going to be my meal ticket.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I got a number.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I called him sometime later.
[SPEAKER_01]: Just as the punk scene was breaking out and I wanted a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: I wanted that bass player up in Newcastle, that Lion King guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, let me give him a call.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I called up the journalist and asked him for his telephone number.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was telling him about this cool scene happening in London.
[SPEAKER_01]: This new punk scene.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really great.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's a whole new thing tear down the wall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I didn't notice because I was talking so fast that the temperature was dropping.
[SPEAKER_01]: And when I said, oh, so that bass player guy, you know, give me his number.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, no.
[SPEAKER_01]: What do you mean?
[SPEAKER_01]: No.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't want you stealing this guy from our great new castle, you know, band, and punk, are you kidding?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not giving you his number.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I hung up and I'm walking around the other thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: God darn it, gosh, darn, it's to find that came up with a much more convincing argument.
[SPEAKER_01]: And, you know, something along the lines, give me a fucking number.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's pretty convincing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I called him back.
[SPEAKER_01]: Only this time he didn't pick up.
[SPEAKER_01]: His girlfriend did.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hello.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I just turned that.
[SPEAKER_01]: She was a curved air fan.
[SPEAKER_01]: That was a band I was playing at.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh my goodness.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, great.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I can do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, you know that that bass player's thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They played in the last.
[SPEAKER_01]: Got his phone number.
[SPEAKER_01]: She says, uh, yeah, Phil's got it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let me find his phone about half a tick.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can hear a walk.
[SPEAKER_01]: Her foot steps receding.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then her foot steps coming back.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Here it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, three, four, seven, nine, one, two, eight, three.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I called him up.
[SPEAKER_01]: And pretty soon, there's that voice that we're also familiar with now.
[SPEAKER_01]: On the line.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I say, first of all, this is a conversation about just you, not your band, just you, you want to, you know, I got this idea.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, he says, keep talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's funny.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that voice, keep talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's amazing how singers sing so beautiful, but have really gruff voices.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, bono's like that too.
[SPEAKER_01]: His speaking voice is so different from his singing voice.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe how?
[SPEAKER_01]: couple things.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, keep talking means, okay, I'm ready to deal without my band.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second thing, keep talking, which is what I had to do for the next two years to keep him in the band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And as soon as you got down to London,
[SPEAKER_01]: and people got to look at him, people whispered his ear every which way, just to hold onto that guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I had to keep talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we got a photo session, you know, tomorrow, we got a, you know, we got gigs coming, we got you know, I had to keep talking, keep things moving forward, so that I wouldn't lose him.
[SPEAKER_00]: But what was your pitch for him to leave last exit and join you on this mission with the police?
[SPEAKER_00]: Couple of things.
[SPEAKER_00]: First of all, it was at London.
[SPEAKER_01]: which is where he knew he had to get to the big city.
[SPEAKER_01]: Second of all, I was living in a squat at the time, but it was in Mayfare.
[SPEAKER_01]: In Mayfare is like the British monopoly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mayfare is the top purple one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And a long story, what I was doing in this two story, penthouse apartment in the middle of Mayfare, for which I was not paying rent, long story.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he comes in and he's see, wow, this is it, oh, okay, something going on here.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was impressed by that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the really weird part is that I played in my tapes that I made of my crap song, my three chord tricks, my fake punk songs that you know, it had to be punk because that was the only scene that was happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I played in these songs that I had, which were just bass lines with yelling, and he did not run away.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's the miracle.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I've still got those tapes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And for this book, I pulled this diaries book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I pulled them out and listened to them, and they're pretty dire.
[SPEAKER_01]: Would you ever have those seen the light a day?
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: They will.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, God.
[SPEAKER_01]: One of these days is going to be an outlando deluxe edition.
[SPEAKER_01]: with those songs on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And also in my book, in the fancy version, stupidly priced version, as opposed to the regular book priced version.
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a CD with some of these tracks on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the amazing thing is, they were pretty basic.
[SPEAKER_01]: And in fact, we stuck together for a couple of years with me talking, doing a lot of talking.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when he plugged in that bass and we got blasting away, we knew that we were in the right company.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it wasn't told, and we didn't have rocks in.
