Besides all the indie tracks, ‘Next To You’ was the first The Police song that Sting recorded. The singer had originally written it as a love song. However, the band known for their politically outspoken lyrics wanted the lyrics to have more of a punch. When his bandmates came up with different lyrics to add to the track, Sting accepted one but was hesitant about another, so much so that he vetoed it.
Sting spoke to Revolver in 2000 and shared how the track ‘Next To You’ came to be and how they added lyrics to change the vibe of the song. He recalled:
“All this brings up a memory you two probably won’t like. ‘Next To You’ is essentially a love song. However it was written during the height of punk, and Andy [Summers] and Stewart [Copeland] complained it wasn’t political enough. So I said, ‘Okay, go and write some lyrics.’ Andy came up with, ‘I’m going to take a gun to you.’
During the interview Copeland asked Sting why they didn’t also add these lyrics; ‘Gun to you, gun to you, all I want is to take a gun to you!’ to the track. Sting responded:
“Because I vetoed it. The truth is, we liked the energy of punk, but we couldn’t really be a part of it. One of our problems was we were quite good at playing our instruments – that was definitely a handicap. You were supposed to have just come off the streets, having never played a bass or sang before.”
The band also had a difficult relationship with punk. Even though it was all the rage at the time, Sting knew the band wasn’t cut out to be a part of it. Copeland even admitted during an interview with Glide Magazine that with Sting’s ‘amazing lyrics’ the band was on the rise and they no longer starved. He expressed:
“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.”
You can read Sting’s 2000 interview with Revolver here and listen to ‘Next To You’ below.
