Boston has a radio station, WBCN, whose most popular deejay is a guy by the name of Oedipus. Oedipus is playing "Roxanne" in rotation; in other words, it will be heard at least once an hour. The song, which is also being picked up by other radio stations, is becoming a hit in Boston. We're thrilled to hear this, and when we get a request from A&M to do several interviews on different stations in the area, we are ready to go. Because of the Sex Pistols furor, the U.S. media are aware that there is something called punk or New Wave going on in Britain but have found it difficult to embrace in the form of the Sex Pistols, who were too raw, too British, and didn't have a song that they felt could be played on the radio. We fill the slot perfectly. We have a great song, they think we are a punk band, we can articulate the new scene, and we don't destroy offices or insult people-at least not to their faces.
We sell out four nights at the Rat and suddenly feel that we are on the way again, although there is no tangible success other than the audience applause each night. At this point "Roxanne" is being played only as an import and is not an official release, but now seeing the potential, A&M changes its mind about us and decides to release the album in America. Despite the rigor of travel, vans, and icy conditions, I find myself excited by our transformation from a raw nothing into something. Maybe I'm finally in the right band. I can't afford it, but I stand in a freezing motel hallway each day and call back to London to talk to Kate, to check on her and let her know how it's going with the tour. She is stoic, calm, and encouraging. She's the one with the guts, not me.
We drive out to the Midwest and into Cleveland, where we have a show at the Pirates Cove. It's late October and we pull up to the stage door in gloom and cold. Inside, the crepuscular ambience of the club is suffused with the faint smell of beer and cigarettes, the vestige of loneliness accented by the garish posters on the wall. There is a small stage at one end where we will try to take it to the people. Just as we are setting up, four or five guys who look like roadies march in and ask what the fuck do we think we are doing, and who the fuck are we. We let them know: the fucking support group. They grunt at one another and tell us that they are here to set up for RavenSlaughter, the local headliner, and need to set up first. "Okay Okay, whatever," we say, letting them have their little power play, and take off up to the dressing room, where we piss ourselves with laughter. RavenSlaughter- Christ, in this day and age.
The group themselves eventually turn up, and we are not disappointed. In black leather, biblical hair, eyeliner, and metal studs, they look like fugitives from a Dracula film. They give us the cold shoulder-we are nothing, they are RavenSlaughter-and we try to keep a straight face, but it's difficult. The lead guitarist is called Killer and he keeps swigging straight from a bottle of tequila. In our tiny corner of the dressing room we quietly make remarks like "'Ard, ever so 'ard," and continue reading our paperbacks. After the show, their having brilliantly fulfilled all our expectations with songs about the coming darkness, Satan, werewolves, and such, we watch gently as poor old Killer heaves his guts out at the side of the dressing room-a night's work complete.
We finish the tour with another gig at CBGB's. With three weeks of playing we have gelled, and we finish with an aggressive in-your-face show with me pushing it as hard as I can because I am desperate to get back home to Kate and the imminent birth of our daughter. After lying on the floor of a fan's apartment for about an hour after the gig, staring like a zombie at a Jimi Hendrix poster, I get a Yellow Cab to Kennedy for the flight that leaves at six A.M., praying that I will make it in time. The fare uses up the last bit of money I have made from the tour, and I briefly wonder how I will get from Heathrow to Putney.
Thirteen
Kate breathes an audible sigh of relief as I enter the flat, and I echo it. She is stretched to the point of bursting, having hung on by sheer willpower until my return. A few hours later as we finish up a Chinese takeout and crawl into bed, she begins having contractions. The roles reverse: she is serene and I am a riot of nerves, walking up and down the hallway until she tells me to just relax-it will be alright. The contractions go on all night, with me calling the hospital every five minutes, wondering if we should go in yet, with about half a clue, and trying to answer weird questions like "Is she dilated?" I sit in the kitchen and eat the rest of the Chinese and wonder if I am coming down with the flu. But eventually a midwife arrives and says it's time to go, and very gingerly we get down three flights of stairs, out into the London mist, and into the newly fixed never-say-die Dyane 6 to drive about three miles an hour to St. Mary's in Chiswick.