[SPEAKER_01]: And you know, it wasn't till Andy joined that steam was able to start writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: But from the very beginning, did you have this reggae-ish kind of feeling?
[SPEAKER_00]: Was that something?
[SPEAKER_00]: No.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, that came later.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was strictly Ramalama punk.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I knew four chords and I stretched them pretty thin to create our set.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when Andy joined, which he had much more sophistication in his playing, that's when Sting his ears picked up and he started writing songs.
[SPEAKER_00]: Three obviously to make that kind of sound is not a common thing in rock and roll.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, why did you think of three as being what you wanted?
[SPEAKER_00]: That was the goal of your band.
[SPEAKER_01]: Lots of room in the car, you know, one driver of three bad members, everybody's comfortable.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, one an extra singer, and that's like three guys got a hunch up in the back seat there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Fuck that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And by the way, very practical.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, yeah, and Jimmy Hendrix did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Cream did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Why not?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even Grand Funk Railroad did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mentioned ZZ Top.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be done.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's true.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You just need to find two real motherfuckers to complete the circle.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Listen, I'm going to take a quick break and then we're going to get into the store behind Roxanne, but thank you for that musical journey to get up to the point of the first album and the classic iconic song Roxanne.
[SPEAKER_00]: So everybody will be right back with George Copeland from the Great Band of Police and so many more things as we dig in a little bit more detail.
[SPEAKER_00]: OK, we are back with Stuart Copeland.
[SPEAKER_00]: So let's do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's talk about Roxanne and going to the studio without land is and how that just why don't you just take us through the journey of that song as you remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like from the very first germ of it and how it became, you know, how you then took that song and into the recording studio and the production of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, we were in Paris on late teens seven, probably beginning of
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were doing shows with Generation X would with Billy Eidle's band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And all of these dishes were all good buddies, we're hanging out in London.
[SPEAKER_01]: But Sting kind of carved off on his own that night ended up in the Pigau, which is a red light district.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he saw these women of the night.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it sort of peaked as an interest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he went home and raped that song, Roxanne, which was sort of a love song to a prostitute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he hid it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had no place in the police as we were in those days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometime later, months later, he was actually staying with Andy when his house was being repainted or some reason he was overnighting at Andy's place.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then he was strumming these cords like a boss and over.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he says, cool, and his ears picked up, said, we should do that.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he said, now, Stewart will never go for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, it's not punky enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a ballot for God's sake.
[SPEAKER_01]: Boston over.
[SPEAKER_01]: You kidding?
[SPEAKER_01]: But Andy insisted.
[SPEAKER_01]: So next band rehearsal, Andy says, think, oh, that's long.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, the one about the prostitute.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's work on that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I heard it and thought, well, let's rock if let's take it out of Boston over.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's do something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's make it ours.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, let's do the rhythm backwards, put two where one should be and one where three should be and do it upside down and
[SPEAKER_01]: But in those days, Sting was very malleable because he hadn't been confirmed as a writer of hits.
[SPEAKER_01]: He still felt kind of codependent.
[SPEAKER_01]: The rest of the band, and just to keep us interested, he would listen to our input and be much more malleable than he became later.
[SPEAKER_01]: So we were able to mess up the rhythm and add the chunky heavy guitar chords to it and do a
[SPEAKER_01]: Noisier chorus to keep it, you know, something fit for a rock band, even a punk band could get away with it borderline.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so that became the version of Roxanne that people are familiar with.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in the studio, who produced the album or that track was that, or did you produce it yourselves?
[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, we had an engineer who was kind of like referee.
[SPEAKER_01]: If anyone would be producer, we'd call them, you know, Nigel Gray, but really he was an engineer.
[SPEAKER_01]: You knew where to put the microphone because also had a great bedside matter and was a great referee.
[SPEAKER_01]: But we produced it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The three of us by two against one is a great way to arrive at a band decision very efficiently and quickly.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so we actually quite effective as producers.
[SPEAKER_01]: In later albums, we could have done with, you know, with more umpiring, more refereeing because it got very doggled.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because now we all do had a make record.
[SPEAKER_01]: That first Andy and I knew how to make a record.
[SPEAKER_01]: But our principal songwriter had never made a record before.
[SPEAKER_01]: It was easier.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it got a lot harder later.
