Synchronicity: 1983/84

Police please...

Police Report: August 31, 1983. Arrive outside Pacific Coliseum at 7 p.m. Scalpers doing brisk trade at 30 bucks a crack. But ticket booth still has few tickets left. Sign on ticket window warns: ALL REMAINING SEATS ARE BEHIND THE STAGE AND VIEW IS OBSTRUCTED. Teen fans don't mind. They pay (.50) each, then join line-up to get into PNE grounds.

7:28. Man in ticket booth puts sign on window: SOLD OUT. All 16,611 tickets are gone. First rock concert sellout at Coliseum in two years.

7:30. Enter PNE grounds. Join long lineup to get into Coliseum. Inside building by 7:40. Warm-up act started 15 minutes early, at 7:15. No twins in the six-piece electro-funk dance band, which sings 'Lies, lies, lies, yeh''. Best part is band's seven photography-style lighting umbrellas. They sit on stage like potted palms in a hotel lobby.

8:05. Good Night say Twins. Crowd doesn't call them back for encore. But Thompson Twins do a sort of video encore - when lights come up, MTV rock videos are shown on big 24x18 foot screen above stage. Twins video played. Also videos by Squeeze, Payola$, Bow Wow Wow.

8:15. Notice age of audience is mainly late teens, early 20s. See one father accompanying two pre-teen daughters. One is wearing Police T-shirt (), the other is wearing Police jersey ().

8:30. Riley O'Connor, head of Perryscope Concerts, the company putting on concert, comes on stage. ''The band is not going on until everyone sits down in their seats!'' he says. Most people continue sitting in aisles on floor level. People on floor continue standing on seats.

8:40. O'Connor returns to play nasty: 'Everyone please return to their seats! This show is not going to start until you start listening to me!'' Someone shouts out, 'Okay Dad!'' Bouncers help convince crowd to comply.

8:50. Lights go down. 'Good eveninggg'' shouts Sting, chief of Police, as he comes on stage. Crowd cheers, deliriously happy. Band opens with 'Sychronicity', title song from new Police album.

Young woman beside me (later learn she's 17, name Roxanne) shouts in my ear: ''I love Sting. Isn't he great?'' I nod. ''Nice tenor voice,'' I say. ''Kinda raspy, though.''

'That's what I like about it,'' says Roxanne, who is dressed exactly like the five friends she's with - white shirt, sleeveless sweater, mini-skirt, pointy black shoes, white socks. All six do the new-wave bob in time to music.

Band plays another new song, 'Walking in Your Footsteps'. Guy in his 20ssitting on other side of me shouts in ear: ''Copeland is fabulous.'' Assume he means Stewart Copeland, Police drummer.

''Listen to those African cross-rhythms, they're almost Arabic,'' says the guy (his name is Brad, says he's a UBC student and musician). 'Fabulous,'' he says.

''The Police are accessible, you know?'' I'm not sure whether he's telling or asking. ''But they're avant-garde too... list to Summer's guitar on this one.''

He's talking about Andy Summers, the Police's unconventional guitarist who slides out some jazzy riffs, but mainly chords that fuse pop, punk and ethnic rhythms.

I listen to song called 'Message in a Bottle'. Tell him I didn't need a bottle opener to get the message out of that one. Next song: 'Walking on the Moon'. Crowd sings along with Sting: ''Yo-yo-yo-yo.''

Before Sting sings 'Oh My God', he tell crowd: 'Three hundred and sixty-five days ago I was standing in this same spot. It's funny isn't it?'' Also says the first time the Police played Vancouver in the late 70s ''we played to about seven people.''

Band sings 'De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da'. It's so easy even I sing along. Brad tell me names of Police songs as trio plays them: 'Wrapped Around Your Finger', 'Tea in the Sahara', 'Spirits in the Material World', and 'Invisible Sun'.

Next song, 'King of Pain', gets giant response. ''Listen how painful the imagery is here,'' says Brad, excited. ''There's nothing like it.''

I listen, taking notes: There's a fossil trapped in a high cliff wall / There's a dead salmon frozen in a waterfull / There's a blue whale beached by a springtide's ebb? There's a butterfly trapped in a spider's web... That's my soul up there.''

''Really painful,'' I admit. ''What's it about?'' Divorce he says.

Hmmm. Good beat, mainly easy to dance to, intelligent musical statements. Maybe that's why Police are No.1 on the record charts.

10:05. Band runs off stage. Video screen show trio going into dressing room where Sting takes off shirt (lotsa screams in the audience). Band members don top hats, pour cuppa tea, cut cake, then trash cake and stick flower and beer bottle in it. Sting tries to whip table cloth off. Cake goes splat on floor.

10:09. Police run back on stage (Sting still shirtless, still wearing top hat) and 'Don't Stand So Close', 'Every Breath You Take' (crowd roars) and 'Roxanne' (''This is my song!'' squeals Roxanne, giving me a nudge.)

