New Wave · Rock · Artists & Legends
A jazz drummer, a guitar minimalist, and a bass-playing former schoolteacher — three virtuosos who squeezed reggae, punk, and pop into something nobody had heard before.
The biography
The Police formed in London in 1977, when American drummer Stewart Copeland — already a veteran of the prog-rock circuit — recruited bassist and singer Sting, then teaching school in Newcastle, and guitarist Andy Summers, a seasoned session player a decade their senior. The punk explosion was raging around them, but the trio had something else in mind: tight, rhythmic, harmonically clever songs played with punk’s energy and jazz musicians’ precision.
Their breakthrough came almost by accident. “Roxanne,” a reggae-tinged plea set on the streets of Paris, flopped twice before finally catching fire in America, and the debut album Outlandos d’Amour revealed a band with a wholly original recipe: Copeland’s polyrhythmic fireworks, Summers’ atmospheric guitar textures, and Sting’s soaring voice riding over dub-inspired bass lines. Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta followed in quick succession, each bigger than the last.
By the early 1980s the Police were arguably the biggest band in the world. Ghost in the Machine (1981) added saxophones and darker political themes, recorded in part on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, while the singles — “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic,” “Spirits in the Material World” — kept the chart run going. They filled stadiums with just three men and their instruments: no backing band, no safety net.
The end came at the very top. Synchronicity (1983), powered by the ominous mega-hit “Every Breath You Take,” became a best-selling album of the year and won three Grammy Awards. But the recording sessions had been poisoned by the members’ mutual exhaustion and clashing egos, and after one final world tour the band simply stopped. Sting’s solo career took flight; Copeland and Summers pursued their own distinguished paths.
They never formally broke up, which made the 2007–2008 reunion tour — one of the highest-grossing tours of all time — feel like a genuine event rather than a farewell. Today the Police stand as proof that a band can be simultaneously a pop machine, a musicians’ band, and a punk-era original: three players, one revolutionary sound, and a catalog that still sounds like the future.