THE POLICE
OUT OF SYNG
RELEASING A WORLDWIDE SMASH AND BECOMING THE BIGGEST BAND ON THE PLANET WOULD BRING INSTANT GRATIFICATION TO MOST ARTISTS, BUT FOR STING, ANDY SUMMERS AND STEWART COPELAND, THREE WAS MOST CERTAINLY NOT THE MAGIC NUMBER…
IAN WADE
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To anybody, ‘the biggest group on the planet spending half a year making an album, and the rest of that year touring it’, sounds fairly straightforward – and basically it is. However, with the case of The Police, it really wasn’t. Strife, ego, violence and levels of tension galore blighted a year they should’ve enjoyed far more than they probably actually did.
1983 began with the band at AIR Studios in Montserrat working on what would be their fifth and final studio album, Synchronicity. An interesting set-up saw each member stationed in individual rooms, with Stewart Copeland and his drums in the dining room, Andy Summers in the studio itself and Sting in the control room with them all connected via video link. Even though co-producer Hugh Padgham claimed this was for social reasons, this approach didn’t help dispel rumours that the trio were increasingly sick of each other. Sting argued that it made things easier for him to hear how the instruments would sound on the finished record, which was no doubt a boost in confidence for a studio with the reputation of AIR.
After knocking up multiple takes, the three of them – presumably together – would compile their favourite bits to edit together into one master track. This wasn’t always the ideal method, however, when Copeland and Sting almost belted the hell out of each other disagreeing over the remix of Every Breath You Take, to the extent that Padgham nearly walked out on the project. An occasional disagreement is one thing, but you can only surmise at what point Padgham had felt was enough to walk out. Asked about the atmosphere, Padgham reflected that, “We’d been in the studio for a couple of weeks and we literally had nothing playable at all. If somebody had come down to the studio and said, ‘Let’s hear what you’re doing’, we didn’t have anything. It was a crisis meeting. The gist of the meeting was: ‘Are we going to carry on or end right now?’
“I wasn’t used to this incredibly babyish behaviour. It was scary, because it was pretty infantile. Sting and Stewart definitely, maybe not so much Andy. Poor old Andy was sometimes left piggy-in-the-middle, though he could be well grumpy himself.”