Outlandos d'Amour: 1977/79

Group says music fans stagnant...

Drummer Stewart Copeland says his band, The Police, is out "to shake up the music industry," an industry he finds dominated by people who were on top of trends in the '60s, but have grown stagnant and cautious in the '70s.

"A lot of the hippie generation don't realize they have become the establishment," Copeland said Wednesday evening before The Police made their Texas debut at Armadillo World Headquarters. "They've become reactionary."

To Copeland, guitarist Andy Summers and the jovial singing bass player known simply as Sting, most record company executives and radio programmers have become so comfortable with established stars and styles they've closed their minds to anything new and different. This leads to predictable music and alienates many young listeners, they believe.

"The kids want to elect their own heroes," said Copeland, an expatriate American teamed with two Englishmen. "They don't want to inherit them from the hippie generation."

This youthful dissatisfaction led to the punk movement, Copeland thinks, just as disenchantment with the weak-kneed rock of the early '60s sparked such groups as the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Who. And although The Police are a little too old and musically sophisticated to be considered punks, they're grateful for Johnny Rotten and company.

"The punks with their abrasive attitudes broke down the doors," explained Copeland. "It took a very violent attitude to get the industry's attention."

But most of the early punks had a severe handicap. "They had great stance and attitude, but un- fortunately a lot of them couldn't really play," said Summers, whose pre-Police record included stints with Soft Machine and a late incarnation of the Animals.

Still, the punks were inspirational, insists Sting. "Real musicians got infused with their energy. We started to play with actual aggression," said the one-time jazz performer and schoolteacher. "Before the punks, popular music had become so slick it lost the primal urgency that is rock'n'roll."

Copeland, ex of Curved Air, a modestly successful English band, was the first to catch the New Wave bug. In January, 1977, he saw Sting playing with a Newcastle jazz combo and asked if he was interested in a totally different musical trip. Recalls Sting, "There was an immediate spark. We wanted to do something together."

With Henri Padovani on guitar, The Police released a single on Illegal Records, an independent label set up by Copeland. It enjoyed moderate success, but it wasn't until Summers replaced Padovani late in 1977 that the group's present style began to evolve.

In the beginning, Copeland had been the major songwriter, but those duties soon shifted to Sting. He wrote or co-wrote all the songs on the group's first album, 'Outlandos d'Amour', a hot collection of reggae-tinged rockers that only hints at the group's live power.

'Roxanne', a rock ballad about a Paris prostitute that's getting strong airplay in this country, was banned by the British Broadcasting Company when released on Illegal Records last year, but quickly became an underground smash in England. When The Police took the song to A&M Records, the company jumped at the chance to distribute it. Later, A&M also signed to distribute the group's album, self-produced for $8,000, a phenomenally small amount in these days of seven-figure budgets.

The Police are determined to hold down recording costs, but not for purely financial reasons. "When there's lots of money involved, there's such a commitment to commercial success that the music suffers," Copeland said. "You start relying on formulas, and formulas make money, they don't make good music."

Helped by the success of 'Roxanne', the album is number 96 with a bullet on Billboard's latest national sales charts. And it's sure to rise even higher if every stop on The Police's U.S. tour is as wildly successful as Wednesday's Armadillo show.

The Police rocked the crowd of about 1,000 for just more than an hour, responding to encore calls with repeats of two songs from their limited repertoire, 'Can't Stand Losing You' and 'Born in the '50s'.

That would've been it, except much of the audience refused to leave. They stood and clapped and stomped and hollered for a full five minutes before the band returned, exhausted and dripping sweat, to play 'Roxanne' for the second time. Bands, especially new ones, get a reception like that about as often as it snows in Austin.

"I loved it, I loved those people," enthused Copeland after the show. "That's what it's all about.

With the success of their album and crowd reactions like Wednesday's, will The Police fall victim to the complacency they found so disgusting in older, established bands? Will The Police be the reactionaries of the 80s? Sting thinks not.

"We're basically an intelligent group. We're aware of the pitfalls of success and I think that's the first step in trying to avoid them," said the muscular former soccer player. "We want success and we're ready for it. We're not going to be blown away by it."

(c) The Austin American Statesman by Joe Frolik