10:25. Standing ovation. Police come back and 'I Can't Stand Losing You'. At 10:37, band takes a bow, leaves stage, lights come up.

''Great, eh?'' Says Roxanne. ''Fabulous or what?'' asks Brad.

''Yeah. Great energy. Fabulous tunes,'' I agree. 'No gimmicks, but more rock than I imagined three guys could put out. I guess it's like the song says, every little thing they do is magic.''

(c) The Vancouver Sun by Neil Hall

The Police deliver, right in the gut...

What you have in the Police are three individuals at the peak of expertise on each one's particular instrument.

If each was playing in a different group, they would overwhelm the other members in sheer virtuosity and imagination - but put together the collective talent of the three creates an even greater whole that never ceases to amaze.

At the Coliseum last night, bassist/vocalist Sting, drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers performed a show that was, as these things go, pretty close to perfect. They are probably the only trio that can make a decent go of it in cavernous hockey rinks - and they don't succeed by relying on fancy technical effects to carry the show.

The success comes through the attention to musical detail and the careful re-creation of recorded songs (which, given their complexity, is a task and a half), so that what hits you in the gut when you hear it on record hits you again with twice the power when the group performs it live.

Even numbers like 'Wrapped Around Your Finger' or 'King of Pain', which draw their emotional impact from deliberate under-orchestration, managed to pervade the Coliseum with delicate atmospherics intact.

The group utilized some stunning lighting and a video screen suspended above the stage to great effect. And pairing 'Invisible Sun', which was accompanied by grim and grainy footage of Northern Ireland, with the anthemic 'One World is Enough (For All of Us)' got the message across more movingly than mere words ever could.

The Thompson Twins, who opened the show, were overwhelmed by the size of the Coliseum despite an ingenious set of white photographers' umbrellas and some neatly choreographed movements. Their music, designed for dancing, was lost in a large sit-down hall.

(c) The Vancouver Sun by Fiona McQuarrie

The Police: Suddenly the No. 1 band and still trying harder...

It is 4 o'clock on a recent Wednesday afternoon in Vancouver's Pacific Arena, and it is time for the Police to do its soundcheck for the night's show. Already things are not going well.

When guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland arrive at the hall, they learn that the third member of the band, lead singer/bassist Sting, is not going to be there. Neither of them is pleased. Already this day they have had to face the usual pack of young fans a surprising number of whom look very much like Sting that waits for them outside of every hotel they stay in and every hall they play in.

This is one more inconvenience they do not need. Summers and Copeland go through as much of a soundcheck as they can, but both of them leave to go back to the hotel feeling unsatisfied - and in need of rest.

This is the 25th concert on a 30-date North American tour. Still down the road are almost six more months in England, Europe, Japan and Australia. It is not always easy being the hottest band in the world.

By 8:15 this night, as the opening band, the Thompson Twins, performs its set, the three Policemen are gathered in their dressing room, acting more like three college roommates than musicians who are about to play to 16,000 people for the next two hours.

While Sting [born Gordon Sumner] and his girlfriend, Trudy, open the gifts and cards that fans have brought to him, Copeland wraps black electrical tape around his fingers, giving them more support for all the drumming that is ahead. Summers, meanwhile, is pacing around.

Much of the tension that was present earlier in the afternoon is still there. The spread of shrimp and beer that has been dutifully laid out in the dressing room is left largely untouched by the band - which seems to be focusing far more on the upcoming show than on the kinds of hedonistic pleasures one usually associates with a backstage rock band.

The Police mean business.

Like the three members of the band who are now assembled in the dressing room, Kim Turner, the band's usually jovial and easy-going comanager, has been through this before. He knows that the tension of this day is par for the course with this band.

Turner has served as a deputy of sorts to the Police nearly from the beginning. In the early days, he drove the trio and their equipment around the United States in a station wagon so that the band could play in small clubs anywhere it could get booked.

Turner also handles the sound at the group's concerts. So besides smoothing over whatever tensions may be present in the dressing room, he must also get ready to take his place behind the large, 32-track sound mixing board he will use.

The other members of the band's crew - which numbers more than 30 on indoor shows like this, more than 70 on outdoor gigs like Tuesday's Hollywood Park date - are equally intent on their tasks. These range from handling the three computerized lighting systems to readying a tea party set the band will playfully demolish in the middle of the set.

In all, it takes five semis and four big touring buses to handle all the crew and equipment the Police uses on tour.

It is not cheap being the hottest band in the world. Eventually, the Police go onstage and blow everyone away. With two female backup singers dressed like Arab women, they tear through songs from all five albums. As always, Sting preens and teases when not concentrating on his bass playing.

Summers, meanwhile, seems absorbed in his guitar, only rarely looking up or responding to the audience. Copeland bounces around, like a hyperactive kid, between his drum kit and a separate, elaborate percussion set-up.

The audience eats it up, loving the showiness and the spirited musicianship. When the concert ends at 10:45, the three band members return backstage content that they have put on a successful show-though each separately admits that it was sloppy, in a playful sort of way. Whatever strain or frustration the three musicians felt earlier in the day had been put aside during the performance. After nearly seven years together, the Police is still one of the strongest touring acts around. 