[SPEAKER_01]: For the first album, only.
[SPEAKER_01]: We had been playing the song's live.
[SPEAKER_01]: So when we went into the studio, we could just run them down and that's it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So the recording of the backing track came very quickly because we had been playing it on stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: The vocal has that moment where Sting does a vocal overdub and in the introduction
[SPEAKER_01]: he's waiting for the song to begin, and they say, hang on, we're gonna run the tape back.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the tape was running, so he sits back on the piano, which is right behind him.
[SPEAKER_01]: He forgetting that the lid was open, so he sits down and plays a butt chord, I think, beat flat minor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he lasts, because that oops, that was the, you know, and that's on the record.
[SPEAKER_00]: which is so classic because I've always wondered about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's a real story that he sat down and that was just his laughter when he sat down and made that mistake and you kept it in there.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I had nothing to do with the song.
[SPEAKER_01]: Completely out of keeping with the sentiment of the lyric completely.
[SPEAKER_00]: But kind of had a vibe.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh yeah, don't question about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: When you're done recording the album
[SPEAKER_00]: How did you feel about that particular track Roxanne?
[SPEAKER_00]: Did it stand out to you three immediately or no?
[SPEAKER_01]: It was still kind of an outlier?
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were recording and my brother Miles came down.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was not yet our manager.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but I used his offices.
[SPEAKER_01]: I used his roller decks and he was a huge resource for the band.
[SPEAKER_01]: But he came down just to offer advice and he supplied something very valuable called dumbass.
[SPEAKER_01]: He doesn't know anything about music, but he knows a hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: when he hears it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he is studiously ignorant of chords or anything musical because it's irrelevant.
[SPEAKER_01]: If folks are going to like it, they're going to like it, not because they flat minor.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so he was there to provide some dumbass, keep us honest.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he listened to one of our songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they're all kind of standard.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm not hearing anything that really gets me going here.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we got, well, we got one left, which we were afraid to play for him because it was kind of subdued.
[SPEAKER_01]: He was like me, kind of a,
[SPEAKER_01]: you know, poke Messiah at the time.
[SPEAKER_01]: It had to be punk.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, but we played it to him somewhat reluctantly.
[SPEAKER_01]: Immediately his ears parked up now that is a unique sound.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm going to take that to a record company, see if we can get ourselves a deal.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's kind of when he became our manager right there.
[SPEAKER_01]: He said, not that I can work with.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he took it to a record company and records.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the rest is history.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I actually know actually there's a little bit more it disappeared without a trace when Anne and put it out.
[SPEAKER_01]: They signed us for like a couple singles, which they tried Roxanne cast the losing you.
[SPEAKER_01]: They both sank without a trace because
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, the rocks in, we went off to Germany to earn some money playing in the backing band for a Germanist artist over there.
[SPEAKER_01]: But that's how we fed ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: While our single came out, so we were not there to promote the record.
[SPEAKER_01]: Soon after that, I had a record that was just too dumb for staying to sing called Don Care.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's our record.
[SPEAKER_01]: It played all the instruments myself, guitar, bass, drums, even saying the damn thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in the radio, BBC Radio One picked it up, put it on the playlist.
[SPEAKER_01]: So actually, I had a hit as Clark Kent with a secret identity because the police were already written off by the critics as uncool on hip and fake, you know, three carpet baggers, previously long-haired, billed bottom, they spotted us as carpet baggers right away.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so the secret identity as Clark Kent, I actually had a hit and went on national TV to play the song, but I didn't want to play by myself.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I had staying in Andy for tend to be my band, all in masks.
[SPEAKER_01]: uh... there we were on top of the pops and i was the first time on national television under the name of Clark Kent and the right about that i'm thinking wow this is cool i hit on my own i don't need these guys haha fortunately Clark Kent disappeared without a trace in the nick of time uh... and then right after that can't stand losing you came out for the second time and actually surpassed Clark Kent by about two points of the chart and the rest of history
[SPEAKER_00]: But was it because Clark Kent, the three of you were on stage on that program, that's the, that's the reason why I can't stand losing you was then released once again, because the, okay, so how did, well, they're unrelated.
[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, we were all in masks.
