Police Story – a tale of true love PART-2

The press for The Police concert isn’t kind. The DJ on Radio One claims that if he wanted to see dinosaurs hauling their menopausal carcasses across stadiums, he’d visit the Natural History Museum. I never call radio shows, but I did consider ringing up and giving the man a lecture on mixed metaphors. 

But I do understand. It’s that polite look I get from fellow musos. The view of The Police is clouded by the caricature that Sting has become.  

To me, Sting is two people. He is Sting, the furiously talented bass-player/singer who recorded 5 flawless albums with The Police and 3 pretty damn fine solo records. But he is also Gordon Matthew Sumner, the milkman’s son from Newcastle, who really, really, really wants to be cool like Miles Davis or Jimi Hendrix. It’s Gordon that lets Puff Daddy and Pato Banton piss all over his songs. It’s Gordon that records 16^th century lute music and asinine pop-jazz records. It’s Gordon that gives The Police a bad name. 

Who will turn up for the gig at Twickenham. Sting or Gordon?

 I spend my time in London hanging with friends who comment on my expanding waistline. “You used to look like Jesus now you look like Buddha.” I distract myself with Guinness and comedy clubs. I compare Colombo with London in my mind. One reminds you how small the world is, the other tells you it is vast. One is a melting pot of people and ideas; the other, a tiny kingdom with everyone trying to be king. 

But the questions still nag. What if Gordon turns up and brings P Diddy and Sheryl Crow and his lute? What if the sound is as bad as it was at the Grammys? (2007, not 1985) What if the gig is an embarrassing suckfest? Things get better with age, don’t they? Don’t they?  

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My family moves from the Killing Fields of Sri Lanka to the pastures of New Zealand. From the wild east to the mild south. I’m 15 and even more of a brat and a drama queen than I am now.  

They put me in a boarding school with overfed farmer boys. I am the only brown kid with funny hair and an accent. I spend 3 years dodging abuse and beatings. I can count the friends I have on 1 hand and still have enough fingers to hold a pair of chopsticks. So I spend my days and weekends in the Wanganui library and the Ridgeway Street 2^nd hand tape shop. Reading, listening and crying. 

I buy all 5 Police albums. All 4 Sting albums. I adore the white reggae of Regatta da blanc, the all-encompassing glory of Synchronicity and even the danceable grooves of Zenyatta Mondatta. I’m convinced to this day that if Andy and Stewart had played on Sting’s The Soul Cages it would be the finest record of the 90s. 

I read about the band and their 5 years at the top. But something else happens. I read Nabakov’s Lolita because Sting namechecks it in “Don’t stand so close to me.” I read Paul Bowles’ The Sheltering Sky because it’s the inspiration for Tea in the Sahara, the quiet track on side B of their world-conquering final album. 

I listen to Led Zeppelin because Stewart mentions John Bonham in an interview. I acquaint myself with Pink Floyd via Andy’s solo albums. I listen to Hendrix and The Beatles and Thelonius Monk because they are all mentioned in Sting’s unauthorized biography. 

In other words, in my 3 years at Wanganui Collegiate School, I am introduced to depression, solitude, literature and rock and roll. All the truly important stuff. And my soundtrack is 5 albums containing 15 top 20 singles (5 No1s) played by the 3 scruffy blonde guys who have allegedly not spoken to each other since I saw the Killing Fields at Liberty. 

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I go to a photographic exhibition in Soho by Andy Summers detailing his travels with The Police. I have read Sting’s Broken Music and have seen Stewart’s handycam film Does Everyone Stare. I know their side of the biography. I do not know Andy’s. 

We all know about Sting. Despite his tendency to lapse into Gordon, he is a brilliant musical renaissance man. Stewart is finally getting the recognition he deserves. He is now acknowledged as one of the 5 greatest drummers of all time. But Andy? I doubt he’d even make the top 50 guitarists of all time.  

In between Rick Astley and Milli Vanilli I used to listen to hair metal during the 80s. Leather-clad posers like Poison, Skid Row and Motley Crue would hawk their ballads to MTV and us youngsters would hold aloft invisible lighters. 

It coloured my view of what a guitarist should be. My perception was of a man on a mountain top with haystacks of hair blowing in the wind shredding the fretboard at high speeds. Andy doesn’t do that. He colours in the bits between Stewart’s hi-hat fills and Stings melodic bass runs. His solos are quirky and short. He uses chorus, delay and flanger to create atmospheric parts. He does not use a guitar to show off the length of his penis. 

I have jammed with a few guitarists, but played extensively with only 2. Both of them have names that start in “A” and end in “jit”. When I played with Independence Square I was a decent songwriter and a pathetic guitarist. Ajit was a guitar hero who could shred, who could riff, who could stand on mountains and roar if he chose to. I was grateful to hide behind him. 

Andy had to contend with two egos clamouring for the limelight. His photos and accompanying captions reveal a modest man, happy to be part of this great band, but happier to be an observer, a man who adds texture and who does so for the betterment of the song and the band. A team player, not a glory seeker. 

Andy is the oldest member of the Police, but also the nicest and the most sensible. I am the oldest member of Powercut Circus. The comparison ends there.  

The reason Andy can do what he does without the song sounding empty is because he has a gifted bass player behind him. I realize that if I am to play with an Andy Summers, I would have to become semi-competent at what I do. 

Asvajit is very much an Andy type guitar player. He keeps his solos short and adds the varnish, not the wood. He is the youngest member of the band, and perhaps, the nicest and the most sensible. If I am to make this partnership work, I will have to lift my game. I just pray I don’t end up like Gordon.

to be continued…