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Jan 01, 1980
SOUNDS
The rotund gentleman sitting at the next table in this Leeds coffee bar demolishing his quadruple eggs, sausage, beans, chips and grease, is regaling us with great gigs at the Queens Hall at which he's had the honour to flog badges, scarves and posters. Beside me, a record company person is egging him on, not least because he keeps slagging off 'Sounds'. Finally he makes to leave, the prospect of a good evening's business ahead. "You know, my supplier tells me that Sting could be the next Donny Osmond," he says with relish. I grin and there's a gentle thud as the record company person's head hits the table top...
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Dec 01, 1979
RECORD MIRROR
For a band largely ignored by the music press and "punk bandwagon jumpers" with two singles about a whore and suicide banned by the Beeb, The Police are doing very nicely, thank you. It's been a long hard slog, but Summers, Sting and Copeland have finally joined that small elite capable of producing singles which chart in the Top Five one week after release...
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Dec 01, 1979
TROUSER PRESS
Police carry on - The Police act responsible: Up in the A&M offices the joint is definitely jumpin'. Enough staff members to man a battleship are scurrying around performing (seemingly) important duties. Yet there's none of the barely contained hysteria one could find so easily in other Manhattan offices; it's more like the co-ordination of a gold strike. A&M is, as you probably know, one of the more successful record companies. They don't release staggering quantities of records (as do more bloated competitors) and their batting average is impressively high. One wall of the conference room - where I am watching a videotape of a certain three-piece rock band - is completely covered with gold records awarded to artists all over the pop music map: Peter Frampton, Herb Alpert, the Brothers Johnson, Styx, etc., etc...
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Nov 05, 1979
CREEM
January 1979: We started receiving phone calls here at BH Central of some urgency from John Pidgeon, one of our English writers who also tolls for Melody Maker. Normally a subdued Britisher, John was extremely excited about this new band, the Police. He'd written a story for Melody Maker and he wanted us to run one as well. It was a strange name for a band, we mused in our usual caffeine stupor, and promptly went back to proof-reading. Even English excitement can overwhelm you, though, and when Simon Frith's voice was added to the din, we decided to run the story. Then the record hit the office and excitement reigned for the next few weeks. The guy's voice was just so... different. "Strangely appealing" was one office opinion. "Almost painful," came from another enthusiast...
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Sep 01, 1979
MELODY MAKER
The Police are not punk. The Police are not disco. The Police are not heavy metal. The Police are not power pop. The Police are the best rock'n'roll band I've seen in years. I kid you not...
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Sep 01, 1979
NEW MUSICAL EXPRESS
The long yarn of the lore: Alongside the habitually garish or else just plain boring film posters that currently besmear the walls of London, the advert for 'Quadrophenia' stands out like a veritable 18 carat pearl in a hat-box full of Woolworth's trinkets. Beneath the amply-shaped letters of the film's title, in stark black and white stand the enterprise's main participants: Steph, the sallow dream girl next to Jimmy with the sheepish half-smile, while away to their far left impish Toyah Wilcox promiscuously pouts next to 'Ferdie', the hard-nosed, pill-pushing 'rude boy' of the film...
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Sep 01, 1979
MELODY MAKER
It's a basement flat in Bayswater, just beyond the casbah rowdiness of Queensway. Sting is in the small front yard when I arrive. He's leaning against the whitewashed wall of the house, his arms folded across his chest, the telephone receiver cradles between the side of his head and his shoulder. Beneath the open window of the living room sits a movie director's chair. The red canvas is stretched loosely over a wooden frame. Sting's name is printed boldly in large white letters across the back. Sting continues his telephone conversation. Two shy schoolgirls pass. One looks down into the basement yard. She recognised Sting, giggles. She shouts to him, waves through the iron railings...
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Jun 14, 1979
SOUNDS
The Scene: The Star dressing room at the Edinburgh Odeon before the gig. The Police are wondering whether they might be about to get their first front cover in a British music paper. They discuss it earnestly for a couple of minutes until Sting suddenly bawls out, "Why should I care? I'm rich!' and with a delirious cackle begins to pluck from his guitar the happiest blues I've ever heard, while Stewart Copeland, who is lying flat on his back on the floor, supplies some rhyming vocals along the lines of 'And I ain't gonna bitch/Certainly won't throw myself in that ditch/'Cos I'm rich...'
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May 10, 1979
SWEET POTATO
Backstage after the first of four sold-out performances at the Paradise, Stewart Copeland is relaxing, intermittently sipping a beer, and mostly trying to explain the particulars behind the phenomenal rise of his band The Police from the midst of the British punk pack in 1977, to the position of a bona fide contender in a country which has treated most new wave exports with a mixture of indifference and loathing. This is not to infer that America has uniformly rejected the punk revolution which swept Britain two years ago, but acceptance in America as been largely critical and not commercial; in England the two went hand-in-hand uprooting the established system...
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May 01, 1979
GOOD TIMES
How does one describe the Police, a trio that concludes their debut album, 'Outlandos d'Amour', with a politico/punk anthem ('Born in the '50s'), a whimsical ditty about fondling inflatable dolls ('Be My Girl, Sally'), and, last but not least, 'Masoko Tanga', a chant from a past reincarnation of the lead singer, Sting, after he had been hypnotised by a noted British paraphysicist? Throw in the reggae influence pervasive in many Police tunes and the Mozart T-shirt Sting is wearing when we first meet and it is obvious that all available pigeonholes have been clogged with guano...
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