Andy Summers Still Has Regrets About the End of the Police

The Police had the biggest album of their career with Synchronicity and then it was all over. Guitarist Andy Summers says it’s a familiar tale which led to the group’s demise.

“It’s the typical process where you become incredibly famous and they throw all of this money at you and then the rot sets in,” he laughs during a conversation with UCR. “It’s very hard to stay away from that.”

Though he would have preferred a different ending, he’s remained in a constant creative state over the decades that have followed. Sometimes, one project will lead to another. That was the case last year when he put out A Series of Glances, the latest book of his celebrated photography. It spawned a soundtrack of sorts, which has now been released as an EP called Vertiginous Canyons.

During a recent appearance on Ultimate Classic Rock Nights, Summers discussed his new music and also shared some thoughts on the forthcoming Synchronicity box set.

It seems like this new EP happened in a fairly organic way.
It’s an unusual path to this one. It’s not my normal process. I’ve got a little shack at the end of my garden. It’s very nice, it’s got guitars and I sit there with a recorder. I go into composing mode and I write out the music. I come into the studio and make better demos and go through [that part of] the process and that gives me another layer of thought. For this one, I had the book, so there was a big creative process with the photographs in the book. Because I did the layout and a German guy, rather grumpily, put it all together the way I wished. But they made a very beautiful book in high end quality. Somewhere towards the end of the printing of the book, they said to me, “Would you do some music for the book?” I went, “Music for the book? What’s that? I’ve never done that before!” They said, “No, we can do that. People can put their iPhone over the [code] like a menu and the person can listen to your music while they view the photographs.”

READ MORE: Why Andy Summers Sees His Photos Sort of Like Songs

That was not an offensive idea, it was like, “Wow, that’s quite a sweet idea.” It’s sort of a mini-movie scoring job, if you like. So I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do it.” Because they’d made a beautiful book and I found no problem with that. I got the book in the studio and I’m flipping through it. Of course, like most modern guitarists, I have all sorts of pedals and sonic devices that I can play through. But it’s mostly done on one guitar. I did the whole thing in three hours. It was not laborious. It was fun for me, because I would get a great sonic thing going through the pedals and that would be the inspiration for whatever the track became. Because they’re mostly improvisations, but with different setups in the sonic department. I didn’t always get it on the first go, but I literally made that between two o’clock and five o’clock in the afternoon. Which if you go back fifty years, that’s the way records used to be made. Hopefully, what you get out of that is a fresh thing and maybe that’s what’s coming through. You know, I had fun doing it and everybody’s happy and now they want to put it out as a little CD, so I’m not fighting it.

Listen to Andy Summers’ ‘Into the Blue’

I like that you played for three hours and just let it all come out. How much did you have to do to it from that point?
I might have had one or two false starts. I didn’t necessarily have a completely full track on the first go, but it was pretty fast. I mean, I’ve been playing all of my life and I am a great guitarist. [Laughs] So it wasn’t too terrible.

You’re known for that.
Well yeah, if you weren’t very good, you’d probably have a hard time. But I’m completely used to my studio and the gear and the things you can do with guitars and all of that. So yeah, it wasn’t a struggle. It was sort of a pleasant exercise.

You grew up playing jazz. What do you think that added to your toolbox as a player that was important?
I started off when I was 15 trying to copy Wes Montgomery until I could play the whole solo on “West Coast Blues.” That showed me how to play through minor seventh chords and I started to get it. So that goes deep and I’m a musician that has perfect time and rhythm. I’m there. You know, I can play the drums as well, which is the main thing. If you think you’re going to be good, if you haven’t got [time and rhythm], you’re never going to be that good. That’s the sacred law. But I grew up playing all of that stuff and life went on. I was at least 20 years old when I started listening to the blues and stuff like that. Then, you pick up these other things along the way. But the deepest one for me was definitely listening to Wes and Kenny Burrell, Jimmy Rainey, people like that. These are my heroes. Not to mention, Miles Davis and the wonderful Sonny Rollins of course. My phrasing and my sense of time and space really comes out of that. That was my education as a teenager, which is when you really take it all on board. Of course, the rest of your life, you’re trying to take what you know farther and get into more complex chords and understand chord progressions and ways you can voice chords until you have a complete guitaristic knowledge and you’ve got the geography of the neck solid [to where] you can play anything anywhere. It takes time.

