Were any bands ever actually inflluenced at all by The Police?

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000008DHD.01.MZZZZZZZ.jpg

Oh sorry, I thought you said brands.

Ya really lost me on that one.

Dave Matthews Band.

Sorry retort pouch. I remember an interview where the hourno played Sting some Men At Work and he said, 'They've been listening to a lot of police records' or something. I think The Police were the first imitation reggae band to hit the pop charts singing in ludicrous faux-Jamaican accents, but MAW followed on pretty closely.

A beautiful mistake.

However "Dead End Job", "Next To You", "Peanuts" (!), and the very strange "Be My Girl - Sally" really have a punkish frenetic pop energy not unlike XTC at the time.. but in particular I think Copeland's drumming sounds not too far off from George Hurley's (just less cowbell) and Andy Sumner's shredding is not unlike D. Boon's. And hell, even Sting's bass playing kinda reminds me of Watt's a little. Just on this record, though.

One could also lose that argument.

I once lived downstairs from this ponytailed wannabe graphic designer guy. He was a real mama's boy - we was in his late twenties and his mom was always coming to pick up his laundry and shit. He had this framed picture up that he made a big deal of showing everyone who came to his house. He'd photoshopped his own face over his father's face in a wedding picture of his parents and clearly had no clue that this was a Freudian nightmare scenario. He sang for a band that looked as if it had been assembled by the Canadian government for an anti-smoking ad campaign. Clean cut kids from diverse backgrounds playing modestly funky Hootie-pop wearing cargo pants and Risky Business Ray-Bans.
He invited me ro a party one night. I wasn't going to go, but people were stomping and yelling "OH YEAH!" and "ALRIGHT!" and sounding like they were having the time of their lives. So I went upstairs expecting some out-of-control celebration and there was no-one there but the band, and they were all gathered around the TV watching a video of a Sting concert, screaming in ecstasy at Sting's every movement. It was creepier than a GG Allin concert.

-- fritz (fritzwollner5...), March 18th, 2002.

as is pretty much every single drummer playing any kind of commercial rock, metal or R&B today. and most of their bass players listened to sting. a lot.

There's a house in my street
And it looks real neat

the Warm Jets (who?) and Dismemberment Plan remind me of the Police sometimes.

There is definitely a Police thing going on with Q And Not U.

And Faraquet.

'I was blue and lonely,
And I couldn't sleep a wink.
And I could only get unconscious,
If I'd had too much to drink,
New York cares....'

And it actually works well I think. Not like my mind, perhaps. Sadly.

Same instrumentation?

Alex OTM

Remind me sometime to tell you my theory of how .38 Special and buncha other useless '70s bar bands built actual shiny new careers in the '80s through close study of Cars albums.

Chuck and Colin S. SOOOOOO OTM, IT AIN'T EVEN FUNNEH, DIG?

Forget Maná...
try a million times SODA STEREO and JAGUARES...
Puya also attest to be major Police heads...they even did a killer cover of "Spirits In The Material World".

best...mental...handicap...evah

These folks also invariably mention Elvis Costello as well. That's usually a sign to STAY AWAY from their band.

Did anyone influenced by the Police ever make records? That anyone bought? That I don't know.

The president looks in the mirror and speaks
His shirts are clean but his country reeks
Unpaid bills
In Afghanistan hills

Emmet Swimming (college band long since dropped by a major) make the obvious connections by covering The Police's "So Lonely" with Men At Work's "Down Under" spliced into the middle.

http://www.the-changes.com/

yeah i reckon he picked up on BM around '75 and went from there

it's a direct lift - all this originality crap - everything comes from somewhere - being original doesn't neccessarily make you good

first 2 albums yeah, but he was coked out and creatively spent by no. 3. next 2 a pick-up and then....ugh...the errrrr solo career

i notice the reticence of bands to get political and half of them must be straying off it b/c of the nasty narcissistic bullshit that sting put out in the 90's - "i am a superseer visionary with half of columbia up my nose who's gonna wrap up a complex political issue in a trite verse/chorus/verse/chorus/bridge/double chorus to fade format and aggrandise myself in the process..."

cautionary tales. band aid III. chris martin. watch history repeat itself.

yeah actually i heard an amazing, totally policelike, track (might have been one of these bands) in a livery cab one night... in fact leaving from the starter of this threads house. i felt sort of locked out from finding out who it was though.

especially "all I know" with that 'eeeoohh!' shit. you know?!!
Fully Zenyatta Mondatta. Never sleep on that record.

