...And The Police Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank
"We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea." Just took two days for Stewart to have his first tantrum, which, hey, is two days longer than a lot of us thought it'd be! From what we saw of the "dress rehearsal," things seemed to be going fairly well -- but Reuters reports that Copeland has branded the second official show of the tour, in Vancouver, a "DISASTER GIG!" Don't worry though, he's not blaming Andy and the "petulant pansy" Sting. Not entirely, anyway. He even laughs it off! Stew posted this to stewartcopeland.net:
“Whenever you’re ready Mr. Copeland” says Charlie, the production manager, as two crew members hold aside the giant gong, creating just enough space for me to slither onto my percussion stage, which is still down in its pit. I leap on board but my foot catches something and I sprawl into the arena in a jumble as the little stage starts to rise into view. Never mind. The audience is screaming with anticipation as I collect myself in the dark and start to warm, up the gong with a few gentle taps. But I’m overdoing it. It’s resonating and reaching it’s crescendo before the stage has fully reached its position. Sort of like a premature ejaculation. There’s nothing for it so I take a big swing for the big hit. Problem is, I’m just fractionally too far away and the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib. Never mind.
I stride manfully to my drums. Andy has started the opening guitar riff to MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE and the crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting and he’s not much help, his cue is me – and I’m lost. Never mind. “Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho.Somehow this makes us even more excited for Bonnaroo.Well we are professionals so we soon get sorted, but the groove is eluding us. We crash through MESSAGE and then go strait into SYNCHRONICITY. But there is just something wrong. We just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song and hit the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never Mind. Next song is going to be great…
But it isn’t. We get to the end of the first verse and I snap into the chorus groove – and Sting doesn’t. He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off kilter that Sting counts us in to begin the song again. This is ubeLIEVably lame. We are the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.
And so it goes, for song after song. All I can think about is how Dietmar is going to string us up. In rehearsal this afternoon we changed the keys of EVERY LITTLE THING and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE so needless to say Andy and Sting are now on-stage in front of twenty thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both tunes. Lost, lost, lost. I also changed my part for DON’T STAND and it’s actually working quite well but there is a dissonant noise coming from my two colleagues. In WALKING/FOOTSTEPS, I worked out a cool rhythm change for the rock-a-billy guitar solo, but now I make a complete hash of it – by playing it in the wrong part of the song. It’s not sounding so cool.
It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we’re The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule. It’s only the second show (not counting the fan gig – 4,000 people doesn’t count as a gig in the Police scale of things).
When we meet up back-stage for the first time after the set and before the encores, we fall into each other’s arms laughing hysterically. Above our heads, the crowd is making so much noise that we can’t talk. We just shake our heads ruefully and head back up the stairs to the stage. Funny thing is, we are enjoying ourselves anyway. Screw it, it’s only music. What are you gonna do? But maybe it’s time to get out of Vancouver…
Posted at 9:52 AM
Tags: Andy Summers | Stewart Copeland | Sting | The Police
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i'd pay good money to see the police fuck up on stage. doesn't even matter. they are gods among men, and even the olympian council had their off days.
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hopefully youtube will explode with videos of the police bitching at eachother on stage.
rock on police.
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Who ate all the pies?
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That's just Stu being a perfectionist. I'll bet noone in the crowd noticed any of this. Besides, an overweight 40 yr old housewife doesn't care about half measures, she's too busy rippin her Talbots panties off to throw at sting.
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It's way too early in the game for Copeland to be posting negative commentary. The Police have been in a self-induced coma for 20 years and he thinks they are MIGHTY? Puh-leez. I would agree that the records are mighty. They are testaments to their legacy. However, they should play a few more shows before anyone points fingers. Even the worst (maybe not all) performers know that one show is worth a thousand rehearsals. Suck it up Stewie, you'll get it back...even if you have to bruise an ego doing it.
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It's way too early in the game for Copeland to be posting negative commentary. The Police have been in a self-induced coma for 20 years and he thinks they are MIGHTY? Puh-leez. I would agree that the records are mighty. They are testaments to their legacy. However, they should play a few more shows before anyone points fingers. Even the worst (maybe not all) performers know that one show is worth a thousand rehearsals. Suck it up Stewie, you'll get it back...even if you have to bruise an ego doing it.
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"the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening to the show is a damp squib."
that sounds like my butthole
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Stu coming in on the four instead of the two? Natch. Sting, what are you thinking? You ought to know Stu by now. That's his MO, yo!
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It just isn't the same without the crazy bitching and fighting. That clip of Stewart attacking Sting on MTV around the time they broke up is classic.
However, if they want to please us fans, they need to get it together, stat.
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To stride manfully embiggens the least among us.
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Stew:
But look at all the MONEY.
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anyone know if there's any high-quality recordings of the recent Police shows floating around anywhere? i'm dying to hear some...
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I have the feeling that he had his tongue in his cheek when he called The Police mighty.
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Did anyone read the entire article/blog? He talked about how they all laughed at themselves at the end. Sensationalist headlines are awesome....
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I'm not a fan of The Police, but i'm a fan of Stewart Copeland.
And i can't believe i read a comment that actually accused him of narcissism. I don't want to say that the person who wrote that is retarded. So i'll just imply it.
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He posted this self-critical piece to the message board of his own Web site? If one of The Donnas had done likewise on their message board, the reactionary, overly sensitive moderators there would've deleted it.
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Come now, Scott. Surely you're not trying to mislead your readers and start a controversy where there isn't one, are you? Shame, shame. Copeland never calls Sting a "petulant pansy" but comments on a faltering jump that makes him look like one. He even uses the word "momentarily". He keeps referring to his own missteps as well and the fact that they _all_ laughed about it after the set. The commenters over at Idolator post [ http://www.idolator.com/tunes/rants/stewart-copeland-suddenly-remembers-that-he-hates-sting-265101.php ] were a lot quicker to see through the bad journalism though.
Penalty, Stereogum. 10 yards.
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