LOOKING BACK ON LEBLANC GENERATION

LOOKING BACK ON LEBLANC GENERATION

J. Kordosh

The Police could’ve easily been voted Least Likely To Do Much Of Anything when they were formed in 1977. The poppin’-fresh Punk Movement was dominating the Britscene like nothing had since the Have Mersey scene of John, Paul, et. al. The Sex Pistols were the talk of the isle (as in: "Isle bet they never last”) and punk credentials were important. The most important credentials a punk could have, in no particular order, were youthful zeal, lack of success, and a complementary lack of talent. The Police weren’t yet geriatric, but they had suspicious ability.

The band was started by Stewart Copeland, a drummer who’d (probably inadvertently) destroyed his punk credibility by drumming for Curved Air in 1975 and 1976. Curved Air was everything their name implied (boring), and it was certainly a blast of fresh (i.e., uncurved) air that blew bands of their ilk out of recording studios and off stages everywhere.

Copeland was a fairly talented drummer, although his true forte was ambition, as will be shown later. He is the third son of Miles Copeland II, ex-jazz trumpeter, ex-Army Intelligence Officer, and ex-CIA agent. All in all, a pretty ex-cellent fellow. Anyway, Miles II “Go” passed on a whole bunch of ambitious genes to Stewart and his older sibs, Miles III and Ian. We’ll cope with these other Copelands in a minute; right now, we’ll keep an eye on Stewart.

They were the only band to use the punk movement to get incredibly rich...

After Curved Air broke up...even the band found themselves the harbingers of ennui...Copeland wasn’t one to sit around and stew. He wanted to start another band, and had even thought up a name for the group: the Police.

Copeland had seen a band called Last Exit late in ’76. He was unimpressed, except for the bassist/singer, an intense, high-voiced character named Sting. Then 25—not quite a year older than Copeland —Sting (real name Gordon Sumner, nickname acquired while playing with a “trad jazz” band, Phoenix, wearing a. black-and-yellow striped shirt) was pretty much a miserable failure when Copeland laid eyes on him. He was unemployed. He was married. He had a month-old-baby.

Still, he was the type of intellectual, humble British sort you expect to become a multi-millionaire eventually. He’d had enough schooling to be a teacher and he’d had enough of teaching to be a musician.z He wasn’t a great bass player (his big influence, Jack Bruce, was) but he was an interesting singer and would prove to be a pretty fair songwriter. Plus he had The Look. Copeland needed the look ’cause he didn’t have it, and it’s not like you can go out and buy it.

In January of 77, Copeland called up Sting to invite him to join the Police. (He didn’t know that Last Exit had lived up to their name and gone the route of Curved Air.) Now that he had The Look, Copeland advertised for a guitarist, realizing (quite correctly) that he’d need one of them, too. He couldn’t find one, so he settled for Henry Padovani, a Corsican who spoke English about as well as he played the six-string. He was enthusiastic, though, and when Copeland asked him in he betrayed his origins. Can you join the Police? Corsican!

Henry’s limited talent was scarcely a reason to stay off the gob-filled stage in Britain, but it annoyed Sting, who could at least play. Eventually Henry would be stung.

Meanwhile, the Police were going nowhere in a big hurry. They played with such forgettables as Wayne County and the Electric Chairs, Generation X, and Cherry Vanilla. Sting later recalled that during the first six months as a band he took it as a big joke, which might not prove he’s an intellectual, but it sure proves he was breathing 10 or 12 times a minute back then.

The Police admit they have a history of using people...

By the time it had come to Sting versus Padovani, the Police were a four-piece, having added Andy Summers, who really was a guitarist. Bye, bye Henry. Like Sting, Summers was British, but the similarity ends there. He was much older and much more experienced (The Zoot Money Big Roll Band, Dantalion’s Chariot, Soft Machine, Eric Burdon’s “new” Animals, a live LP with Neil Sedaka, if you want to call that experience, and, finally, classical training right in the good old USA) than Copeland and Sting. As you can see from his resume, though, he was at least as big a failure as Sting, maybe bigger.

Fortunately, Copeland would have no more failing when it came to the Police. They were in a different spot, though: punks couldn’t accept them because they were musicians and musicians couldn’t accept them because they were trying to move in punk circles, which was the thing punks moved best in. Even though big brother Miles had become a punk businessman (Faulty Products, managing band and putting out records), he didn’t think much of the Police. Maybe once, twice a week, but that’s all.

The Police went through a dismal recording session with John Cale spinning the dials, saw their first single (“Fall Out” on Illegal Records, a label started and run by Stewart Copeland) reach the 10,000 mark in units sold, and resorted to moonlighting... Copeland reviewing drumkits (which is better than reviewing musicians because they rarely try to sucker-punch you) and Sting becoming a successful model. He was so successful, in fact, that when the modeling agency had need for a blonde group, he gave them the Police, who’d obligingly become uni-yellow haired. One dull night on the Continent, Sting strolled (as they say) through a red-light district and wrote “Roxanne.” I don’t know what else he did, but that’s the way the story goes.

Finally, Stewart went to Miles for some bucks, or pounds, and M.C. agreed to pop for the studio costs of an LP they wanted to release. If wanting to release an LP seems like a monumentally stupid idea for a band with an “extremely limited” audience, well—it was. But that’s the way things worked in those days and the group began recording Outlandos D’Amour in January, 1978, about a year after Copeland had hooked up with Sting. They used Nigel Gray’s 16-track studio in Leatherland; later they would split with Gray on the same good terms they had with their non-guitarist, Henry. The Police admit they have a history of using people.

Copeland would have no more failing when it came to the Police...

Meanwhile, money-man Miles would drop into the studio whenever he couldn’t sleep...until he heard “Roxanne,” that is. Evidently, that turned the, uh, “trick,” and the energetic elder CoDeland immediately

took the tape to A&M Records. By now, Miles (and A&M) were doing pretty well with Squeeze (who were bigger than the Police), and A&M agreed to release the song (a minimum of three times). Of course, Miles shrewdly peddled the tune with no advance monies from the record company, which eventually guaranteed the band a financial base the Beatles would’ve traded George Harrison for a decade earlier.

With all these good vibes vibing, Miles got the band a slot opening for Spirit in Britain. This might be as much fun as opening the window, but the roll was starting. Stewart became Klark Kent on vinyl and Sting became the Ace Face in Quadrophenia. People began to come to their jobs, and Miles slowly assumed the managerial reins. Having done so, he promptly decided to take the band to America.

Well, zip, crash, bang, you know the rest—if you don’t, it’s within these pages somewhere, all about the low-budget touring and the white reggae “controversy” and all the other amazing adventures the Police have had since they got big. The way it looks from here, they were the only band out of England circa 1977 to cleverly use the punk movement (circular, remember?) to become incredibly rich. They’re the most manipulative band I can think of, but that’s not all bad, since they’re not. All bad, that is.