Police on Our Backs (Version 2.0) Print E-mail
Sunday, 29 July 2007
The Police, as you must know, are entertaining the masses at Fenway Park with two shows, the finale being Sunday July 29.
So, there I was, late Friday (July 27) night at the Paradise, sharing the downstairs men's room with ... Sting. Yep, just the two of us, doing our business (one urinal apart, men maintain some degree of privacy, you know.) What, I asked him: No rock star pissoir? No, he laughed, he was just folks. Say what you will about reporters rhapsodizing about stars being human after all, but, ah, well, that was the case. One time, when he'd been given an honorary doctorate by Berklee College of Music - where his son briefly studied - I'd asked - yes, ironically - as if this Dr. Sting thing might just make his head swell. He responded that it was probably imposssible for it to swell any more than it had, given his success. Cool answer.
Anyway, about Friday ... We'd both just seen his son's band, Fictionplane, play the room - well, he'd seen the last song, as he was delayed by a meeting and just caught an encore with his wife Trudie Styler. But he talked about how proud he was of his son. "I applaud his courage and talent; he's really worked hard," and said that Fictionplane's position as the opening act on the Police tour was legit. While we talked, he mimicked the usual audience response to an opening act - arms crossed, bored look - and said Fictionplane, an act full of manic bravado, had won over the show-me stadium crowds. That is, this proved not to be an act of nepotism on parade. People who didn't have a clue about Fictionplane or Joe Sumner - that's Sting's 30-year-old bassist/singer son - were digging it.
Sting and I exited the loo, hands washed - all four! But there was more chat. We got talking about the last time we were both at the Paradise, in 1979, when the Police had, he said, "ten minutes of material, and played too fast." They had to encore with "Roxanne" (also played at the beginning) because they had nothing else. Backstage, then, I remember him explaining how the Police weren't a punk band, really, but how punk had kicked down the doors, allowing new wave bands like the Police to rush in. That could have cost him street cred - like it mattered? - but he was honest about the Police then, and seems so now. "It's not a nostalgia trip," Sting said of this improbable Police reunion with guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland. "It's fresh, it's volatile." He likes the mischievious Bob Dylan model for re-arranging the classics. Songs change every night - just like they always did, he said. The Police were not a jukebox, then or now.
More:
http://www.jimsullivanink.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=706&Itemid=38
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