Category: Police

Having become highly popular in the first half of 1979 with an album and singles originally released back in 1978, there was a huge amount of interest in the new material that was going to be released by The Police.

In September 1979 they unleashed a single which somehow straddled new wave and M.O.R. rock and in doing so turned the band into a global product for mass consumption. In other words, this is the single that re-invented stadium rock, just as those who had fought in the punk wars had thought they were going to win.

mp3 : The Police – Message In A Bottle
mp3 : The Police – Landlord

I’m not going to sit and here and say that this is a dreadful song. Far from it. It’s got a great tune and a catchy chorus to kill for. And the drumming from Stewart Copeland in particular the way he changes tempo all the way through it, is something to behold. Hell, even the bass playing of Sting is top-class stuff. As for Andy Summers on guitar…..well he’s not a million miles away from playing the same notes as can be heard on Don’t Fear The Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult which has long been regarded by rockists as a classic.

In fact, I shouldn’t restrict the love for ‘Reaper’ to the rockists as I’ve learned from attending dancing events with Glasgow hipsters of all ages that I am very much in a minority with my distaste for the song…

So, Message In A Bottle was a single tailor-made for sounding brilliant on the radio. Heavy rotation on BBC Radio 1 as well as across the ever-growing independent local stations in the UK meant it was a certainty to hit the #1 spot within a very short space of time. I’ve looked it up. It came in at #8 and the following week it was on top of the pile, eventually spending three weeks at #1.

I bought this single on green vinyl when it was released – just as I owned other earlier singles by the band on different coloured vinyl as part of the marketing ploy by A&M Records.

After the success of Message In A Bottle there would be no need for such gimmickry……

JC

Album: Outlandos d’Amour – The Police
Review: Rolling Stone, 14 June 1979
Author: Tom Carson

On the Police’s debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, lead vocalist/bassist Sting sings in a sleight-of-hand variety of styles: there’s a high-pitched quaver reminiscent of Ray Davies on the love songs, some Jamaican patois trotted out for the reggae cuts, a bit of Roger Daltrey’s phlegm-that-swallowed-Kansas howling for a big rabble-rouser like “Born in the 50’s.” Sting sounds like a guy who’s just made sergeant and is looking for a voice to back up his new stripes.

His band, too, offers a little something for everyone. If the flexible, jazz-influenced flourishes of drummer Stewart Copeland, a reggae beat and guitarist Andy Summers’ finely honed attentiveness to nuance lend the Police a stylish art-rock elegance, their music still sounds unpolished and sometimes mean enough to let them pass for part-time members of the New Wave—even though it’s a brand of New Wave sufficiently watered down to allow these guys to become today’s AOR darlings. And yet their hybrid of influences has been fused into a streamlined, scrappy style, held together by the kind of knotty, economical hooks that make a song stick out on the radio. Musically, Outlandos d’Amour has a convincing unity and drive.

It’s on the emotional level that it all seems somewhat hollow. Posing as a punk. Sting, as both singer and songwriter, can’t resist turning everything into an art-rock game. He’s so archly superior to the material that he fails to invest it with much feeling. Deft and rhythmically forceful though they are, the songs work only as posh collections of catchphrases (“Can’t stand losing you” or “Truth hits everybody”) thrown out at random to grab your attention: lyrical hooks to punch up musical hooks, with nothing behind them.

By trying to have it both ways—posturing as cool art-rockers and heavy, meaningful New Wavers at the same time—the Police merely adulterate the meanings of each. Their punk pose is no more than a manipulative come-on. For all its surface threat, there’s no danger in this music, none of the spontaneity or passion that punk (and reggae) demands. Even when Sting says, “There’s a hole in my life,” he can’t convince us it’s keeping him up nights—we know it’s just another conceit. And the larger the implied emotions, the tinnier he makes them sound. A gimmicky anthem manufactured out of whole cloth, “Born in the 50’s” reaches for Who-style generational myth-making (down to its ringing, Pete Townshend-like guitar line), but Sting can’t make us see that there’s anything special about this generation, because he knows there really isn’t.

