Caught looking: Police members Andy Summers (left), Sting and Stewart Copeland peer into Copeland's Super 8 camera during a photo shoot. Courtesy True North Records.
You can’t accuse Stewart Copeland of harbouring an unhealthy nostalgia for his time with the Police. Since the band’s breakup in 1985, the much-admired drummer has had a fruitful second career. In addition to releasing a number of challenging solo records, Copeland has scored countless films (most famously Francis Ford Coppola’s Rumble Fish and Oliver Stone’s Wall Street), a few ballets, even an opera. But a couple of years ago, Copeland stumbled across reams of Super 8 film he had taken of the Police in the late ’70s and early ’80s, during their world-beating prime. He felt compelled to act.
At the urging of good friend Les Claypool — singer/bassist for spazz-funk band Primus — Copeland whittled 50 hours of footage down to a lean 70 minutes and submitted it to the Sundance Film Festival, where it had its debut in January. Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out provides an impressionistic chronicle of life on the road — the bewildering adulation of fans and the tedium of hotel-hopping, but also the buzz of playing live and creating lasting music. With Copeland holding the camera, most of the film focuses on bandmates Sting and guitarist Andy Summers, who seem alternately baffled, indifferent and dismissive about their stardom. Filled with footage from concerts, photo shoots and media engagements, as well as more mundane settings like tour buses and luxury hotel rooms, Everyone Stares provides the kind of backstage access that eludes shows like VH1’s Behind the Music.
The film received its Canadian premiere at the North By Northeast Music Festival last weekend, where Copeland attended a special Celebrity Interview. (The film will be released on DVD later this year.) Copeland made time to talk to CBC Arts Online about his documentary intentions (and pretensions), how writing an opera compares to writing pop songs and the responsibilities of being in the world’s biggest band.
Q: Did you intend Everyone Stares as a rebuttal to the overplayed Behind the Music special on the Police, which dwelled on the more sensational aspects of the band?
A: Naw, never thought about that. The film’s perspective made itself. There’s only one thing this film could be, which is a first-person view of life in a band. It couldn’t be an analysis of the band. That would have been irrelevant; that isn’t what the images are all about. The images are all about the personal experiences of being in this band. When you’re watching the movie, your name is Stewart and you’re the drummer in this band. There are so many instances, which are really magic for me, when the punters, the record-company guys, the crew, the band members, the journalists are talking right into the camera and they address the camera by name [i.e. Stewart]. I love all that.
The film was shot by a 20-year-old rock star and it was edited by a fiftysomething father of many. Same guy, but a very different perspective on what it all means. I didn’t have any real statement that I wanted to make. The Behind the Music about the Police was about how we fought all the time. That’s just because they were stuck for a story. But I have to say, I began to fall for that, too. I was very pleased, and I got a very good feeling, from looking at all this footage. It’s obvious, where [Sting and Andy] look right into the camera, and Andy’s kind of grumpy — because that’s just the sort of guy he is — but mostly, you can feel the love. They look into the camera and they twinkle at me. And that’s really what the band atmosphere was all about.
A: A funny thing. I sent it to Andy and he loved it; of course, he’s the star of it. I sent it to Sting and I figured out when he got it [the rough cut] to the minute, and [Copeland feigns looking at his watch], he must have gotten it by now [picks up an invisible phone], “Sting! What do you think?” And he’s “Uhhhhuhhhhyeah, cool, man, cool.” And then when I finished it, I sent it to him [again, Copeland feigns looking at his watch], he must have it now — “Sting! What do you think?” And he fessed up that he hadn’t actually seen it, and that he probably isn’t going to see it, because he’s allergic to watching himself on the screen. He just doesn’t watch himself anymore. Which is funny, because we used to tease him about his preening. He couldn’t walk past a mirror without flicking something of his vestments or hair. We used to tease him about it, but he’d say, ‘F--- off, it’s my job.’ And he was right. It’s odd that he doesn’t do that anymore.
Q: During the Police’s eight-year run, you were arguably the biggest band in the world. Now, that throne belongs to U2. Do you see any similarities?
A: They’re very similar. In fact, I suspect that Sting and Bono are the same guy. They’re both the same height, they’re both kind of the same build — although Sting is way buff — they both talk with the same husky voice. I know U2 a bit, and I see them when they play in L.A., and I swear to God, I feel like saying, ‘Bono, I mean Sting-o, what are you doing here with this Irish accent and this Irish band?’ They even have the same humour; they laugh the same way.
Bono’s a little more clever with his public persona. Sting seems to have lost interest completely in what people think of him. He couldn’t care less, he just lives his life, makes his music. When he used to preen in front of the mirror, his image was much better and people liked him more. Now that he’s become a more mellow guy and completely unarrogant, completely uninterested in his persona, he’s not as cool looking and he’s not perceived as cool as in the days when he actually thought about it.
Off duty: The Police outside a London music venue in December 1979. Photo Martyn Goddard/Evening Standard/Getty Images.
Q: How do the two bands compare in terms of shouldering the responsibility of being the world’s biggest band?
A: I think U2 have gone beyond where we were. They’ve lasted way longer, and their achievement is a more significant achievement. We held our throne for eight years, they’ve held their throne for what, 20 years? They’ve managed to make, what, 10, 12, 15 albums? [11.] I’m not sure the Police would have been able to keep the music fresh and interesting for that long. Maybe we could have. Unproven, unknown.
Bono, more than Sting, has been able to take the social conscience that kind of comes with when you’re up on that pedestal. After a while, you think, “Look, everybody’s putting a microphone in my face, everybody’s looking at me. I notice, in my spare time, there’s some bad s--- happening in the world, and I’d like to do something about it. Here’s a microphone, why don’t I use this [the microphone] to deal with that [the bad s---]?” Sting and Bono both tried it, and Sting got pilloried. I don’t know exactly why, but Bono seems to have been able to take that and not get pilloried, and achieve really good things in the world.
A: The most challenging musical exercise was writing my first opera [Holy Blood and Crescent Moon for the Cleveland Opera], which was two-and-a-half hours of orchestral music with giant armies heaving across the stage. Taking this story and turning that into lyrics, and turning those lyrics into two-and-a-half hours of music, it was a huge, huge undertaking, and it seemed like such a huge mountain to climb. When you’re climbing a mountain, you’re thinking, “Oh, how much further?” When I was writing this, I couldn’t get enough; when I got to the end, I just wanted to write the whole thing again. It was challenging, but the rewards were so great. It was the gift that kept on giving, the mission that just kept on inspiring. It was really a challenge, a huge amount of work, a world that I knew nothing about, and I had to learn on the job – as is my wont.
A: Nothing that important. I can hear reggae influences in a lot more popular music than there was before the Police, but do I get credit for that or do the reggae bands get credit for that? I was just the first white boy to steal it. Actually, I wasn’t even the first white boy to steal it. The Clash were there before us, but they couldn’t do it right; they were really lame when they did it. They have a song called Police & Thieves, and that’s exactly what we were: We were the Police and we stole their chops.
Andre Mayer writes about the arts for CBC.ca.
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