[SPEAKER_01]: So nobody knew what was on the stage at that time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, they mean, what kind of masks I'm just curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: Sting was in a gorilla mask and he was in a brazen of mask.
[SPEAKER_01]: I actually wasn't the BBC wouldn't let me mine with a mask because it looks stupid, you know, and you were a Clark Kent.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so they painted up my face to obscure the idea that it didn't fool anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: But fortunately we weren't nobody knew we were anyway.
[SPEAKER_01]: We weren't anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, everybody thought who is Clark Kent for about five seconds?
[SPEAKER_01]: in the zeitgeist of London.
[SPEAKER_01]: Who is Clark Kent?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it Frank Zoppers?
[SPEAKER_01]: David Bowie?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mahatma Gandhi, but the enemy busted me, fortunately.
[SPEAKER_01]: But the record company kept, they did persevere with the police because they had a hit with Clark Kent.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that was kind of behind the scenes.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then afterwards, the second song that was released was Roxanne.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then Roxanne did it immediately get some real play or did that kind of bubble up a little bit.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, eventually it did hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: At first, the BBC didn't add it to their playlist.
[SPEAKER_01]: They just, we didn't make the cut.
[SPEAKER_01]: Simple as that.
[SPEAKER_01]: However, my brother Miles, who's a great marketer, said, band by the BBC, because it's about a prostitute.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we made a lot of hair band by the BBC, the police who are too, you know, insurrectionist, too dangerous.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, that dangerous band, the police.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we made a bit of hair out of that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But eventually, I think second or third time around,
[SPEAKER_01]: It did make the playlist and did become a hit.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, it became a hit while we were on tour in America.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we were struggling across the ocean of America playing clubs trying to break the big one.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we went back to England at the end of this tour.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we had heard that rocks in, hit hit the charts, but didn't really make much sense to us.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then we were booked on a tour supporting another band called Los Alberto's Trios, which is a comedy band.
[SPEAKER_01]: I really great band actually, but it was all comedy.
[SPEAKER_01]: As soon as we went out on stage for the first show, it was pretty clear whose tour it was.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it was just full of, you know, after all the dues we paid after being a fake punk band, and discovering that we're actually kind of a good progban in America, and all the journeying the struggle, we emerged suddenly, and that shrieking a high-pitched sound, which is the sound piranhas would make if they could make a sound of the twiny boppers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And unbelievably, we emerged from the darkness as a boy band.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go figure and we're on the front of all these teeny-bopper magazines and sting was all Mr. Beautiful, you know, go figure.
[SPEAKER_01]: We tried to be a punk band.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're actually too sophisticated for that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But ended up as a boy band.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, that's incredible.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because that album is certainly
[SPEAKER_00]: feels pumped to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was never, it was something that was completely different at the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: But when you're as handsome as Stingo, the Twiny Boppers are gonna go for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, don't sell yourself short.
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on, Stuart.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, there are three blonde heads.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, okay, there you go.
[SPEAKER_00]: By the way, one of the great album covers Ghost in the Machine with the, you know, the digital.
[SPEAKER_00]: I still take that's classic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, a lot of people still don't know what it means.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really?
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's the three of us represented by LEDs.
[SPEAKER_01]: But at the time, people were mystified, Bart, and our management were convinced that that cost us several million in sales, because it didn't have a picture of the three-blown heads.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, it was always pretty obvious to me, but maybe that's the way my brain works.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, we're gonna take another quick break, and then we're gonna get into police deranged.
[SPEAKER_00]: The upcoming album, I'm Stuart Poplan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, ladies and gentlemen, we are back with Stuart Copeland.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now, Stuart, let's talk about this new album of yours called Police D-Ranged for Orchestra, which is, I was listening to some of the tracks before this, and Roxanne, because we were talking about Roxanne.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it is deranged in a really kind of remarkable, reinvention, reimagination way.
[SPEAKER_00]: But how did this all come together?
[SPEAKER_00]: And how did you think about taking this approach and releasing this album?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, the pieces actually do come from police, just other bits of police that you never heard before.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it came about as a result of a movie that I made from super footage that I shot.
[SPEAKER_01]: of the motels to the stadiums.