The lack of emotional commitment becomes truly offensive in the minstrel-show Natty Dread accent that Sting puts on for the reggae numbers. The Clash’s great “(White Man) in Hammersmith Palais” works as white reggae because it’s all about Joe Strummer’s painful awareness that he can never claim this music as his own. Sting simply co-opts the style without acknowledging that such questions exist. The Police’s reggae is an infuriating and condescending parlor trick—a kind of slumming that isn’t even heartfelt.

As entertainment, Outlandos d’Amour isn’t monotonous—it’s far too jumpy and brittle for that—but its mechanically minded emptiness masquerading as feeling makes you feel cheated, and more than a little empty yourself. You’re worn out by all the supercilious, calculated pretense. The Police leave your nervous system all hyped up with no place to go.

JC adds…….

This was actually drafted for inclusion over the Festive period but having miscalculated how many I actually needed, I put it to one side, initially for a rainy day and then chose to have it come back as the first of what will be an occasional series given the positive fedback for this sort of thing.

It is fair to say that most of the 1979 reviews were far from favourable to The Police but Rolling Stone was a bit more vitriolic than most, with it damning with faint praise (and as it is an American review I’ve posted, I’ve chosen the more common album cover to be found over there rather than the one UK folk will be more familiar with.)

As time has gone by, there has been something of a rethink about Outlandos d’Amour, with many more than happy to talk up the strengths of the hit singles, albeit the way Sting has gone about his solo career and the high-profile rock star lifestyle he’s pursued has meant he’s remained fair game for many.

Even Rolling Stone has changed its tune. This is from December 2010 when it placed it at #434 in the greatest albums of all time:-

They would get bigger, but they never sounded fresher. The Police were punks who could play their instruments, absorbing reggae into the spare, bouncy sound of their debut album. “Roxanne,” “Next to You” and “So Lonely” proved that Sting was already a top-notch pop songwriter.

Almost the exact same was said in March 2013 during a feature on Best Debut Albums of All Time:-

They would get bigger, but they never sounded fresher. From Sting’s smoothly syncopated bass to Andy Summer’s prog-rock guitar and Stewart Copeland’s precision drumming, the Police were post-punks who could play their instruments, absorbing reggae and jazz into the spare, bouncy sound of their debut album, a record that didn’t sound quite like anything before it. The risque “Roxanne,” ”Next to You” and “So Lonely” proved that Sting was already a top-notch pop songwriter and these songs are in the DNA of everyone from No Doubt to U2.

Outlandos d’Amour came in at #38 in that particular rundown…..which, even for a fan like myself, seems embarrassingly high.

mp3: The Police – Roxanne
mp3: The Police – Next To You
mp3: The Police – So Lonely
mp3: The Police – Born In The 50s

 

Now (v) will appear next Monday, the day that I actually fly back into Glasgow. Today’s post is all about a very significant anniversary.

It was 40 years ago today…….

I’ve written about this before, so what you’re getting is a based on a posting from February 2014.

I’ve mentioned a few times that my first live concert was on Thursday 31 May 1979 at the Glasgow Apollo. The headline act was The Police and support came from both Bobby Henry and The Cramps. The tickets, costing £2.50 in advance or £2 on the door, had gone on sale a few months earlier but such was the anticipated lack of interest in the headline or support acts that the promoters and venue management had made plans to open just the stalls area and for all tickets to be on an unreserved basis.

The fact that a re-released Roxanne began to storm up the charts changed things somewhat, but even then, it was something like just 48 hours in advance of the gig that tickets for the circle and upper-circle areas went on sale, leading to a last minute surge in demand.

The Apollo was an old traditional style venue, having first opened in 1927 as a theatre. It did have a very high stage which, as I was to learn in later years, made for a great gig from the perspective of bands as it was impossible to invade – but it gave fans down at the front a really sore neck looking up at their heroes and heroines. It had hosted thousands of gigs over the years, being the main venue in the city for all sorts of touring acts across all genres, but I’m not sure if it had ever hosted anything where the seating was totally unreserved while being a sell-out. Nobody was ready for what happened on the night.

Large groups of young people went along and having gained access at the front door, went where they wanted inside the building. Naturally, most gravitated to the stalls and this area filled up very quickly, albeit it was obvious most folk were using tickets for other parts of the venue. The upshot was that fans who had bought tickets some weeks or months ago found they were now being shunted to the upstairs parts of the venue and there was a huge amount of anger, especially among those who were so late in arriving that they were only allowed access to the Upper Circle, affectionately known as the nose-bleed seats, such was their height above ground.