In the hospital everything is routine and they take over without batting an eye. Kate is wheeled into the delivery room and starts giving birth immediately. I hover uselessly in one corner like a sparrow on one leg, feebly crying out, "Push," along with everyone else, but the baby doesn't come-something is wrong. After what seems like hours of effort to no avail, the doctors realize that the baby's umbilical cord is wrapped around its neck and that the incessant pushing is merely strangling the baby. They produce a medieval-looking pair of shears and yell out that they are going to cut the cord. They do it, and like a cork blowing out of a champagne bottle, my daughter enters the world. There is another tense moment of silence as she is carried over to a small table and then routinely smacked on the behind, which produces a hearty cry from the baby and a flood of tears from me, followed by insane laughter as I hug Kate and we slobber over each other. We stare at our daughter wonderingly, a life, a being, a miracle. I go home later that day overjoyed and wiped out from the experience. I call my parents, friends, and relations; tell them the news; and then, feeling fragile, pass out for about sixteen hours.
The next few days are nothing but hospital visits and getting used to the new world of parenthood we now inhabit. Stewart is sweet enough to drop by with a big bunch of flowers and kindly asks Kate, "The baby-is she mobile yet?" In a few days we have to take over, bring the baby home, and go it alone. It is a terrifying prospect; touring America is nothing compared to this. It's raining with a. torrid vengeance the afternoon I pick Kate and baby Layla up from the hospital. Half numb with fear lest anything happen on the way back and mildly pissed off that the windscreen wiper works about only once every ten minutes, I drive so slowly with Kate and the baby back to Putney that I cause the traffic to back up on Hammersmith Bridge. But I don't care. "New baby, mate," I yell back to the raised fingers that are proffered from cars swerving past us.
Back in the flat we have a special room for the baby, with a cot ready to go and a tiny plastic speaker thing that I bought in Marks & Spencer to monitor the baby's breathing. We hardly sleep the first night, nudging each other all the time and nervously asking, "Can you hear her?" "I'm not surebetter take a look." And we go on like new parents the world over, agonizing and rejoicing, but meanwhile there is the small matter of a rock band with its own hungry mouth.
Miles has arranged a tour for us as the support group for the Albertos y Los Trios Paranoias. The Albertos are a comedy rock band with about eight members who enjoy great popularity on the college circuit. The pay is fifty pounds a night, and we are happy to get it, a small handout that will let us continue the fantasy for a while.
The first gig is at Bath University. Without rehearsing, we drive down from London in the late December afternoon, happy to be back together and not really knowing what to expect from this tour. It doesn't sound like our crowd-but then, we don't have a crowd. We set up our gear onstage in front of the Albertos. Though we are the support, at least we are getting paid and we are looking forward to playing in front of a packed auditorium. The hall looks as if it can hold about a thousand people, ten times larger than the matchbox-size holes we usually play in. Showtime comes and we dutifully trot out to warm the crowd up for the Albertos. As we arrive in front of our amps and drums the hall erupts into chaos. A rushing tide of black leather, spiked hair, and ripped T-shirts charge and push up against the stage as if this is the last band they will ever see. For a minute
we are shocked; what the hell is going on? Is this the Albertos' crowd? But in the heat of the moment we can't stop to analyze but instead react and begin churning through our set, responding to the wave of adrenaline as if this will be our final gig. It's pandemonium; we can hardly hear ourselves, but inspired by the force in front of us, we pull off a killer show and leave the stage to a mob of screaming, hysterical girls calling out after us.