[SPEAKER_01]: of shooting everything that moves in twenty years later they invented computers and I was able to digitize all that and make the home movie from hell which just on an off chance I sent to Sundance yeah he wrote back say hey look we'll show the movie will present your movie which meant that I had to make it into a real movie which means it needed a soundtrack then I was at that time professional film composer and I knew however the movie uh... but we didn't have film music but had to be police music just alternative police music
[SPEAKER_01]: So I found impulse from stage, blind alleys in the studio, it's just like other police alternative versions of stuff and carved them together to create what I called at the time, derangements, other versions.
[SPEAKER_01]: And then another unrelated story is that I was playing shows with orchestra as a result of my twenty years of the film composer.
[SPEAKER_01]: I had an involuntary education in how you use an orchestra and how to put it on the page so that they will play it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So those two things came together, my work with orchestra and these derangements to bring the world police deranged for orchestra.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you're touring throughout the year and you have some, I think you've already had a US show or two.
[SPEAKER_01]: No, I played twenty five shows here.
[SPEAKER_01]: I was in Chicago area last week, London a couple weeks before that.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've been playing the show for like a year now.
[SPEAKER_01]: And eventually the pated job, hey, let's make a record of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: So we have.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what is the reaction been to from the fans?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do they have any kind of expectation coming in of what this experience is going to be like?
[SPEAKER_00]: Or what do you think?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, they're not coming after me with pitchforks.
[SPEAKER_01]: The shows go over really well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a real barnstorm or a show because with the orchestra, you know, and I go and I sit in with, you know, the Vancouver Symphony, the Chicago, the Cleveland, Atlanta, Nashville, symphonies in those cities.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I just bring my charts flop them out, count them in, and they play it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I do bring three sisters, soul sisters on the night, three beautiful women who are
[SPEAKER_01]: like the Supremes or the Shifon.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's sort of like hearing the police sung by the run-its.
[SPEAKER_01]: So that's what we do on stage.
[SPEAKER_01]: And people are curious.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do play hide the hit sometimes.
[SPEAKER_01]: But by the end of the show, the place is rocking.
[SPEAKER_01]: The show never fails.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a real easy win this show.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because everybody knows the songs and it's a great musical environment.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's a pretty slam dunk of a show.
[SPEAKER_00]: So when you play and you tour with these different symphonies, what is the process of that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, it's real simple.
[SPEAKER_01]: I show up in Atlanta to a clock at their symphony hall.
[SPEAKER_01]: Meet the orchestra for the first time.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hi, all doing?
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: One, two, three.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we play it down.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have two and a half hours rehearsal.
[SPEAKER_01]: We come on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
[SPEAKER_01]: Two and a half hours rehearsal with the orchestra.
[SPEAKER_01]: Doors open at seven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Show it eight.
[SPEAKER_01]: That knife.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that even happen for all these musicians?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: I put it on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't just put what notes to play.
[SPEAKER_01]: I put how to play them.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not just done.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's done.
[SPEAKER_01]: put that information on the page, the articulation, the dynamics, everything, the shape of how they play this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they read this that their ethos, their reason for a drawing breath is to faithfully play the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, your rock musicians need six weeks of rehearsal of arguing and compromise and throwing ideas back and forth to get their show together, but the works put it on the page and they will play it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's pretty amazing that it did.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they play it incredibly well, too.
[SPEAKER_01]: They really lean into it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I, you know, I, I, I chatted up the orchestra.
[SPEAKER_01]: I've got my pickup lines, you know, I go over to the, I go over the woodwinds and in a loud voice, I say to the, oh, well, so tell me about your reads.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an orchestra joke, you know, they tell drummers and rock and roll, but they tell obo jokes and orchestra and viola jokes.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I go and I bond with them, I'll make friends with them all.
[SPEAKER_01]: So they want to be played the show.
[SPEAKER_01]: They are my crew.
[SPEAKER_01]: They're ready to rock and I turn the mighty national symphony for just one night into a rock band.
[SPEAKER_00]: Uh, that's great.
[SPEAKER_00]: And do you notice when you go from orchestra to orchestra, is there a different feelings or different sounds that are even across?
[SPEAKER_00]: So there's a different personality with them.
[SPEAKER_01]: Amazingly, because they're playing exactly the same information, exactly the same way as per their instructions on the page.