"I find that just before I go on, I always ask myself how on Earth am I going to get up for another show," Sting says a few hours after the show is over, sitting in a bar at the band's elegant hotel. He is gracious and talkative yet guarded, and this late at night he seems more than a little tired of all the requests for autographs from people in the bar. "But it's always there," he says, "always an edge of danger that keeps me excited."

Indeed, this free-wheeling attitude is at the heart of the Police's appeal on stage, even as the meticulous and exacting way it goes about recording is at the heart of three after the concert, they are unanimous in agreeing their albums' appeal. In separate interviews with all that the secret to a Police show is the mixture of high musical standards and an insistence on spontaneity and risk.

"I can't really explain it," Copeland says, "but when Sting suddenly breaks into 'La Cucaracha' in the middle of a song, it just keeps us going, keeps me on my feet." Obviously, the Police is doing something right. The band is easily the most popular group in the world right now, with 'Synchronicity', its current album, a smash hit everywhere it has been released.

Yet for all the newfound success, the fancy hotels, limousines and the high-tech stage show, the band does not seem to have changed much from the intense young trio it was in its scuffling days. The Police still plays like it has something to prove.

"Becoming this big has actually made us better," Copeland says, sitting in a dressing room at the Vancouver arena just after the show has ended. It is a room normally used by the hockey teams that play there, and Copeland, an emphatically athletic drummer, fits right in. "The only thing I regret now is the inevitable loss of feeling like the underdog. Now we're Goliath."

The only one who seems to have any second thoughts "The day 'Every Breath You Take' got to No. 1 on the about the Police's current success is Sting. charts, I was in Mexico where I was doing a movie ['Dune']. That day, my character was killed. It seemed appropriate.

I always expected this group to make it, but when it happens, it's death really. I mean, OK, we've done it. How can you top being No. 1 in America? You can get another No. 1, but it isn't as gratifying. So now we've just got to continue taking risks and remain open to change. I can see no point in doing this same tour next year.

That does not sound like a real danger for the Police. With each album its music has grown and changed, reflecting not only the feeling among all three men that they do not want to become caricatures of themselves, but also the high musical ambition they all possess.

"Rather than feel we gave anything up along the way, actually think our success has made us better, it's forced us to really hone our talent," Copeland says. "We've had to go far beyond what we thought would be expected."

"We've been able to push back the frontiers of what's acceptable in pop music," Summers says proudly. "The limousines and all of that are just a symbol of success, a convention. The music and the art has always come before that. There is no way I'd play commercial music just so I could drive in a limo."

But Summers also shares some of Sting's nervousness about the success the Police has achieved.

"This band won't last forever. I don't want to be playing the same songs 10 years from now. You know, nobody gets off, no acts just call it quits. They all stay on and eventually go down hill. That's the scary part. My main concern is that we never lose that inner dynamic. We've got to keep that flame going."

One way they are doing that is by working on various individual projects in addition to their Police work. Sting has finished "Dune" and already has plans to star in another film.

Summers will be releasing his first book shortly, called 'Throb'. It is a collection of about 100 black-and-white photographs he I has taken while the band has toured over the years. In addition, he is making plans to record an album with jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette.

Copeland, meanwhile, did the soundtrack to Francis Ford Coppola's 'Rumble Fish', and he and former Wall of Voodoo vocalist Stan Ridgway have recorded the title song.

This is not, however, a sign that the band is breaking up, despite the rumours that have followed the Police almost from the beginning. Wearily, as if they are tired of explaining, all three do their best to put those rumours to rest. "We're like squabbling siblings," Copeland says.

"The main thing is that none of us can relax. For all the kids in the audience shouting and telling us how great we are or whatever, there are two other guys on stage who are very hard to impress.'

"If we fight, it's because we care passionately about the music," Sting agrees. "There is no way three strong egos will agree all the time. I'd kill for an idea, I really would.

"Anyway, we've been together for seven years. It's been worth it, obviously. I see more of Stewart and Andy than I did of my wife [he is currently separated and seeking a divorce]. It's like an uneasy marriage. Our children are the songs."

Watching them backstage before the show - alternately snapping at each other and kidding around in a manner reminiscent of the Beatles in "A Hard Day's Night" - and then seeing the dynamics on stage, it becomes clear that this tension is part of the Police's magic. Even though Sting does the bulk of the writing, all three have an intense concern for this band and its music.

"Anything different I'd want to do musically, this is the perfect band to try it," Copeland says. "That 'old Police thing' is my 'thing'. The fact is, I'm happy playing Sting's songs; by the time we've worked them out, they're my songs. I've outgrown any of those jealous feelings."

He is right to. The Police has achieved something only the top acts have been able to accomplish: become international pop stars and still make music that is ad- venturous, intelligent and entertaining.

(c) Chicago Tribune by Jonathan Taylor