Me? I did what I seemed to have done at just about every gig I’ve gone to over the past 40 years and that’s get there not long after doors arrive to make sure, if it’s a seated venue, that I see the support act, and it it’s a standing venue, I get a good spot somewhere in the middle, close to the front (although in later years, my definition of close to the front has become loose!!)

As for the music, I’ll have to hold hand o and admit that I can’t remember much of Bobby Henry who, gawd bless, will always be the first live musician I had the privilege of seeing. The Cramps were chaotic and confrontational and didn’t go down too well with the majority of the audience. Lux Interior didn’t help things by constantly challenging folk to invade the stage and fight with him – which, as I’ve indicated earlier, was a near impossibility given the height of the stage above the font of the stalls but what did become clear was that anyone crazy enough to jump down on to the stage from the circle area (it was a drop of about 20 feet) stood a chance…..and so a few of the bouncers were deployed to ensure this didn’t happen as Lux was, as the show went on, really antagonising most of the audience. I thought it was huge fun and enormously entertaining, and it was there and then that I made the menal note to make sure I’d see support bands, on the basis it would be easy enough to walk down into the foyer if they were dreadful (I assumed at this stage that all concert venues in the world were laid out like The Apollo).

By the time Sting, Stewart and Andy hit the stage, the place was rocking and absolutely roasting hot. And I was high with euphoria.

They opened with I Can’t Stand Losing You, the song which had first got be interested in the band. I don’t have details of the exact set list, but just six days previous, in Chicago, this is what they had played and it’s very likely the Glasgow set was identical:-

Can’t Stand Losing You
Truth Hits Everybody
So Lonely
Fall Out
Born in the 50’s
Hole in My Life
Be My Girl – Sally
Message in a Bottle
Peanuts
Roxanne
Next to You
Landlord
Encore – Can’t Stand Losing You

My memories are that the Outlandos d’Amour album featured heavily and that there were a couple of tracks that I hadn’t heard before – one of these would likely have been Message In A Bottle but I have a feeling Walking On The Moon may have been aired as there was a lengthy almost boring bit where Sting did his ‘yay-yo’ nonsense while asking the audience to respond to his calls. Andy certainly performed Sally as I can still picture him going off to the side of the stage and returning with a rubber doll, to the great delight of the many adolescents in the audience (myself included) who thought it the most outrageous thing we were ever likely to see in our entire lives.

The encore was more than one song, but I’m sure it was just the three singles from the album played for a second time. It lasted about an hour all told and it went by far too quickly.

The other passengers on the 62 bus home must have been in despair as the four strong group of us from school – all boys as the girls from the school who were going along that night wanted nothing to do with us!! – were still in hyper-mode and we didn’t or couldn’t shut up. And we talked a lot about Sally……..

mp3 : The Police – Be My Girl/Sally

40 years on, and I still get excited when I walk through the doors of live music venue. I’ve long lost count of how many shows I’ve seen – and I still kick myself that I didn’t think to keep ticket stubs – they were simply thrown away, often inside the venue itself as they no longer had any use or purpose.

The fact that The Police would eventually become just about the biggest act on the planet for a brief time in the early 80s, as well as Sting becoming the most self-righteous and pompous prick imaginable makes it all too easy to mock them. But as a 15 year-old lad, I thought they were as good as anything else that was emerging from the post-punk era that had been christened New Wave which is why I’m still proud that they were my first headline act. They say you never forget your first time, and that a small part of it lives with you forever. I’m no different…..and although I’ve been left embarrassed by an awful lot of the stuff that came out after the initial singles, I’ll never forget the part The Police played in developing my life-long love and affection for music and live gigs.

JC

Hadn’t realised that it’s been well over two months since the last part of this occasiona series….how time flies when there’s an ICA World Cup to worry about.

I’m not sure everyone, or indeed anyone, will agree with me what I’ve come up with today.

The flop debut single from May 1977 recorded and released before Andy Summers was part of The Police. It also has the distinction of being the only 45 that they would release not to be the work of Sting. This was a Stewart Copeland number, while its b-side was also his, in conunction with his brother Ian.

