INTERVIEW
As a new Police Greatest Hits boxset is released, the guitarist reflects on the dire poverty of early days, being “too good” for punk and embracing the tension at the heart of the band
At first sight in ’77, you already knew The Police were too good to last. Virtuoso swans among punk’s puddleducks, the power trio darted from the reggae chop of Roxanne to the cinematic sweep of Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic, and made conquering America look relatively easy. But if the band’s frontman and principal writer, Sting, was a prolific talent and stone-cold star, then didn’t he just know it. As the bassist’s creative grip tightened, the tensions that drove the early chemistry with guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland grew sour, and following 1983’s Synchronicity, they pulled the plug at their peak.
Summers has worn many hats since those days on the force. A jazz cat, soundtrack king and occasional white-noise-maker, he’s been a loquacious friend to Guitarist over the years, though only rarely drawn on the subject of his old band. Now, though, with a new Police Greatest Hits half-speed vinyl boxset to promote, Summers is happy to revisit those stadium-filling days.
All these years later, which of your guitar parts from The Police do you find most interesting?
“Well, my favourite has always been Message In A Bottle. It’s the best guitar riff and there’s a harmony part as well, which most people can’t get. You’ve got to have the fingers for it. Roxanne. Can’t Stand You Losing You. Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic. I like all of them.”
Did you have a philosophy when it came to your Police parts?
“Very much so. Apart from all the sonics, I would never play things like big barre chords with major 3rds. One of my signature things was to make it harmonically neutral, so the songs didn’t have this sort of 19th century romantic chord progression. We came from a modern place, which in my case was done by using not the major 3rd but the added 9th or the major 2nd, because that sounded hip and modern to me. It wasn’t like tricky or extended jazz chords, and it wasn’t like romantic 19th century harmonic progressions. It was something else.”
Did you have different influences to other players on the scene?
“Yeah, that was a big thing. Of course, probably the first thing I tried to play was Apache, but then you progress beyond that. I mean, I started out as a kid trying to copy Wes Montgomery. I could play the whole solo from West Coast Blues by the time I was 15. And that was back in the days when you slowed an LP down. Thousands of hours of doing that.