They actually sound much more like Echo and the Bunnymen than The Police.

-- N. (nickdastoo...), February 27th, 2004.

hahahahaha

http://www.geocities.com/telephonepolesmusic

been on a bit of a brit-funk trip of late and ran into this one that i'd never heard before. linx were one of the most commercially successful brit-funk bands, but this cut off their first album just screams the police to me. just everything about it: vocals, guitars, bass but especially the drums - just check out the cymbals:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AmWfhBm56Q
Linx - I Won't Forget

anyhow, more obscure examples plz

xps I was under the impression that the Police's most influential concept wasn't their sound so much as how they reconfigured the dynamics of a rock trio, breaking away from tradition and having it revolve around the drums while the lead guitar became more about texture and color and the bass became more melodic.

... and the vocalist sang in a fake Jamaican accent.

I swear the vocals here reminded me of Sting's weird accent before I found out she's his daughter:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW-uXRlw-aU

Wondering how much Sting's geordie accent influenced his vocal style. I mean if you say the word 'jamaica' for instance in a geordie voice, it'll sound closer perhaps to a Jamaican pronunciation rather than a home counties or even American pronunciation - you'd have a much stronger emphasis on the second syllable and it would be a lot longer too. I don't know what I'm getting at here exactly and I'm not gonna deny the blatant cultural appropriation, but there seems like some sort of affinity between the two. Or it could just be another day of me talking out of my arse again.

https://townsquare.media/site/838/files/2015/12/elvissting.jpg?w=980&q=75

Elvis you fool, had you done the same, YOU would have been the headliner for Amnesty International!

This earworm from a couple years back totally reminded me of The Police...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UVNT4wvIGY

i thought that was more xtc senses working overtime

having it revolve around the drums while the lead guitar became more about texture and color and the bass became more melodic.

The Who got there first.

Sting never got punched by Bonnie Bramlett for calling Ray Charles and James Brown the n-word, Elvis

I feel like Sting (like Bryan Ferry) intentionally hid his regional accent. I had an old friend from Newcastle who was more or less made to do the same at school, the same way I know some older left-handed people who were made to be right-handed.

Amazing that The Outfield never got name checked here, just for the Sting affectation. In my mind the bigger impact of The Police is, yeah, the textural spacey echoey Summers guitar stuff from "Walking on the Moon" onward, but in truth I guess that was something a lot of people were exploring in tandem, The Edge most famously.

Still, I feel like commercially The Police probably opened the door for a ton of records to get made and promoted... I'm thinking of a lot of early to mid 80s guitar bands that gets compiled as "new wave" but always felt to me more like, idk, "80s pop-rock" --- The Fixx, Tears For Fears, Flock of Seagulls, Big Country... Am I way off base or is there some Police in each of their biggest hits?

1. the biggest influence the band exerted was on established, zillion sellers… "owner of a Lonely Heart"! Mick J wanted the guitar on "too Much Blood " to sound like Andy summers… the likes of, say, Crass all the way to Smiths or the Cure would be like "these are old guys playing prog, whether or not with a Jamaican accent and exotic rhythms here and there, fuck them,"…and I think that producers and engineers involved in commercially minded rock music on both sides of the pond were very enamored of the way those records were recorded(the first three very cheaply and quickly, the latter two quite expensively in Monserrat)…

2. I hereby issue a good natured challenge, to a guy I for sure have mucho mucho respect for… Tarfumes! Can you, for a period of time the duration of which I leave entirely to you, refrain from mentioning the Who, Pete Townshend or any individual or quality that issues forth from that band on this message board?

heard this song from 2021 the other day and immediately thought of The Police. I mean this drummer is clearly aping Copeland, right? its kind of the proggy direction they were hinting at on Synchronicity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmiAmW3sgHs

No.

xp

Copeland has been such a drum magazine staple for so long his influence extends beyond just Police fans to just general drum nerd shit

been on a bit of a brit-funk trip of late and ran into this one that i'd never heard before. linx were one of the most commercially successful brit-funk bands, but this cut off their first album just screams the police to me. just everything about it: vocals, guitars, bass but especially the drums - just check out the cymbals:

📹
Linx - I Won't Forget

had to find the link via incognito session so google/youtube won't get the idea that I like this awful song but "locked out of heaven" by bruno mars is a police pastiche

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-fA-gBCkj0

I texted this to a friend, calling it my favorite Police song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrDj5XvZXX4

He replied, "That's not the Police! Sting would never worry about someone else. 'But I've seen the tip of the iceberg / And I think I need to explain it to you.'"

