Stewart Copeland has discussed the experience of reuniting with The Police for their tour, explaining how the scale and structure of the operation felt fundamentally different from the band’s early years, speaking on The Magnificent Others with Billy Corgan.
The drummer talked about the reunion tour and how it compared to the original band era. He described the differences in how decisions were made and how much control the three members had over their own music and performance.
“It was very strange. It was very mercantile in a weird way,” Copeland said. “The emotion of the audience was the big deal. Everything else was weird. You know, back in the day, we had a drum tech, guitar tech, um, front of house guy, and a tour manager. On the reunion tour, we had 200 people.”
He explained how the size and nature of the reunion effort changed the dynamic within the band itself. “But the concerts were really uplifting, but we were no longer… it was no longer our band,” he continued. “Used to be the three of us and we decide where we’re going to go. We work it out with Miles, our manager, and what we’re going to do. This we are now three soldiers in a giant army. And it’s not ours anymore. My hands don’t belong to me. They belong to the tour. It’s like irresponsible and it’ll everybody up if I twist my… No more horseback riding.”
Copeland described how the band’s decision-making process had changed with the reunion tour. “In fact, specifically and so you we were very much subsumed and we’re playing those songs and our rule was to resolve any dispute. The way we did it before is the arbiter. Anyone wants to try something new. If everybody likes it, fine. But if there’s dispute, we go back to, you know, you know, the resolution was what we did before.”
He summed up his feelings about the shift in ownership and control. “So, but you know, it just didn’t belong to us anymore. I see. The Police was this huge brand out there with gazillions of people, you know, and it was this machine. It belonged to Live Nation, you know, who actually did us pretty good, you know. I used to say, ‘If they’re ripping us off, come on, rip us off some more.’ [laughs]”
Copeland made these comments during an appearance discussing The Police’s reunion tour experience. His remarks shed light on the challenges the band faced when reuniting on such a large scale.
The Police had disbanded in 1984 at the height of their fame and reunited in 2007 for a world tour. The reunion tour ran from May 28, 2007 to August 7, 2008, featuring 152 shows marking the 30th anniversary of the band’s beginnings. The band had not performed together as a working unit for over two decades before that reunion.
The 2007–2008 tour became the third highest-grossing tour in history, with revenues reaching over 360 million dollars. The world tour visited five continents and played to nearly 3.7 million fans. This scale of operation stood in sharp contrast to the band’s early years, when the three core members worked with a small production team of just a few people.
The decision to reunite came after deep tensions between the members in their original run. Before the 2007 reunion, group therapy helped the trio resolve their bitter differences. When rehearsing for the reunion tour, old tensions arose again, but when tickets became available they were quickly consumed, with the three members realizing the demand was far larger than any of them had anticipated. Live Nation served as the promoter for the ambitious tour, overseeing the vast machinery that Copeland describes.