[SPEAKER_01]: In fact, the Chicago Symphony does have a different
[SPEAKER_01]: feel from the Cleveland Orchestra.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's hard to take your finger on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: In some orchestras, the brass section is particularly bright.
[SPEAKER_01]: In some orchestras, the strings really shine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And even though they're all playing the same music, human beings, we all have two eyes that are nose and one mouth, but we're all really different.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the same is true of the orchestras.
[SPEAKER_01]: Even though they have the same components, they have the exact same marching orders, they each orchestra has its own personality.
[SPEAKER_00]: Since you mentioned this about the humanity behind it and the personality behind it and how the page, the notes on the page are exactly the same, but the sounds that come out are not.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to ask you about artificial intelligence and how that's impacting the music industry and the different feelings.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you saw what Peter Gabriel was writing and then what Grimes is doing, where Peter Gabriel is very much a, it's another tool.
[SPEAKER_00]: So he's, you know, everybody needs to embrace it, that sort of thing.
[SPEAKER_00]: Grimes, of course, is embraced it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Other artists are understandably very concerned for a variety of reasons.
[SPEAKER_00]: including re taking their voices, taking their music stems, and creating something without the participation of the artist themselves.
[SPEAKER_00]: So how do you feel about AI in your world?
[SPEAKER_01]: I would agree with Peter Gabriel.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: We just got artists can use it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And an analogy would be the drumbox, which was originally designed for a lounge keyboard player to have some kind of accompaniment without having to hire a guy.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he could have a little box with four setting, rock one, rock two, somba, and rumba.
[SPEAKER_01]: or something.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it would go, which style, which style, which style, which style in the pianists could play along with this electronical accompaniment.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I got myself one so that I could have a drummer in my living room while I was doing my home recordings.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I could play guitar to the drumbox.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they gradually got more and more sophisticated to the point where people were actually, I think the first person actually used one on a record that you could hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think was Peter was, what's his name, drummer singer Phil Collins.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's the first time you could actually hear the drumbox on the record.
[SPEAKER_01]: And from there, it kind of grew and was considered to be a great threat to drummers.
[SPEAKER_01]: But in fact, drummers like myself, we got hold of these things and started making use out of them ourselves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they became another tool used by drummers.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it turns out that human beings love to dance to an electronically created rhythm.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go figure this primal impulse to thrust our Pudenda in public can be most stimulated by a machine.
[SPEAKER_01]: How does that work?
[SPEAKER_01]: But anyway, but it's true.
[SPEAKER_01]: Humans are, you know, the regularity of it does.
[SPEAKER_01]: is a similarly a tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: It can be threatening, but it can be used as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I will share with you a secret.
[SPEAKER_01]: Don't tell anybody.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I unfortunately did establish a tradition of, you know, every Valentine's mother's day in birthday, I write a little poem for my wife and love of my life.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it brings me great joy.
[SPEAKER_01]: My brother did thirty years ago when I started this.
[SPEAKER_01]: And thirty years later, I
[SPEAKER_01]: I've used up my rhyming dictionary.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you because you're blue.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go to Tiffany's and get something new.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's not bad.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, hey, I've used that.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's say, hey, I comes along and I put in Mother's Day.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_01]: Mother, she's the boss and give a few lines and it comes back and it's pretty and a dime, pretty, pretty lame, but
[SPEAKER_01]: It's something to work with, and I can jigger in here and push it there, and just sort of tart it up and change a few words, and I got something.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so AI gave me kind of a starting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's not good enough.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I give you starting point.
[SPEAKER_01]: I once tried to give me an opera plot, okay, you know, a story, got this element, that element, this historical character, give me a plot.
[SPEAKER_01]: And now I got it, it came up with really lame stuff and I couldn't use any of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's early days though.
[SPEAKER_01]: It is early days.
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's, you know, in two years or maybe probably in ten minutes, it's gonna be much better than it is now.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, nope.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's going to be threatening.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, there are some things in life, you know, communism is a fantastic idea morally, in arguably superior morality, but it's just done work when humans get their hands on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think the idea that all information should be available to everybody anywhere, that's got to be a good thing, right?
[SPEAKER_01]: No, it actually is causing strife and disharmonity in our communities.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's an, an, an arguably good thing, but can cause evil.