Rush was so in love with the Police

I wonder if Yes did? I can definitely see why, they were the one new wave/"punk"-ish band that really had pro chops

XTC were no slouches.

Highly possible that Yes knew Andy and Stewart personally from their prog rock days too xp

Or even before that in the case of Andy Summers.

xpost yeah XTC definitely

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXsgFPPLBa0

Got to think Richard Page of Mr. Mister was at least sartorially influenced by Sting.

Now I have Stink singing “you need.a hero” in my head

Assuming Grand National have already been mentioned. Pretty sure lead singer Rudd used to be in a Police covers band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7opB9Eoc64

Maxeen was basically the Police reincarnated as an early 00's pop punk band, all the way down to the singer/bassist, who I always thought had a passing resemblance to Sting. I think their second album got trapped up in some major-label limbo and never got a full release, but I always thought they were underrated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlEjzoyYGis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keO8mMU0pyA

I wonder if Yes did? I can definitely see why, they were the one new wave/"punk"-ish band that really had pro chops

Drama/90125/Big Generator all seem a little Police-ish to me

Rush was so in love with the Police

I wonder if Yes did? I can definitely see why, they were the one new wave/"punk"-ish band that really had pro chops

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, May 5, 2023 10:54 AM (two days ago)

One of the biggest downsides to the Police calling it quits is ending the 'influence tennis match' being played between them and Rush/Yes. Would a Synchronicity follow-up had a few more ventures into proggy time sigs? Would tracks from Power Windows or Big Generator incorporate more open space and whimsy? I guess we'll never know.

Also, has any other diamond-selling album been as back-loaded as Synchronicity? The songs with the largest radio presence don't arrive until Track 6 ("Synchronicity I" being the equiv of Hysteria's "Women" in its lack of a cultural footprint compared to the rest of the singles). Hell, you have to white-knuckle through the "Did this get placed on here by accident?"-level WTFery of "Mother" before you hear a anything from MTV or Casey Kasem countin'-'em-down.

The Police seemed to break up partially fighting over using a synclavier or a fairlight.

What they ‘could’ have done that would have made sense to do what the Talking Heads or Peter Gabriel did and expand the band to expand the sound. One could imagine say what a more open live version of the Police with say Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland and say a second percussionist. Stings ego as a musician is just not wired in that way, he likes being the boss and in total control.

The problem with that is that Sting *did* try to expand the sound, repeatedly ... but with the goal iirc of cutting out the other guys, who were not surprisingly having none of it.

This is supposedly the demo that more or less made it to the album, with Stew and Andy tossing on one-take overdubs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylo6qCqcQ3U

In the case of the former, it's an all-time drum part. In the case of the latter, Andy is all but invisible on the track. From the infamous reunion interview:

What can you tell me about Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic?

Andy Summers: Well, I'm going to get very insulting here. When Sting was off doing the demos in Canada, he used this pianist who was incredibly pushy.

Stewart Copeland: He wasn't pushy.

Andy Summers: Fuck he was! He even managed to come down to Montserrat when we were recording.

Stewart Copeland: He was just like us actually.

Andy Summers: Well, yeah, but there wasn't room for him. He must have played 12 piano parts on that song alone. And as the guitar player I was saying, 'What the fuck is this? This is not the Police sound'.

Stewart Copeland: So we tried to make the song a Police song - which meant undoing all of Sting's arrangement. That was our basic policy anyway. Always has been. Throw out Sting's arrangement, keep his lyrics and the song. So we tried playing it slower than the demos, we tried my "rama-lama" punk version. Andy tried turning the chords upside down. We spent more time on this song than on all the other songs put together. One morning, in a state of extreme grumpiness, I remember saying, 'Okay put up Sting's original demo and I'll show you how crummy it is.' So Sting stood over me and waved me through all the changes. I did just one take, and that became the record. Then Andy did the same thing on the guitar. We just faced the music, but the bullet, and used Sting's arrangements and demo. Damn.

