I, like millions of others, was a HUGE Police fan.
Unlike, say, Kiss or Foghat, who would continue to appeal to a certain denim-clad demographic, the Police were the first band I adored whose music could be described as sophisticated.
The band's early music had been as immediate as anything Chuck Berry or the Beatles had recorded, yet it challenged fans to step beyond their butt-rock comfort zones. For every punk-adjacent rocker on Outlandos D'Amour like "Next To You" or "Truth Hits Everybody", there were three songs that would throw the kitchen sink at you by co-opting reggae, prog, jazz & Motown.
On Reggatta de Blanc and Zenyatta Mondatta, the band adhered to the formula established on their debut as if their very lives depended on it, resulting in songs that may have been credited to Sting as a songwriter, but were, in fact, group efforts. The iconic opening riff to "Message In A Bottle", for example, had been created by Andy Summers, for which Sting awarded him zero credit.
Every great band has that iconic three-album run and for Police fans, those first three albums recorded with producer Nigel Gray were it.
In hindsight, the trio had squeezed just about every last bit of inspiration they could get from their otherwise limited "live-in-the-studio" approach to studio recording at at least one member of the band was itching to break out.
Little did we fans know that, left to his own devices, Sting would turn our favorite bottle blond punk band into, dare I say, Genesis.
The first step was to hire Hugh Padgham, who had cut his teeth on albums by XTC, but, since 1980, had been the producer for, you guessed it, Genesis.
In recent years, each member of the band would write a book detailing the band's scrappy early days, their ascent to the top of the pop industry, and the spiritual falling out that took place during the Zenyatta Mondatta sessions.
While there may have been multiple factors, the most apparent one was that Sting was no longer willing to acquiesce to Stewart and Andy's refusal to develop songs that simply did not sound like Police songs.
In Sting's mind, a hit was a hit and, as a result, he took increasing offense to Stewart and Andy's efforts during the Zenyatta sessions to retain "quality control" as a personal attack.
For the next album, Sting swore to himself, he would arrive prepared to do battle.
Thus, when Sting arrived to sessions for the album that would become Ghost In The Machine, he brought in album-quality demos of several songs, including "Everything She Does Is Magic", a saxophone, and his own keyboard player.
As you can probably imagine, this was perceived by Stewart and Andy as a belligerent power grab, which, in hindsight, it absolutely was and Sting's keyboardist was sent packing.
Try as they might to top Sting's demo, ultimately, the decision was made (by Sting) that the band would use Sting's demo of the song, with Stewart and Andy merely replaying the demo's drum and guitar parts.
The pair had done so under protest, but once the song became their highest charting single to date, Sting was even more convinced than ever that he'd been right, they'd been wrong, and that the next album would benefit from much the same approach.
On Synchronicity, Sting came in with the songs, Stewart and Andy played their parts to his liking, and the result was their first U.S. #1 hit single ("Every Breath You Take") and the biggest-selling album of their careers.
Thing is, one should never have to ask "Is that Stewart Copeland or a drum machine?". Unfortunately, hearing Sting's songs recorded as he'd intended them to sound revealed to many longtime fans of the band that Sting no longer wanted to be in the Police.
He wanted to be in Genesis.
As great as "Wrapped Around Your Finger", "King Of Pain", "Synchronicity II" and "Tea In The Sahara" may have sounded on the radio, they simply were not Police songs.
By forcing his vision upon the band and thereby eliminating the back and forth song development between all three members that would have molded such songs into Police songs, Sting had shortchanged not only the band, but their fans as well.
By this time, it was not uncommon for longtime fans of the band to begin exhibiting the first symptoms of "Sting overload":
- Extreme irritability whenever a song from Synchronicity is heard.
- Uncontrollable muttering of profanities at the sight of any poster where Sting's head is twice as big as Stewart's or Andy's, which, of course, in real life IT WAS!!
- The use of the term "gaseous pants-load" anytime Sting name-checks Arthur Koesler or Carl Jung in an interview.
To anyone who caught the band on their Mad Max-inspired stadium tour of 83-84, it was obvious that Sting not only saw himself as the star of the show, he now believed he'd outgrown Stewart and Andy.
In his own mind, by going solo, Sting could finally make the music he was born to make, free of input or criticism from those who, in his eyes, couldn't write a hit to save their lives.
So when his first solo album, Dream Of The Blue Turtles, was released, it would finally be evident to all that Sting had never needed Andy or Stewart and that, on his own, Sting's songs would now soar to new heights.
For all of Sting's supposed book smarts, why was it that first single "If You Love Someone Set Them Free" saw fit to take inspiration from a motivational poster. Thankfully, there was no song called "Hang In There", but the sentiment of the next single, that Russians loved their children too, was no less daft.
Even so, the hits continued to pile up for Sting, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that the momentum of the Police's continuing popularity was just powerful enough to propel lukewarm, but earnest jazz wanking into the upper reaches of the charts.
By that point, even Phil Collins had to marvel at Sting's ability to sell crap to the masses.
Meanwhile, those of us who'd been huge fans of the Police's early work had to wonder if the music of Blue Turtles was what Sting, in his heart of hearts, had really wanted to play all along and, if so, had he merely been biding his time in the Police just waiting for his moment to pursue every bad jazz leaning he'd ever had?
Back then, of course, the jury was still out on that issue and would be further delayed by Sting's half-hearted return to the Police in 1986 under the guise of reworking some of the band's earlier material to more closely resemble Sting's current artistic wishes.
Thankfully, Stewart Copeland's untimely fall from a horse limited the damage to two songs, an unreleased re-do of "De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da" and the single "Don't Stand So Close To Me '86", which failed to break the Top 40.
If the plodding and overly precious version of the latter had truly been closer to Sting's original vision for the song than the version the band had recorded for Zenyatta Mondatta, then it probably for the best that Sting pursue such tomfoolery under his own name.