I mentioned when I put together the ICA for The Police that the band quickly disowned the 45 on the basis that it was recorded before they had even played live. It’s also the case that original guitarist Henry Padovani (pictured above on the right looking a bit like Ian Dury) was so nervous about being in the studio that his guitar solo was all he could manage and  Copeland had to play the other guitar parts as well as the drums.

It was released on Illegal Records in 1977 and sold dismally, even by the standards of punk songs on small labels.  It would be re-released in a different sleeve in 1979 when the band were enjoying chart success via A&M Records, and would sell enough copies to reach the Top 50.

I think I’m inclined to include it in the series, not so much for it being a ‘cracking’ debut single, but mainly as it proved to be so different from their records that would go on to dominate pop charts across the planet just a few years later.

mp3 : The Police – Fall Out
mp3 : The Police – Nothing Achieving

JC

ORIGINALLY POSTED ON MONDAY 28 APRIL 2008

(The songs today were part of a recent ICA, so feel free to skip on past and come back tomorrow for the next single by The Clash…..)

The Police were the first band I ever saw play live, back at the Glasgow Apollo in May 1979. £2 a ticket, and they were supported by two other acts – Bobby Henry and The Cramps. Yup, the psychobilly nutters led by Lux Interior who did get his knob out on stage that evening. It certainly made Andy Summers‘ act of bringing on a blow-up doll to serenade during a rendition of Be My Girl/Sally look rather tame.

The fact that the band became the biggest act on the planet for a brief time in the early 80s, as well as Sting becoming the most self-righteous and pompous prick imaginable makes it all too easy to mock The Police. But as a 15 year-old lad, I thought they were as good as anything else that was emerging from the post-punk era that had been christened New Wave.

Not too many other bands were singing about prostitutes in 1979. These were the days when even the use of the word ‘damn’ was liable to get your song banned from the airwaves. The Police were actually regarded as a group that was a bit daring, cutting edge and subversive. You’ll have to trust me on that for I know its almost impossible to imagine.

But Roxanne wasn’t the first song that I ever heard by The Police. My first sighting of the band was in fact on The Old Grey Whistle Test in late 1978. They played two tracks that night, including what was their current single. A couple of days later I picked it up in the local record shop. The thing that I most remember was the sleeve – a picture of someone (turns out it was drummer Stewart Copeland) slowly hanging themselves by putting the noose around their neck and standing on a block of ice that was melted away by a three-bar electric fire. The back of the sleeve was a close-up photo of the ice block having melted…..and beside it was the photo that had been held by the hanging man.

I honestly had some nightmares about that sleeve. Is this what you were driven to when someone chucked you and broke your heart?? Surely not…(and it’s just occurred to me that perhaps a certain Ian Curtis might have glimpsed this sleeve at some point or other….)

But aside from the sleeve, it was a record that I played constantly hour-after-hour and day-after-day. I hadn’t been exposed to all the much reggae, so the song had a beat and rhythm that I thought was really unusual. I also loved the sound of Sting’s voice – it was so much sharper, clearer and tuneful than most other singers fronting new-wave bands. I was gutted when I realised the single wasn’t going to chart (it only made #42 on its first release):-

mp3 : The Police – Can’t Stand Losing You
mp3 : The Police – Dead End Job

The Police were one of a handful of bands that I was championing at school, but it was initially very difficult to get too many people interested. Then, all of a sudden, Sting began to get a lot of attention thanks to him having a main part in the movie Quadrophenia, and interest in his band exploded. Including from lots of folk in school. I think about 7 or 8 of us ended up going along to the Apollo gig – the tickets were unreserved seating so it didn’t matter when you bought them.

They say you never forget your first time, and that a small part of it lives with you forever. I’m no different…..and although I’ve been left embarrassed by an awful lot of the stuff that came out after the initial singles, I’ll never forget the part The Police played in developing my life-long love and affection for music and live gigs.

Sneer all you like. But this record deserves its place in the Top 20.

 

This is one that I’ve been giving some thought to for a few months as I know that putting the spotlight on The Police and attempting to justify them having an ICA will appal rather be of any appeal to most readers. But given that this was the first headline band for whom I ever bought a concert ticket (May 1979 – Glasgow Apollo) and that I’ve included one of their 45s in my list of my favourite ever singles it would be ludicrous not to make this effort.