If we're going to talk about Mr. Mister, the Outfield, and Men at Work

whatabout

The Call and... wait for it... Mike + the Mechanics

Or even Genesis. This is a total Police nod:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qm_8pRYKHqo

One could imagine say what a more open live version of the Police with say Branford Marsalis, Kenny Kirkland and say a second percussionist.

The one time I saw the Police — 1986, on the Amnesty International “A Conspiracy Of Hope” tour — Kirkland was in the lineup, but only played the keyboard parts from the recorded arrangements. There was no stretching out (by him or anyone else in the band).

"If You Love Somebody Set Them Free," "Fortress Around Your Heart" and "Love Is the Seventh Wave" sound like they could've been Police singles easily, but then again they wouldn't really expand their sound either - even the saxophone was likely dropped in rather than shaping the songs in any fundamental way (and I could see them easily swapped out for Summers's soloing).

Sting plays his music as sophisticated and informed by jazz, but it’s more in a box of his design. He pretty much went the Zappa way of hiring ringers including a long relationship with a guitarist of similar harmonic knowledge but Sting with complete editorial control.

Now Zappa would use such control often for him to be able to improvise and create on stage, so it is different.

I think this control is why Stings music is rhythmically largely stiff as a board completed to the Police. As Andy was referriing, would Rosanne be a hit as a bossanova as Sting originally thought? Maybe maybe not, but I think without happening upon the police- Gordon Sumners would have never become a ‘star’.

"Roooooooo-sannnne ..."

bird, I don't think Stewart and Andy would have dug "If You Love" or "Seventh Wave." Particularly the latter, which in anyone's hands is a bit glib.

"Fortress," though. Fuck. It slams as is, an epic track. But imagine it with the moodiness of "Wrapped Around Your Finger" and you have a different song. Less clutter and more impact. One of the Stingster's best lyrics imo

I missed the Linx chat :-( But the Police were definitely the inspiration for I Won't Forget, as I believe they pointed out in interviews at the time (?)

Costello later based Clubland in part on the Police, as most of Trust had nods to his peers in that way

No mention yet for Billy Joel's belated pastiche?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1wk0r8CeiKc

Also, has any other diamond-selling album been as back-loaded as Synchronicity? The songs with the largest radio presence don't arrive until Track 6 ("Synchronicity I" being the equiv of Hysteria's "Women" in its lack of a cultural footprint compared to the rest of the singles). Hell, you have to white-knuckle through the "Did this get placed on here by accident?"-level WTFery of "Mother" before you hear a anything from MTV or Casey Kasem countin'-'em-down.

This is why I've never been entirely convinced by the album's slightly elevated position in the canon relative to the previous four. It's mostly so because The Hits and the sales ofc, but how many of these list-makers actually give a damn about the first 21 minutes besides the Synchronicities? This feeling would be easier to ignore had the two sides been reversed (FTR I consider the whole album to be generally really nice and I also think the strangeness of WIFY and Sahara gets downplayed next to Mother).

WIYF

try one more time

"Fortress..." and "All This Time" are the only Sting solo singles I like. If "Why Should I Cry For You" was a single, then that one too.

have you heard "Russians"? a very powerful commentary on the Cold War *runs away*

No fucking way you could make a Police song out of "All This Time" or "Russians" or, for that matter, "Moon Over Bourbon Street" or "Fields of Gold."

The dude went solo so as to be able to do that sort of thing without getting side-eye from his bandmates, and he was right to do so. The other Policemen wouldn't want to be associated with that material.

"Why Should I Cry for You" is an edge case. Can't imagine how it would sound, but it's plausible. "Shape of my Heart" done in the churny style of "Bring on the Night"? Plausible.

Fortunately there are at least some songs performed in both contexts, so we can actually compare. I am not sure whether "Shadows in the Rain" worked better as Police or Sting track. Leaning Sting right now but I may waffle.

try one more time

Nope that was it

WAYF on the other hand, probably as 'straightforward' (read: most obviously Police-sounding) as the album gets.

sigh. pretty silly of me not to realize two songs on the album are so similarly titled, even with your clue

have you heard "Russians"? a very powerful commentary on the Cold War *runs away*

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown)

most galling thing about that song imo is the implication that british people all love their children

(americans just as bad on that count so brits don't think i'm singling y'all out)

It's worse: he hopes the Russians love their children too

That song has a decent following with late-Boomer/early Gen-X lefty dudes who love history, it appears.

