THE POLICE
DON'T MESS WITH THE MAGIC
How The Police battled a tight deadline, rid themselves of label interference and made the album that turned them into international superstars: Zenyatta Mondatta.
Words: Michael Molenda
Back in the so-called glory years of the record industry, label executives often seemed to be some bizarre personality fusion of Stalin and Santa Claus. Recording artists would often see the benevolent side of pats on the backs, manipulative but encouraging verbal cheerleading (“We’re gonna make you a star, kid!”), and a promotional machine that appeared to have love for their albums alone. Of course, if an artist ever had the gumption to request an audit of their royalty account, these smiling faces would transform into fiery demons looking to obliterate their career with a scorched-earth intensity. These very same execs also loved to embrace almost superstitious truisms about “things that need to happen to create a hit act or identify a dog”.
One of these prophetic markers was the allimportant third album. To understand this concept, you need to shift your consciousness back a few decades to an era when major labels actually invested in talent and sought to groom artists for success. Typically, a record label would “carry” a band’s losses through albums one and two, but if they didn’t score significant chart and/or sales action with album three then they might be cut loose from the corporate umbilical cord, often never to be heard from again.
For The Police, that line in the sand was their 1980 album Zenyatta Mondatta.
“It was a crazy and bizarre time,” guitarist Andy Summers remembers. “We had some good hits off of our first two albums, and we were doing well in the States, but we hadn’t broken wide open there yet. You can’t believe how much pressure there was for us to make it in America. ‘Gotta make it in America. Gotta make it in America. Gotta make it in America.’ This was yelled at us like a mantra by our manager. So Zenyatta was perceived as the possible breakthrough album.”
You’d think their label would have moved heaven and earth to ensure The Police had the time, support and resources to deliver a worldwide smash. That didn’t happen.
In reality, the mountain of importance being placed on the third album wasn’t exactly mirrored by long and studious preproduction and songwriting phases, or a creatively nurturing recording plan. Not that Summers, bassist/vocalist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland were accustomed to any inflated 70s-style rock-star treatment. The band’s first album, 1978’s Outlandos d’Amour, basically had a recording budget of near zero, which forced the band to grab cheap time at Surrey Sound whenever it was convenient for the studio.