Out of sync: Why 'biggest band in the world' the Police mysteriously split after their biggest album

Few rock acts have gone out so on top as the Police did after releasing their final and most successful album 40 years ago. Synchronicity was the third-biggest album of 1983, selling 10 million copies worldwide and spawning three top 10 singles — including the monster hit “Every Breath You Take,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 for eight consecutive weeks. The album also won three Grammy Awards and later entered both the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry. At the peak of Synchronicity-mania, the BBC even declared the British rock/reggae/new wave fusion power trio the “biggest band in the world.”

“We were like the Beatles. We were all over the world. We were highly recognized and, you know, it was crazy,” says guitarist Andy Summers. “We do have a huge number of major, hit, sort of legendary songs, and they haven't gone away. I mean, how many times a day do you hear ‘Every Breath You Take’ [on the radio]? … It's the most-played song on American radio.”

Maybe the songs never went away, but not along after Synchronicity, the Police definitely did — bafflingly, with no fanfare or explanation.

“I mean, the obvious reason is [Police frontman and bassist] Sting suddenly thought he could be his own guy and didn't need the band anymore,” Summers says with a shrug while speaking with Yahoo Entertainment about his semi-autobiographical collection of rock ‘n’ roll short stories, Fretted and Moaning. “We'd made five records for A&M, so I can understand that. And you know, at the time, [Sting going solo] seemed like sort of a cute idea. Of course, it was absolutely devastating. But the problem with it was that we didn't say, ‘So, that's the end of the Police. We're not doing it anymore.’ We didn't say that. Our manager, Miles Copeland, wanted to keep it kind of quiet: ‘No, no, no, don't give it away!’

“Never saying a word lasted about a year. And then it just got like, ‘I'm fed-up with lying. I'm not going to do this anymore.’ And then I certainly started saying, ‘No, the band's broken up’ — and it all started to come out. Very upsetting.”

After the Synchronicity tour wrapped in March 1984, the Police went on what seemed like just a temporary hiatus at the time, with Sting recording his 1985 full-length solo debut, The Dream of the Blue Turtles; drummer Stewart Copeland focusing on his world music album/film project, The Rhythmatist; and Summers collaborating on a second record with King Crimson’s Robert Fripp. “And then [the label] tried to get us back together. But that's another story — which is kind of pathetic, actually,” says Summers.

Before we get to that story, let’s go back to the beginning. The Police had success seemingly right from the start with their debut album, the platinum-selling Outlandos d'Amour, and its top 40 single, “Roxanne.” But their journey, as the three polished players tried to find their place in London’s crude and amateurish late-’70s punk scene, was not an easy one. Summers’s “path was a slightly strange one” in particular, because he was already a seasoned musician — practically an elder statesman by rock ‘n’ roll standards, at age 35 — when he joined the Police. (Summers had played with acts like Soft Machine, the Animals, Joan Armatrading, David Essex, and Neil Sedaka, and was even a rumored candidate to replace Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones.) The guitarist had “dropped out” of the British blues/psych scene for five years and was living with his wife and daughters in L.A.’s Laurel Canyon, attending college and studying classical guitar, when “things were getting a bit desperate” and he decided to give music another try in his native England.

“And within three years [of returning to London], I was in the Police,” says Summers. “I met up with Sting and Stewart, and I threw everything out the window to join this absolutely unknown punk, or so-called fake ‘punk,’ band. And off we went. There was nothing, no money, no gigs, nothing. … But the rest, as you know, was history.”

Summers admits with a chuckle that he and his fellow Police-men “couldn't really pull [punk] off. We were faking, and I think that the punks knew that at some level. … [We were] super-good musicians, which is what we were sort of known for. We weren't like a sort of simple punk band. We played complex music.” Summers says he found the punk movement “horrendous” and was delighted when it “lasted six months and went away.” As punk started to sputter out, the Police were still “hanging by a thread” and “completely poverty-stricken,” but after doing “a very underpaid three-week tour” of the States and having a surprise No. 1 local hit on Boston’s WBCN with an import single, they returned to the U.K. and began to ride a new wave, so to speak. And that’s when the Police got their “big moment.”

“We had finished that tour at CBGB, went home, and that was kind of the end of the band,” says Summers. “But then our so-called manager Miles Copeland said, ‘Oh, we could put you on a support act with this group called the Albertos. … You can get 50 pounds a night, paid.’ So, we drove down to a place called Bath in the West Country of England to play at the university. And we thought, ‘All right, we're good boys. We're the support group.’ We went on at like 7:30 to be the opening act for the Albertos; the place was held about a thousand, and it was packed to the rafters with punks. And the minute we started playing, the place was a complete frenzy. They were going absolutely mad for us. We'd had two singles out and somehow they hadn't done anything in London, but they’d penetrated around the rest of the country. We had sobbing girls, people throwing themselves at the tables — an incredible first show. The Albertos were standing on the side of the stage with white faces, like, ‘Oh my God!’ We did 21 shows with them, and every night it was the same thing: a complete and utter riot. After that, off we went.”