[SPEAKER_01]: Then I think A and I, AI is going to do a lot of good things, but it's also, as people are saying, probably pretty dangerous too.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, certainly understand from the artist perspective, yeah, but obviously both perspectives, but the idea of taking police stems, you know, stems from your songs and your voices and your drum, you know, your drum beats and that's already out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Those samples are already out.
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I'm sure.
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember John Bonham was the first where you could get John Bonham grooves.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's from the record, Dammit.
[SPEAKER_01]: And they were available as samples.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I might even use them in a film score in a couple places.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's a tool.
[SPEAKER_01]: Bruce Springsteen used my snare drum from every breath you take.
[SPEAKER_01]: In one of his big hits, I've been sampled all over the place, you know, message in every breath you take, Andy was sampled ferociously by puff daddy.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, create a whole new song.
[SPEAKER_01]: So AI is late to the game when it comes to ripping off the original artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right, ripping off has been there for the very beginning.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing going back to the police deregge for orchestra.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things I read is that as you were piecing pieces together, you came to the quote unquote unpleasant conclusion that sting is a fucking genius and Andy is also a genius, but that's what I read.
[SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, and all this is my revenge, you know, it must guitarists that can get an amp.
[SPEAKER_01]: The goes to eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: But all Andy, his fingers go to eleven.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, I'm sure he's got eleven or twelve of those things.
[SPEAKER_01]: Those chords he holds down.
[SPEAKER_01]: How's he do that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't even know.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Takes me a whole orchestra to reproduce eddy stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that you are coming up with, again, something I read was a rock opera with Chrissy Hinde of Pretenders.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that something that's going to be seen the light of day this year?
[SPEAKER_01]: It played an Italy, it opened an Italy last summer.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're productions about even as we speak.
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's not really a rock opera, it's an opera opera with opera singers doing all their opera thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But within it, one of the characters, it's about witches in the Alps and the witch hunts of old and times.
[SPEAKER_01]: But one of the characters is an anomaly.
[SPEAKER_01]: She's an anachronism.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she's, you know, like she's the head witch is like from the future.
[SPEAKER_01]: When I figured, let's get a rock sound for that one character.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I said this is about women.
[SPEAKER_01]: I figured I had to talk to a woman.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I called Chrissy, who is no ordinary woman, it turns out.
[SPEAKER_01]: And she got in there and she completely lobotomized the whole concept of the opera, which
[SPEAKER_01]: to, you know, to you know, which is a really good thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, she wrote five songs, but mostly it's an opera opera with just this rock element in it called.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's just seed.
[SPEAKER_00]: Will that become a soundtrack?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm working on all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's all in the future.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then you have your upcoming book, Stuart Copeland's Police Diaries.
[SPEAKER_00]: That comes out later this year.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's what you were talking about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.
[SPEAKER_01]: The actual pages from my diaries of those years with modern commentary about what it all meant.
[SPEAKER_01]: The day's thing and I first met are first shows.
[SPEAKER_01]: how much we got paid, how much the truck cost, how well we did, and the general grind of our time together, and those years before Andy joined, well, including when Andy joined, we still starved, it took a minute, but then Sting started writing those big songs, and the police then ate everything in its path.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have to ask you the same question I asked Nick Mason that everybody wants to know.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is there any chance that you all will get back together to do a tour or a new album or anything along those lines?
[SPEAKER_00]: Ah, very slim.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think so.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're all three of us enjoying playing these same songs.
[SPEAKER_01]: And he's doing a term Brazil with a band.
[SPEAKER_01]: And actually he's playing with a drummer who's a good friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's probably a great show.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'd go see that show Andy and Joao Barone.
[SPEAKER_01]: That's going to be a cool show.
[SPEAKER_01]: And things, of course, playing the two.
[SPEAKER_01]: So all three of us are out there.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we've talked amongst ourselves and remarked on the fact that how great it is to play these songs without those other two assholes.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, my base player doesn't turn around and give me shit.
[SPEAKER_01]: So what would it take?
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to put you on a smile.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, we're getting along so well.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, like life the way it is.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it would be fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: It would be fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it is fun in arguably to play to a stadium and to rock the house with a stadium.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is a lot of fun.
