Why the reunion, guys?
Posted: Sunday, June 17, 2007 9:24 PM by John Roderick
The Police
I’m not sure who was clamoring for a Police reunion. I mean, I’m sure it sounded like a great idea to a lot of people, but why would the Police themselves agree to do it? When they broke up it was the perfect gesture. They were as big as they were going to get, they hated each other, boom: the end. Brilliant.
Now they’re back together and touring, but why? I don’t think they like each other any better, and unlike Zepplin or the Beatles it’s not as though their legend only grew in their absence. I wanted to understand the reason, because I wanted the reunion to be important and good. I didn’t want it to feel gratuitous or phoned-in. Because I like the Police. When they opened with "Message in a Bottle" (played too fast!), I sprinted across the festival to get close.
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Oh, I was conflicted. One the one hand it’s indisputable that Stewart Copeland is one of the greatest drummers in rock, the only man I know famous for his hi-hat playing. Also, to my surprise and delight, Sting is a pretty great bass player, laid back and easy. But guitarist Andy Summers, my favorite member of the Police back in the day, who defined tasteful guitar in the '80s and was the embodiment of unflappable, casual cool, looked like a 60-year-old Englishman who’d just been woken up by a fire alarm. His guitar tone was disagreeable and artificial sounding, like he bought some tone-modeling effects system and picked the worst chorus/distortion sound imaginable as a joke. To make matters worse he soloed on every song, and his solos were meandering and rusty. This was the last thing I expected. When you haven’t made a new record in 20 years it’s not unreasonable to expect that you’ll play the old songs the way we all know them.
To make matters worse, Sting’s many years making adult-contemporary drivel has apparently convinced him that he’s a “jazz” artist, so that he insisted on “reinterpreting” his own vocal melodies a la Ella Fitzgerald. Rather than singing “Don’t stand so close to me” as we know it and love it, he sang, “Don’t… standsoclose…tomeh,” like he was riffing on "Amazing Grace."
So I was left feeling like they didn’t even really dig their old stuff enough to play it straight, especially since the reinterpretations felt lazy and unimaginative.
Bob Dylan reinterprets his music all the time, but he tours nine months a year and has for 30 years. To the Police’s credit they played a lot of stuff from their first record, and they played with a minimum of backing tracks — a bold move in modern music — so you could really hear the music being made by the three guys. But it only made Andy’s bad tone stand out more. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and headed back stage, passing through the VIP area where a large crowd was watching the show on a big-screen TV. The actual show was happening 50 feet away, so that if they stood up they could see the stage itself, but there they sat passively taking it in, listening to the music piped in on speakers. So much for the VIP life.