By the time the Police started to work on what would be their farewell record, the ambitious Synchronicity, at Montserrat’s AIR Studios in December 1982, they had become an arena act, having released four albums that had sold a combined 7 million units in the U.S. alone. But the band was already burned out. “I think towards the end of the career of the Police, it probably was starting to drag a bit. … I mean, being in a band like that, at the level, is extremely demanding. There's not really much room for anything else whatsoever,” Summers explains. But despite longstanding rumors and reports that the Police despised each other and even came to blows in the studio while working on the perhaps unfittingly titled Synchronicity — and despite the fact that the three band members recorded their final album's basic tracks in separate rooms at AIR — Summers insists that they were always musically in sync.

“We were a really good band, and we had to play very well together. …. So, that was what held us together,” says Summers. “There's a lot of legends about [the Police not getting along]. Now, look: We were three blokes together, and there was a lot of camaraderie and humor. You know, we were a band, and we were a unit. God, we were together all those years, 24/7. So, that whole, ‘Oh, they hated each other!’ — it’s the mythology, but no, it's not true. I don't feel hatred. I haven’t got time for that. You know, I emailed twice with Sting this week, and talked with Stewart the other day [at the time of this interview]. It's rubbish.”

Summers, who was a decade older than his bandmates, argues that any friction between them was actually what made the Police so special and exciting. “We were three guys all trying to make it together,” he says. “There's always personality differences, and I think that's what makes it work. ‘How could you possibly stay together?’ — I say, that's what made it work! That was what would come across to the audience. You've got three alpha-males, bearing down on the audience — three very forward people, all together in one band. It makes for a dynamic which I think the audience felt, absolutely.

“We did go back on an incredibly successful reunion [tour], so there has to be something there,” Summers continues, referring to the Police’s 2007 concert trek, which at the time was the third-highest-grossing tour ever, with revenue of more than $360 million. “We have shared a past, that we all share together. It was probably the greatest thing in our lives, for all of us. We ain't going to forget it. It's who we are. So, I don't really like it when people say, ‘Oh, there's so much hate.’ No. You weren't there. You don't know that. You're just going to the sort of tabloid line.”

But before the Police’s massive 2007 reunion, there was that above-mentioned “pathetic” reunion attempt not long after Synchronicity, in July 1986. “There was always, ‘Are they going to get back together? God, we hope so, we really hope so, ‘cause there's so much money there!’” Summers laughs. “It could have maybe had a chance. But the problem, actually, in real-life terms, was that we were going to be in the studio in the North of London. And then the night before we went in [to work on a proposed Synchronicity follow-up], Stewart went out on a horse, fell off, broke his collarbone, and couldn't play drums. End of story.”

The North London recording session was aborted due to Copeland’s accident. The session did yield the group's final single, “Don't Stand So Close to Me '86” (a techno remake of the Police’s top 10 hit from 1980’s Zenyatta Mondatta), which ended up on a presumably contract-fulfilling greatest-hits compilation, Every Breath You Take: The Singles. Sting wanted the out-of-commission Copeland to program the re-recording's drum track on a Synclavier digital workstation, while Copeland fought to use a Fairlight CMI synthesizer instead — and while Copeland ultimately got his way, the argument ultimately doomed the Police for good.

Summers admits that readjusting to life after the Police’s “extreme fame” was “very difficult at first. I’d been in that scene for about eight years, with a total entourage all the time… and then suddenly, it's not there anymore. I think it was just like a sort of psychic vacuum.” But while Summers — who at age 80 is about to embark on a 30-date "The Cracked Lens + A Missing String" theater tour incorporating his music, fiction writing, and photography — confesses that going back on the road with Sting and Copeland two decades after Synchronicity was “a bit nervous-making,” the 2007 reunion did help him get some closure.

“I thought we could do it in a much saner way,” Summers says. “We don't have to get caught up in all that [band drama]; we can just play very well. I personally felt this was going to be the best we've ever played. We’ve all been musicians, and even since the original breakup, none of us have stopped. I never stopped practicing the guitar; I'm playing better than I ever play. I also felt like we could take advantage of the incredible technology that had become available since the kind of funky days of when we were in early ‘80s: By the time we got to 2007, the technology was superb. We lived like kings, and we played the 50,000 to 80,000 people a night, for two years. It was an amazing tour, and I thought it was the best we ever played.

“So, there was a lot of reasons to do [the reunion]. I also wanted my kids to see it,” Summers admits with a chuckle. “I’d say, ‘You, know I used to be in this band — and it was really big!’ And they’d go, ‘Yeah, Dad. Sure, sure.’ Well, guess what? We played at the Staples Center, and my kids came down. And they were like: ‘Whoa.’”

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