In a collegiate "History of Jazz and Rock" class in '94, the professor included "Russians" on the listening list, but no other songs from any of the Policemen. A few of us asked "Why?", he said that he thought that Sting should be represented. He did not understand that what we were really asking was "Of all the rhythmically and sonically interesting songs from the Police/Sting oeuvre, why choose a drumless dirge with 'There won't be snow in Africa this Christmas'-level lyrical ridiculosity?"

Written by noted jazz-rock dude Sergei Prokofiev.

I would ask that professor to be tied down and repeatedly exposed to Regatta de Blanc

in the liner notes of Blue Turtles he actually prints part of the sheet music from the Prokofiev piece he quoted, even at the age of 10 I thought that was remarkably pretentious. as though Sting expects people to see that and know how to hum the bit in their head or even play it on piano then go, ah yes, that's the part he borrowed. even though it's immediately obvious when you hear the song.

Something about the way Sting uses jazz and classical reeks of snobbish elitism, as if rock music was somehow beneath his efforts to do something REALLY important. I've seen past criticism echo the same feeling, but they also seem to suggest some kind of snobbishness towards classical and jazz. (Dave Marsh often seemed hostile to both, Christgau definitely towards classical.)

It's possible Sting shares the same philosophy as, say, Jean-Luc Godard or Jim Jarmusch or collectively the Beatles and doesn't believe in classifying anything as high/low or popular/serious art, and that ultimately what makes art great transcends those classifications, but unlike their work, I never get that impression from Sting's.

Not a fan of his album of 16th century lute music then?

I can't stand using lute

Or maybe

No matter what I doot
I'm still hungry for lute

Roxanne

You don't have to put on the red lute

If I ever lute my faith in you

Marsh's issue with Sting's jazz affectations/appropriations isn't with jazz itself; it's with Sting. Marsh is on record as a huge fan of Miles, Coltrane, Sun Ra, and many others.

As for Marsh's attitude towards classical, he's written about how his high school music appreciation classes were strict and unbending in their insistence that THIS (the material being covered) was GOOD, and THAT (what Marsh and his classmates were listening to: Motown, Beatles, Chicago and Memphis soul, garage rock) was BAD. It's likely that may have colored his viewpoint.

jfc I honestly didn't know about the lute music...

Re: Marsh's views on jazz, I do remember him writing some good words in Coltrane and Sun Ra's favor, but he's also written some bizarre claims that came to mind. For example, from his 1001 singles book: "Jazz purists like to boast that their virtuosos could cut huge hits any time they wanted to, but the spotty record of so-called 'jazz-rock fusion' makes that a brag of doubtful validity." He ignores the polarized reaction to fusion within the jazz community alone (and even then I wonder what his definition of "purists" may be since it's usually synonymous with traditionalists), and I don't think there are/were many great jazz musicians who remotely believed that cutting a hit record was that easy or could be dependent on instrumental talent.

I dunno, I certainly heard the "oh, they could make huge hits whenever! They just don't want to! They're better than that!" thing many times before I read that in Marsh's book. But yes, he does ignore how going electric, or incorporating even a hint of a backbeat on a record, would result in cries of "sellout!" from fans and musicians alike.

I don't think there are/were many great jazz musicians who remotely believed that cutting a hit record was that easy or could be dependent on instrumental talent.

It depends on what Marsh means by "jazz-rock fusion" here, though. He loves In A Silent Way, an album not deliberately calculated to be a hit. He loathes things like Blood, Sweat & Tears' "Spinning Wheel," a record/band seemingly designed to a) show The Kids that These Jazz Musicians Are Better Than Your Rock Musicians, and b) prove that Jazz Musicians Can Make Hits. He's also a fan of Steely Dan (apart from Gaucho). So at least part of the issue is that he's casting a wide net without defining his terms.

I do think there were a not-insignificant number of musicians who approached their work as "jazz" who thought it was relatively easy to make a hit record. It HAD to be easy; people like Connie Kay and Clark Terry played on sessions for hits where very little of their facility was required of them -- "Wow, that was a hit? And all I had to play was ___?" Mickey Baker, unable to make a living playing bebop, realized all he had to do was bend a string, and suddenly he was a highly in-demand session guitarist and made a handful of hits as a leader.