In his recent interview with Glide Magazine, The Police drummer Stewart Copeland revealed that if it wasn’t for Sting, the band would still be ‘starving’.
Copeland, in the interview, talked about his book, Stanley Clarke, the songs and so on. The drummer was asked about his upcoming book, ‘Stewart Copeland’s Police Diaries’, where he mentioned Sting and his songwriting. After describing the book in detail, he said:
“So it’s got all these building blocks of The Police and it’s an interesting part of the story because that’s when we were starving for like a year and a half, until Sting started writing great songs.”
Copeland admitted knowing very little in the beginning. He told:
“In the beginning, it was all my songs, which were crap. I wasn’t a songwriter. I only knew three or four chords at that time. But these were songs of convenience so that we could play the punk clubs, which were the only places to play in those days.”
In an earlier interview that happened in April, Copeland revealed his favourite Sting song, which, according to him, has ‘the worst arrangement’. For the song ‘Every Breath You Take‘, he told:
“In my humble opinion, this is Sting’s best song with the worst arrangement. I think Sting could have had any other group do this song and it would have been better than our version—except for Andy’s brilliant guitar part. Basically, there’s an utter lack of groove. It’s a totally wasted opportunity for our band. Even though we made gazillions off of it, and it’s the biggest hit we ever had.”
According to Rolling Stone, despite their success, The Police singer Sting had to leave the band since it gave him depression rather than happiness. After that, Sting swore to never reunite with the band. Many years later, the singer broke his promise and reunited with the band for one last time in 2007. Now all the members are in their own ways, working on their solo careers, or other projects.
