Strange Things Happen: A Life with The Police, Polo, and Pygmies
Stewart Copeland
Language: English
Pages: 336
ISBN: 0061791490
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
“An excellent read.” —St. Petersburg Times “An often hilarious, always candid and astutely observed memoir chronicling a life observed, largely, from the vantage point of a drum throne.” —Buffalo News Rock legend Stewart Copeland, drummer for seminal pop trio The Police, shares his stories from before, during, and after his days with Sting and Andy Summers, in one of the most popular and influential bands of the eighties. Strange Things Happen indeed.
the horse. But this is a relatively slow tumble so my own angle of impact with the field is hard. Even though I roll like a ninja and am back on my feet before the horse is, there is something wrong with my shoulder. My collarbone has a new flexibility in a place that it shouldn’t. Damn! It’s broken. The horse is fine, but there is no more polo for me this summer. Pity also about that Police album that we were just about to record. The following summer we are so overhandicapped that we can’t
with. The word no is alien to me. The problem is, both of these options require massive homework. Even as a naïf you can’t mount the podium before a sixty-piece orchestra without full command of the material. And especially if you are a drum god, you can’t mount the stage with rubber fingers. But I’ve got Les Claypool on the phone and he is a persuasive man. A couple of weeks later I’m sitting in a Vermont café on a sunny morning, surrounded by bearded granola crunchers, and Trey comes bubbling
wearing someone else’s clothes. But you don’t just look funny; you dent your knuckles. I’m kind of long-armed; I sit back on a high seat and flail most comfortably at distantly placed cymbals and drums. Since I play orthodox grip, my snare is tilted away from me. Matched grip players tilt the snare toward themselves. Taylor is a matched grip forward-leaner on a low stool. But I hate to be precious about these things. I always respect the musicians who just plug and play so I try to shun public
aroused by the preshow teaser, a comedian who comes onto the stage and plays with the audience. His job is to rowdy up the crowd so that, during the show, the music will be wildly applauded and the jokes will get hysterical laughs. He gets this side of the room to shout louder than that side of the room. He gets punters onto the stage to perform dumb tricks. He exhorts booing for mean judge’s comments and cheers for happy ones. It’s all about limbering up the punters, who enjoy this unexpected
very strict. But we are flying now. Eberhard, like Francis Coppola, values instinct above all in his players. After explaining his dramatic needs for the opening of the show he cuts us loose. There aren’t any London cognoscenti in earshot so we get grooving in ways that would kill us back home. We’re actually pleasantly surprised by ourselves. After the discipline of the punk straitjacket, we’re concise in our playing; but now we’re free to blow like the wind. When I first met Andy I valued him