How were you finding the music of people like Wes and Sonny?
They were all coming out when I was a kid. Wes Montgomery, of course, blew the whole jazz world away. He was this incredible guitarist out of Indianapolis, who played with his thumb and wasn’t a so-called educated musician, but he was a virtuoso beyond belief. No one could believe he played like that. He played such beautiful melodic lines, an incredible, natural jazz player. Of course, he was one of three brothers, so he was in an environment where it must have been encouraged. He played with them a bit, but he became such a star on his own. [This was at] the time in musical history when the guitar was really starting to emerge more and become sort of the premier instrument in music, generally. I think that’s a fair thing to say. Basically, all guitarists bowed to Wes. There are other great ones as well, but no one could really touch Wes.

Fans are excited about the Police box set for Synchronicity. What was your involvement?
Well, you know the way that goes. [Laughs] People say, “You must have wrangled over every single track!” No, the record company made it. They go, “Okay, boys, we’re going to pull out all of these tracks that you never released. Here’s the Synchronicity album and here’s all of the artwork.” They basically pull it all together and then they pass it by us. We go, “Don’t like that.” There was a bit of a wrangle about someone who wrote an eight page essay about the Police. I thought it was terrific. Then Sting’s camp didn’t like it, so it got rewritten. Stewart [Copeland] and I didn’t like it, so it got rewritten into whatever is in there now. So, there’s some involvement, because there are sensitivities in all of this. But I feel good about it. I hope it’s going to be number one. That’s what I hope. I don’t know, I don’t want to say there’s an element of revenge, but it’s like, “Yeah, see? You should have listened the first time!” [Laughs] I’m not sure what I’m thinking, but I’d just like to see it go to number one, because it would be a kick. We’ll see.

From your perspective, what’s the song on Synchronicity which took the most interesting journey?
“Every Breath You Take” is an interesting one. When you hear the demo on that, you won’t even believe it. The whole album was difficult, but “Every Breath You Take” was going to go in the trash, basically. We thought it was too light and it wasn’t very good. Sting and Stewart just couldn’t agree about where the kick drum and the bass went and so on. It reached the point where we were all getting pretty tired of it and didn’t really want to do it. Sting said to me, “Go on, go in there and make it your own.” We needed a guitar and I went in and almost instantly played the guitar line that is of course is the signature of the song. Everybody stood up in the control room and cheered. The manager heard it and said, “I’m going straight to A&M. This is going to be a number one.” And it was, that was our first number one in the U.S. It was number one for eight weeks straight.

READ MORE: How ‘Every Breath You Take’ Turned From Romantic to Dark

That’s a good turn of events, considering how you all were feeling about the album generally.
It was a tough album, period. I mean, we had been together five years and were massively successful. Sting was obviously feeling his oats and wanted to leave the band and go out on his own. In a sort of anal way, he was ready to finish off the contract, which was five albums. “You know, we’ve done what we’re contracted for, why should we stay anymore?” Of course, any band would stay, naturally, because it was going so brilliantly well. We dominated the world. No one wanted us to break up, but Sting wanted to go and be the thing all on his own.

READ MORE: Police Albums Ranked Worst to Best

One of your early song ideas, “Goodbye Tomorrow,” evolved into what became the B-side, “Someone to Talk To.” What do you remember about that particular song?
That was a really nice piece and I thought it should be on the album. But it wasn’t on the record. “Mother” was my sort of Captain Beefheart weird song that I put on the album. It didn’t really fit with it at all. I think A&M were probably a bit shocked that something like that was on the album — they didn’t really want something like that. I was always trying to push the envelope in terms of musical hipness, but my thinking was less commercial. I did write “Someone to Talk To” and I was very pleased with it, but it didn’t make it onto the album. It would have probably been a hit.

What have you come to appreciate about Synchronicity with some added hindsight?
Well, it’s not my favorite album, actually. I appreciate it and I think it’s got some great songs on it and the playing is very good. This is not very commercial thinking, but for me, the best album was the second album [Reggatta de Blanc]. We were still raw and the album was made in 10 days. I think it’s got all of the excitement of three young guys trying to make it. That’s the toughest album for me. Synchronicity proved to be more sophisticated. We were adding other instruments onto the tracks. It was slightly less of a trio album, although it was trio-dominated. But it was a little bit out of that [original idea]. Something like “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic” is too keyboard for me. We couldn’t do that on stage, so I had to figure out a fancy guitar part to cover that. I like all of our albums, but I particularly cherish the second album and I think the first one [Outlandos d’Amour] was good too. It’s the typical process where you become incredibly famous and they throw all of this money at you and then the rot starts to set in. [Laughs] It’s very hard to stay away from that. In fact, maybe one of the only bands that never happened to was U2. They all seemed to hang together very well. I don’t know if it’s because they’re Christians or what it is. Although I don’t think people were ever as hysterical about U2 as they were the Police. That would be a [topic to] debate.

Listen to the Police Demo For ‘King of Pain’