There’s no doubt that the rapid growth in popularity of the band which saw them transform from post-punk new-wave wannabees into stadium rockers in the blink of an eye had a lot to do with how they have come to be acknowledged or otherwise by music fans of my generation. It is also nigh-on impossible nowadays to separate any feelings for the bland outpourings, musically and otherwise, of Sting over the past 30-plus years from much of the music that he and his two mates made when they were initially together between August 1977 and March 1984 (the dates of their first and last gigs as a trio). Having said that, they were a band who, for this fan, really came to represent the law of diminishing marginal returns in terms of quality – the bigger they got in terms of mainstream fans, the more bland the music they made; conversely, the more bland the music they made, the more units they shifted and the more money they made.

They were, for a while the biggest band on the planet. Five of their six studio LPs went to #1 in the UK and Australia. Their two final albums have picked up 11 platinum discs in the USA and it is estimated they have sold 75 million records the world over. And their final number one saw them deliver one of the most instantly recognisable pop singles of all time – albeit I cannot bring myself to include it in this ICA which unsurprisingly focuses very much on the earliest material.

SIDE A

1. Can’t Stand Losing You

The song that made me fall for the band, courtesy of seeing it performed live on the Old Grey Whistle Test in late 1978. Housed in one of the greatest single sleeves of all time, it limped to #42 on its initial release but reached #2 ten months later on its re-issue, kept off the top spot by I Don’t Like Mondays, the ode to mass shootings as recorded by The Boomtown Rats. Three minutes of pop magic with that hint of a reggae that was prevalent in many of the early singles and which seemed to offer something a little bit different; a jaunty tune over the black tale of a teenage suicide after being unable to cope with being chucked.

2. Dead End Job

I’m not going to make any grandiose claim that this is among the best the songs by the band but I feel it fits in really well at this early stage of the ICA. The b-side to ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’ is just a bit of new-wave noise that was partly reliant on a riff developed by the drummer but it demonstrates that the initial output of the band wasn’t that different from many of their contemporaries other than they clearly had a very talented guitarist (who was of course more than a decade older and experienced than most other new wave axemen).

3. Message In A Bottle

The band’s first UK #1 single and the proof that they were about to really make it big. There shouldn’t be too much argument that this is a tremendous bit of pop music however you look at it. It is driven along by a cracking riff and it also gives space to demonstrate that the rhythm section are quite talented. Bought on green vinyl by me on the day of its release in September 1979, the 7” take isn’t widely available as the album and all subsequent CD releases of greatest hits etc. have offered up the longer version in which ‘sending out an SOS’ goes on for just a wee bit too long.

4. Next To You (live)

The opening song on the band’s debut album was always one of their most popular; Sting would include it within his solo sets while it has also been given the cover version treatment by a number of other acts including Foo Fighters. It is that unusual beast from the new wave era – an unashamed love song. Such was my desire to get everything by the band baack in the days that I bought an import LP called Propaganda in late 1979 as it contained two live tracks recorded earlier in the year at the Bottom Line club in New York. Next To You was the second of those tracks and quickly established itself as my favoured version.

5. Roxanne

The breakthrough hit. It is worth recalling that this had been a huge flop in the UK in April 1978 when released as the band’s debut as much for the fact that our notoriously conservative radio stations would naturally shy away from airing any songs that were about sex never mind one that was so openly about using the services of a prostitute. It was only after the 45 became a hit in the US and Canada in Spring 1979 (hitting the Top 40 around the time the band were captured for the above mentioned Propaganda LP) that the UK stations decided to get behind the band and this led to A&M Records quickly re-releasing Roxanne to enjoy an eight-week residency in the Top 40. The red light that had stopped the band going anywhere had now totally changed colour….

SIDE B

1. Fall Out

The flop debut single from May 1977 recorded and released before Andy Summers was part of the band. It is also the only 45 not written by Sting. The band have been very self-deprecating about it and in many ways disowned it quite early on with the admission that it was recorded before they had done any live performances and that original guitarist Henry Padovani was so nervous about it all that he only played the guitar solo with Stewart Copeland (who had written the track) playing the other guitar parts as well as the drums.

