Strange things happen: a life with the Police, polo, and pygmies

by Stewart Copeland

  The curtain comes down and all hell breaks loose onstage. Thick stage makeup is being exchanged all around. We had them by the throat!

  THERE IS A PERFORMANCE at 10:30 the next morning! The morning after the knight before. The audience is made of school children bused in for “culture.” It is an unbelievable event. For the kids it’s an alternative to algebra, so they are good-natured but have No Respect. This show also serves as a dress rehearsal for the B cast. Since the piece is long and loud, and will run for five days, we have two of each principal character.

  The curtain goes up. The imam comes out raving. The kids burst into laughter. The tenor climbs out of the sea and sings a big number. He is stabbed! The audience cheers!

  There is a general hubbub from the massed urchins that obscures almost all sound from the stage. The big percussive orchestral punctuation points that were so dramatic last night produce giggles from these little monsters. The big battle, which actually runs according to plan this time, has them paralyzed in their seats and they light up at the end. They actually stay focused until the second battle, which is a complete failure. By the end of the first act, attention is wandering completely. Fidgeting badly through the finale, the little termites greet the act one curtain with a groan of relief.

  For the second act, the kids are again cheerful and curious. When the tenor, who in this cast is the spitting image of Mozart in Amadeus, finally greets his long-lost love, there is an audible swoon from the teenage girls. He kisses her and the girls squeal. They sing for a bit and he kisses her again and the girls cheer while the boys hoot. After some more romantic parley, the audience are ready for a third kiss. When they get it, Imre, Mike, and Susan deliver the blow with such dramatic timing that the show must stop. Uproar! Bedlam! Hooting, squealing, and every other noise that human monkeys can make. To their credit neither conductor nor singers bow or break role. They hold their positions until the riot dies down, and the opera continues with new purpose.

  We lose some of them during the last scene, but the closing ten-minute denouement has them deep into the plot. The double whammy at the end produces a shriek that turns into wild applause that obliterates the girls’ lament, and the curtain is down to thunderous applause, cheering, stomping, standing, and leaving. The curtain calls are brief but ecstatic all around. There is a surprise for young tenor Michael Rees Davis. He takes his first bow to that sudden, happy sound of hysterical teenage girls shrieking. It is a sound that would be familiar to Donny Osmond. An ear-piercing, high-pitched squeal/yell/shriek produced suddenly by a thousand young female voices. It has an almost percussive impact. And young Michael Rees Davis is loving it. He deserves it—he literally did have them by the throat of the tender princess.

  REASONS TO BE CHEERFUL: THE REVIEWS

  “A serious undertaking on all counts…a valuable addition to the operatic world….”

  —WALL STREET JOURNAL

  Good.

  “Standing ovation…fervent cheers…of mild interest….”

  —NEW YORK TIMES

  Hmmm.

  “A sold-out State Theatre loaded with anticipation and excitement…rousing applause and a standing ovation….”

  —CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER

  Yes.

  “The audience rose to its collective feet and yelled…a magnificent job…. This is a story with guts….”

  —AKRON BEACON JOURNAL

  There you go!

  “Complete and unredeemed disaster…preposterous twaddle….”

  —NEW YORK NEWSDAY

  Oh well….

  Everything needs yin with its yang. I’ll have to make do with mixed reviews, which is not so disastrous when you consider the complexity and subjectivity of the mission. It was predictable that not everyone is going to get my piece any more than I got Salome. I’m certainly grateful for all the ink that the press gave us to sell all those tickets. We outsold Aida, La Bohème, and Carmen in this town (of Philistines?).

  All of the preceding fixation with audience and critical response may seem to some like pandering to the punters, but I think it’s important. The most intense music cannot be all things to all people, but it must be something specific to someone—namely the punters in the seats. It is communication and needs dialogue, which means the musician speaks and the listeners respond. Hearing and interpreting that response is crucial for ongoing creative enterprise. But even if there is no response and the work falls like pearls before swine, it’s the creation that is the fun part. Swinging the mallet and connecting with the ball is worth all the effort, whether or not the shot scores. And, to continue the equine image, I’m very grateful to Cleveland for letting me play on all of those horses.

  CHAPTER 13

  BAKE-OFF IN FORT WORTH

  1990

  H

  oly Blood and Crescent Moon is going up again in Fort Worth. Opera is an expensive hobby for any city, and part of the funding comes from gala events at which the burghers, oligarchs, and grand matrons can be snobbed into making larger contributions than one another. To support our production, the opera community is throwing a black-tie bake-off. The contestants are: the mayor; the owner of the football team; one of the players; the director of the Fort Worth Opera; a telegenic quadriplegic kid who has won the heart of the city; and me, the opera composer. One month earlier, when the event is proposed to me, the organizers are asking about what delicacy I might like to enter into the competition. Well, the most complex items in my repertoire are “bowl de cereal” and “cuppa tea.” Fortunately, Fiona, my wife-to-be, has an underutilized flair for following recipe instructions, so we propose a Wolfgang Puck dish that is an angel hair pasta with broccoli.

