AS A ROCK BAND, THE POLICE came in for a lot of stick. Their first four singles, which included “Roxanne” and “So Lonely”, were flops when first released in 1977 and 1978. The trio were sneered at by the cool kids of the music press, dismissed as “white reggae”, a term used pejoratively to suggest inauthenticity. Rolling Stone’s review of the band’s first album, Outlandos d’Amour, called it an “infuriating and condescending parlor trick”. How dare they presume to ride in on punk’s coattails?
Andy Summers had studied classical guitar for four years at university. Drummer Stewart Copeland’s father had been a CIA station chief. The CIA! Could they possibly be any less, “sticking it to The Man”. The Police virtually The Man. However, Summers, talking about the band’s 2007 reunion tour, told a newspaper: “I got about $1m a night, and we did 150 nights. Someone’s got to do the job.”