It came out on the small label Illegal Records who took advantage of the band’s higher profile and re-released it in late 1979 where is sold enough copies to hit the Top 50 here in the UK at which time Stewart Copeland said the original release (which can fetch up to around £40-£50 if it is in mint condition) had sold “Purely on the strength of the cover, because of the fashion at the time. Punk was in and it was one of the first punk records – and there weren’t very many to choose from. “

It’s actually not all that bad if viewed as a punk record. It certainly gave no indication however, that the band would be all that special.

2. Invisible Sun

The one time where the trio courted controversy. By late 1981, they were one of the most popular bands in the world despite each of their three albums suffering from ever decreasing quality. They were popular not just because they had shown an ability to make catchy and radio-friendly pop songs but for the fact that their clean living, trouble-free approach to the job in hand, including playing the game of co-operating to the fullest extent with the media, made them a band that was appreciated by folk of all ages. For every snobby review that emanated from the pen of a music critic you could point to twenty or more sycophantic profiles in the pages of newspapers and magazines while broadcasters were falling over themselves to get the handsome and rugged frontman onto their stations.

So the release of a mournful sounding anti-war number, whose video never stood a chance of being aired in the UK thanks to it consisting solely of footage taken from news stories that dealt with the civil war underway in Northern Ireland, was a shock to the system. They didn’t have to do this and indeed a backlash could have set them back in the UK – but the fact that the single reached #2 (kept off the top spot by Adam Ant being Prince Charming) was proof that pop music could be effective in getting across a social and political message. Band Aid was just four years down the line…

3. The Bed’s Too Big Without You

I struggled to understand those who criticised the band for their efforts to deliver a blend of pop and reggae, particularly those whose gripes seem to be centred around ‘white men haven’t got the natural rhythm to make reggae’. The thing is, the music industry played along with the notion and were very happy to pigeon-hole singers and bands in ways that defined the sort of music listeners should expect from white musicians and what should be written, recorded and performed by black musicians – particularly in the 80s.

Sting and his mates absorbed a lot of influences – it’s worth remembering that prior to post-punk/new wave both of Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland had been in bands who encompassed R&B, psychedelia and prog – and therefore they could play a bit. If you want evidence, have a listen to this album track from 1979 , particularly the middle section where the vocals stop.

4. Voices Inside My Head

Here’s the problem I knew I was going to hit with this ICA. Eight songs in and I’m not convinced that there’s another two songs out there to complete the task in hand. Bu hey, every one of the band’s five albums had filler going back to the debut which in Be My Girl/Sally included a spoken word number about blow-up dolls (and on that tour ‘Sally’ would be brought on stage while Andy Summers did his free-form poetry. John Cooper Clarke it most certainly wasn’t!!)

This track from 1980s’s Zenyatta Mondatta has just two often repeated lines over an increasingly aggressive and catchy beat that turns into the ‘cha’ chant that would layer be taken up with great gusto by Stuart Adamson in the early songs of Big Country (see Fields Of Fire….or even better catch live footage of that band on you tune from hose days and you’ll catch what I’m on about).

Voices Inside My Head was a song that came to life in the live setting, often stretching out well beyond its standard four minutes, and seems to be a good fit at this point in the ICA.

5. Peanuts

This stood out as strange even back in the days The Police were searching for the formula that would take them to the top. It’s frantically fast with a ridiculously punky guitar solo (see also Landlord, the b-side to Message in A Bottle which was a candidate for this part of the ICA) but has the bonus of a twisted and strange sax part and a crazy chant of the song title seemingly coming out of nowhere after a lyric that was attacking pop stars who were not only living life to the full but making a career of singing songs about said lifestyle. It was seemingly aimed at Rod Stewart who had been one of Sting’s idols just a few years earlier….

I do love how the song comes to a spluttering and tired sounding end. Seems an appropriate way to close off this particular an ICA which I’m not myself completely convinced is worthy of inclusion in this what I think is proving a great series (thanks in the main to the guest contributors) but without whom etc……

mp3 : The Police – Can’t Stand Losing You
mp3 : The Police – Dead End Job
mp3 : The Police – Message In A Bottle
mp3 : The Police – Next To You (live)
mp3 : The Police – Roxanne
mp3 : The Police – Fall Out
mp3 : The Police – Invisible Sun
mp3 : The Police – The Bed’s Too Big Without You
mp3 : The Police – Voices Inside My Head
mp3 : The Police – Peanuts

Enjoy.