[SPEAKER_01]: But a police tour is such a huge thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were like Cogs in a wheel.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, even though we might be central to the mission, we're just soldiers in a huge army.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it's just, it eats your life.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's just too big.
[SPEAKER_01]: And we're kind of enjoying life as civilians.
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe one major event for
[SPEAKER_00]: Climate change, I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna think about some ideas.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, come back, get back to me.
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, well, at least you have the invitation come back to you about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: That gives people hope out there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, again, like an easy one percent chance.
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, it's not zero.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything's lighting in a bottle.
[SPEAKER_00]: We've talked about all the different things that you've done and not all of them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many different things.
[SPEAKER_00]: So many different medium media that you work in.
[SPEAKER_00]: And what haven't you done that's on your bucket list?
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm getting into ballet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have done ballet, but mostly I've been doing opera, but I'm getting back into it inspired by Instagram and TikTok.
[SPEAKER_01]: And these dances that people are doing are amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I want to take that stuff into the fine arts world with an orchestra and the fine ballet companies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm really moved by that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know any of their names, these people, but like in Korea and in Romania, they've been strange clips of like Eastern Europeans with
[SPEAKER_01]: baggy suits and neck ties and bow ties even doing these bizarre comedic dances.
[SPEAKER_01]: I love all that stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so I want to write some ballet.
[SPEAKER_01]: I regard an opera house as a building with an orchestra in the pit all kinds of talent on the stage and all kinds of infrastructure for me to tell a story with music.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so even though ballet is not an inspiring word, the talent that is available under that banner is very cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: What are you most proud of?
[SPEAKER_00]: What, what would you up to this point in your career?
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sorry, but it's a nambi-pambi answer.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's my kids.
[SPEAKER_01]: I want it.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got seven kids, five grand kids and four grand puppies.
[SPEAKER_01]: And that is the meaning of life.
[SPEAKER_01]: That is the reward.
[SPEAKER_01]: I got my Grammys and I got my cold discs and I got all kinds of other accolades, but they say, but the kids, you know, in the warm embrace of my kids, I feel safe.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel complete.
[SPEAKER_01]: I feel that I mean something.
[SPEAKER_01]: I have a place in the universe.
[SPEAKER_01]: And there are seven great kids, four sons, three daughters.
[SPEAKER_01]: And so, if I dribble to the left, I got my son Patrick going to pick me back up.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I stumble to the right, there's Jordan to grab me.
[SPEAKER_01]: If I burst into tears, the left is going to cheer me up.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm covered.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm safe.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm a sentimental guy, so I love that.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's good for you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Good luck.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, Stuart, thank you so much for your time today.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really, really enjoyed it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Love the energy.
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, you have to, I was gonna ask, no, I think I'm a pretty energetic guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: But my God, how you find the time in each day to do all the things that you've done, congratulations to you on all that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, thanks for joining on the Skurbion Sound.
[SPEAKER_00]: Really appreciate it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thanks for listening.
[SPEAKER_00]: Take care now.
[SPEAKER_00]: That was Stuart Copeland, drummer extraordinaire of the police, sharing his story behind the police's most iconic song Rock Sand, which is now nearly fifty years old, hard to believe.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a wrap on a very special season four of the story behind the song.
[SPEAKER_00]: Another season of amazing interviews with music icons and legends that I've privileged to host.
[SPEAKER_00]: We now have over fifty timeless episodes in our banks, here at consequence, that you can enjoy any time until you wait for season five.
[SPEAKER_00]: Just look for them on your the story behind the song's show in your podcast feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: And keep checking that feed.
[SPEAKER_00]: We may have a very special, entirely new bonus episode coming your way, because, well, why not?
[SPEAKER_00]: We're here to please.
[SPEAKER_00]: There are so many great, strong stories to tell.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm your host Peter Chaudi with Deep Cuts Media, you can find me at DeepCutsMedia.com.
[SPEAKER_00]: If you like my show, please rate it, follow it, and share it with your friends, family, and other music fans just like you.
[SPEAKER_00]: and make sure to check out all the cool story behind the song merch, including the show's poster, and in the consequence story you'll also find the puzzle.
[SPEAKER_00]: So go to consequence.net to see all the great merch.
[SPEAKER_00]: And until next season, or until this very special new bonus episode that's coming your way, thanks for listening to the story behind the song.