The poor Albertos stand on the side of the stage in shock, their faces chalky white. As we fall', into the wings their drummer, Bruce, remarks with a bemused look on his face, "So that's your game, is it?" We're so blown away by what has just happened that we feel almost apologetic as if we have pulled a dirty trick; it wasn't really cricket, and we were obviously going to be a very hard act to follow. The Albertos realize that they might have made a wee bit of a mistake, but back in the dressing room we are practically bouncing off the walls. How could this be? In London we get iced, but here-here, on the outskirts of Bath we are gods.
After some casual questioning, it turns out that "Roxanne" and "Can't Stand Losing You" have both become legendary outside of London. Tonight we have witnessed the manifestation of their success. We leave through a heavy mob scene, with girls sobbing and throwing themselves at us, and this will be repeated every night of the twenty-date tour. We drive back to London that night howling with glee like winning a fight for the first time and sure that we can do it again. Arriving back in Putney about two A.M., my head spinning from the previous few hours, I open the door to the flat, trip over the baby monitor wire, curse, recover, and with barked shins creep into the bedroom-the world of mother and daughter. Kate is awake, breastfeeding the baby. I whisper in the dark, "How are you two? You're not going to believe this...."
The Albertos tour comes to an end three weeks later with us feeling cocky and triumphant. For the first time in months the scenery stops moving, and instead of pacing the few feet between thrashing drums and howling audience, I unwrap Christmas presents, watch the telly, and cuddle up with Kate and our new daughter. The aroma of baby smell acts like a strange new soporific, and for a moment I relax into a becalmed state, but I know it is only a temporary lull in the proceedings. We are heading back to Germany right after Christmas to work with Eberhard again. Our relationship with him is undergoing a change. It is fast becoming evident that we are a hot new band, and working with Eberhard feels like something we don't have time for, yet we still need the money. We have agreed to do the tour. We like him, and without him we may have been forced to go our own separate ways, so on January 9 we fly back to Germany.
We do the tour of twenty dates, cruising from one German town to another and enjoying the fact that we are working and making some money, even if putting our own career on hold somewhat. But this time around, having more muscle, we insist on opening the show with four of our own songs, which are in distinct contrast to the rest of the night with its string quartet and synthesizer sounds.
One of the highlights of this show is a song called "Code Word Elvis" in which I play classical guitar with a string quartet for the opening part of the song and then race across stage at midpoint to pick up the Telecaster and whip out an electric solo. I have to put the classical guitar down quickly but carefully, extricate myself from behind the music stand, remember not to trip on my footstool, and then hurl myself across twelve feet of stage, skid into position by the amp, whip on the Telecaster, and launch into a burning solo as Eberhard raises his left eyebrow and baton, all of which is performed to the snickering attention of the German audience, waiting for me to blow it. Finishing the solo, I race back to the string quartet as a four-bar drum break takes place and recompose myself into a classical-musician demeanor to strike up some sweet arpeggios with the quartet. It is a tricky little feat, to say the least, but it goes down well with the audience every night as they place bets as to whether or not I will crash into the lead violinist.
Returning to petroleum-colored England in February 1979, we are lifted by an intense media focus that appears to dispel all doubts about our future. Although most of the world still doesn't know us, England is suddenly right behind us, with journalists pounding on the door and offers coming in from everywhere. A&M now realizes our potential and becomes eager for us to get on with the second album. There are murmurings of "don't you want to use a big studio in London, have a famous producer?"-as if that would be insurance to get the hits they want-but they don't see that the magic formula is already in place. We opt to carry on at Surrey Sound. We resolutely do not want a producer or anyone telling us what to do; we have three producers in the band. We like Nigel and the funky low-key quality of the studio in Leatherhead that provides the creative atmosphere we need, and we return.