Only 48 hours till the next ICA…..it’s a guest posting from an old friend.

The Robster has been putting up some great stuff over at Is This The Life? including a great tale of his first ever gig which happened to be The Wedding Present.

I’ve mentioned a few times that my own first live concert was in May 1979 at the Glasgow Apollo.  The headline act was The Police and support came from both Bobby Henry and The Cramps.  It was a chaotic night in loads of ways.  The tickets, costing £2.50 in advance or £2 on the door, had gone on sale a few months earlier but such was the lack of interest in any of the bands that the promoters and venue management decided to close off all areas except the stalls. Nobody however, would anticipate that The Police would storm the charts shortly beforehand with a re-released Roxanne and be tipped by many as the ‘next big thing’, which led to a huge demand for tickets. I think it was 48 hours in advance of the gig that the circle and upper circle tickets went on sale and soon it was a total sell-out.

The problem for the venue was that all tickets were for unreserved seating and they just weren’t geared up for that…also the fact that groups of friends were coming along and demanding that they be allowed to sit together even when their tickets were for separate parts of the building (I can vouch for this from personal experience).  The upshot was that the stalls filled up very early while  those who had tickets for that area (ie had bought them ages in advance) were angry at finding themselves shunted to the nosebleed seats high up in the gods (which was a ridiculously long way up at the Glasgow Apollo).

I can’t remember much of Bobby Henry who, gawd bless, will always be the first live musician I had the privilege of seeing.  The Cramps were chaotic and confrontational and didn’t go down too well with the majority of the audience. Lux Interior didn’t help things by constantly challenging folk to invade the stage and fight with him – which was a near impossibility as the stage was a good 30 feet above the font of the stalls but was reachable if you were crazy enough to jump down 20 feet from the circle area – so instead the front man got his cock out while singing Human Fly.

The whole place was at fever pitch by the time the main act came on stage.   They opened with a song that I would later place at #20 in my 2008 45 45s at 45 series:-

mp3 : The Police – Can’t Stand Losing You

The fact that the band became the biggest act on the planet for a brief time in the early 80s, as well as Sting becoming the most self-righteous and pompous prick imaginable makes it all too easy to mock The Police. But as a 15 year-old lad, I thought they were as good as anything else that was emerging from the post-punk era that had been christened New Wave which is why I’m proud that they were my first headline act.

Not too many other bands were singing about prostitutes in 1979. These were the days when even the use of the word ‘damn’ was liable to get your song banned from the airwaves. The Police were actually regarded as a group that was a bit daring, cutting edge and subversive. You’ll have to trust me on that for I know it’s almost impossible to imagine.

I’d bought Can’t Stand Losing You a few months earlier after seeing the band play it live on The Old Grey Whistle Test.  I hid the record away from my folks cos I thought they would go crazy about the sleeve.  Pictured at the head of this post you can see it is an image of someone (turns out it was drummer Stewart Copeland) slowly hanging themselves by putting the noose around their neck and standing on a block of ice that was melted away by a three-bar electric fire. The back of the sleeve was a close-up photo of the ice block having melted…..and beside it was the photo that had been held by the hanging man.

I honestly had some nightmares about that sleeve. Is this what you were driven to when someone chucked you and broke your heart?? Surely not…(and it has since occurred to me that perhaps a certain Ian Curtis might have glimpsed this sleeve at some point or other….)

But aside from the sleeve, it was a record that I played constantly hour-after-hour and day-after-day. I hadn’t been exposed to all the much reggae, so the song had a beat and rhythm that I thought was really unusual. I also loved the sound of Sting’s voice – it was so much sharper, clearer and tuneful than most other singers fronting new-wave bands. I was gutted when I realised the single wasn’t going to chart (it only made #42 on its first release) but it made up for it when it was re-released in the summer of 1979 and reached #2.

They say you never forget your first time, and that a small part of it lives with you forever. I’m no different…..and although I’ve been left embarrassed by an awful lot of the stuff that came out after the initial singles, I’ll never forget the part The Police played in developing my life-long love and affection for music and live gigs.

Here’s the b-side

mp3 : The Police – Dead End Job

Enjoy.