Recording this time around feels different, for we are flooded with a new wine, the dark energy of CBGB's, the visceral energy of the stage, the tense improvisations, and the needle-stabbing surge of the crowd. Filled with this brew, we reenter the studio as if we already own it. We still have to make the record, but it comes faster this time because now we are in possession of an identity, a signature sound and style that is the music of the Police. Sting has established himself as the main songwriter and brings in new songs, a couple of which, "Message in a Bottle" and "Bring On the Night," are gems. We have a process of getting to know the song and then rearranging it to give it the Police sound, which means moving it into a place where the sound is tight, lean, and spare, the meat close to the bone. "Message in a Bottle," "The Bed's Too Big Without You," "Walking on the Moon," and "Bring on the Night" are all great songs, and we argue and fight our way into tracks that remain the tight compromise between our ideas.
As we record this time, we are fueled by the wave of excitement and expectation. We have gelled as a band, and driven by the rush of playing together, we are determined to push our nascent success further. Our engineer Nigel referees and nudges us along in the right general direction but lets us try out our ideas, so the atmosphere is creative, daring, in flux. In the spirit of opening up the sound of a three-piece band, I experiment with a variety of different effects pedals. Under my foot now I have a Hanger, a phaser, a compressor, a fuzz box, all of which I send through the Echoplex. I rarely try any other guitar than the Telecaster because it seems to work on just about everything. We make our extended onstage jam from "Can't Stand Losing You" into the instrumental title song-"Regatta de Blanc"-of the album. With guitar harmonics and ricocheting snare drum hits from Stewart, this piece sounds like no one else. "Deathwish," a new song of Sting's, is treated with a Bo Diddley rhythm and given a modern edge by using the Echoplex. For the intro to "Walking on the Moon," I play a big shining d minor eleventh chord that acts like fanfare to the subsequent get-underyour-skin melody. "Bring on the Night" has a beautiful classical guitar arpeggio and a pungent stabbing bass line accompanying the vocal line. "Message in a Bottle" is a masterpiece of pop song writing by Sting, and will always remain a favorite of mine. Somehow in this moment we are able to take the energy of punk and combine it with a more melodic and harmonic approach so that the result has the required edge and hipness, doesn't have the complacency or the bloated quality of earlier seventies rock. It's an unquantifiable moment, when the right three people come together under the right circumstances at the right time. There is no formula for this-and we simply make it up as we go along, but always with the intention of arriving at something that has inner tension. We fight about the music but are a locked unit. Later many musicians approach us with a somewhat wry expression and mention that they wished they had thought of it. But it would never have been so, the music of the Police could have been made only by the three of us. Recording Regatta de Blanc is a moment that remains as one of the best in our history.
Dale and Mike, the boys from A&M, come out one night, and it is gratifying to see their spontaneous smiles as we play them "Message in a Bottle." Within two weeks we have the album in place. We can do this because we record as a performing band, with the studio almost another
gig. We don't need much help other than with the engineering, and despite the banter and the sarcastic tone we take with one another, the truth is that we know where we want to go. We become a sealed unit, hermetic, impossible to penetrate. A&M sees this and leaves us to get on with it.
At this time in Britain there is a popular television show called Rock Goes to College. Each week a college somewhere in the country is picked as the venue for a current rock band to perform. We don't feel big enough yet to get this kind of exposure but are thrilled when we are asked to do it. We are given a date at Hatfield Polytechnic, yet another so-called important step because it is national exposure and will help propel us upward.
At home I try to be fully attentive to Kate and Layla, but I find it difficult to be as present as I should be, the success of the band tending to wash through everything, be everything, eat everything. I sense that I am walking a tightrope. The phone rings off the hook, the baby cries, the press beat on the door, the monster begins rising from the dark of the lake, and we set out on the path of success and mutually assured destruction.
On February 21 we drive up the M4 motorway, past the sign that says Hatfield and the North, a sign that groups know as a constant reminder that once again they are about to travel away from home locked in a grimy van with a pile of drums and amps. Oddly, no one to our knowledge has ever seen or been to Hatfield, and the general belief among bands is that it does not actually exist. But today we are in high dudgeon because, as if visiting the ancient ruins of Ephesus, we are actually going to see Hatfield-or at least the college.
One Train Later: A Memoir Page 24