  When we get to Fort Worth, Fiona gets her first exposure to life as Mrs. Composer. She too is press-ganged into events at which her actual title is “Fiancée of the Composer.” All unsuspecting, she is lured into a big lunch with the other alpha women of the city. Suddenly a light goes on her and an announcement is being made about her. She must rise from her seat and acknowledge the acknowledgment. It’s hard to adequately convey how alien this is to the private and mysterious Fiona. But rise she does and beams beautifully at the bejeweled matrons. With her natural English élan and stylish correctness, she is a big hit with the Texas old money—and the arts are safe for another year.

  The Bake-Off is held in a Texas-sized convention hall within which there is a village of extravagantly designed kitchens built on little stages like TV sets. I think each of the little kitchens is the creation of a leading local home designer.

  Fiona and I have made some friends among the faster set in Fort Worth, and some of them have stopped by our kitchen, bringing with them a gift of aged tequila. Their Texas hospitality is in perfect tune with my own shine for this spirit, and soon both Fiona and I are singing and carousing as she cooks and I entertain. A mysterious Frenchman appears wearing a sash and medallion. He wants a taste of Fiona’s pasta.

  Now Fiona has been rummaging around the fake kitchen for the proper ingredients and utensils but has come up with only an approximation of the right stuff for the Wolfgang Puck recipe. The pasta that has been provided is spaghetti, not angel hair. There are no forks. But Fiona is resourceful and has managed to fix up a brew that I’m ready to try myself. The man with the sash and medallion is looking expectant so I find him a plate, tell him he can cut the phony French accent, and then attempt to ladle the pasta using the most efficient utensil that I can find, which is a teaspoon. Most of it ends up spattering his forearm. He’s holding a clipboard, which he uses as a kind of shield from my overeager hospitality. By the time I get a pile of noodles mostly on his plate, he’s backing away. But he hasn’t got any broccoli! He’s taking evasive action, but he’s not yet out of range, so I lob the perfect broccoli, dripping with Fiona’s perfect sauce, at him. The little blighter is too fast for me and he bats the flying vegetable away with his clipboard and escapes into the throng. Never mind, more for me, I sneer hungrily to myself.

  We
are having a fine time, but all too soon it’s time for the real dinner to begin. We are summoned from our nifty little kitchen party spot to the big dinner tables in the dining hall. This is the dreary part of the evening. Major sponsors of the arts are rewarded with proximity to the artists. It’s a symbiotic but not necessarily fond relationship, and it’s a fact of life in fine arts. Fiona is ripped from my embrace and seated at the far side of our round table, where she must endure the fawning attentions of those donors who have earned face time with the fiancée of the composer, while I’m stuck on my side with the grandest contributors of all, who get to dine with the composer himself.

  You may be wondering what this is all about. For extreme fans of opera (or ballet, or any of the fine arts) who are very wealthy, dinner with your humble correspondent is like dinner with Mozart himself. Since every composer that they know of is a piece of cultural history (or they wouldn’t have heard of them), so must also be the composer sitting right now to their left. As I chat with these individuals, I can see them already formulating the tale to bore their grandchildren. It’s sort of like rock fandom but in black-tie attire. And they aren’t teenage girls, they are ancient plutocrats.

  Finally, the dinner drags through dessert and I can’t bear another moment without Fiona at my side. I bid extravagant farewells to the opera-loving oligarchs, catch Fiona’s eye, and we begin to make our escape. We’re almost out of the room when we are caught by my handler, who insists that we return to our seats. I try to reassure her that we’ve locked in the next ten years of sponsorship with the money folk. My old English boarding school trained me well in the art of brownnosing. But the prizes for the bake-off are about to be given, she persists. By now we have figured out who the French guy was, and I reassure her that there is not the remotest possibility that we will be judged the winner—even though Fiona’s pasta was way better than the formal dinner.

  I married up.

  “Trust me, we didn’t win,” I assert confidently.

  There is no escape, however, and we must return to our table. As we sit back down, rejoining our dinner companions, a voice is booming over the PA. It’s the windup to the prize giving and no sooner do we tune into what the voice is saying, than we hear the announcement:

  “And the winner for the Most Interesting Something-Something is…Stewart Copeland!”

  The name echoes around my head.

  “Whaa—?”

  Fiona recovers quickly and urges me toward the stage. On my way up, I grab her to my side and mount the stage to boozy applause. I’m still gaping as I take my bows. After years of this sort of thing I’m pretty good at impromptu speeches, so I’m just clearing my throat to thank whoever I can think of when the large voice booms out of the PA again.

  “And the winner for the Most Colorful Use of Blah-Blah, is…Someone Else!”

  And with more applause, we are joined on the stage by another winner, with whom we unexpectedly must share the accolade. Then the voice booms out again, and it finally sinks in. The Last shall be First and the First shall be Last. Everyone gets a prize: the mayor, the manager, the player, the director, and of course the überwinner, to tumultuous applause, the quadriplegic kid. He was probably nice to the French dude.

  CHAPTER 14

  HORSE OPERA

  1992

  Channel 4 TV in England has commissioned an opera.

  J

  ohnny and I are looking through the smoke down the barrel of a movie camera. He’s Billy the Kid, and I’m Jesse James. He wrote the screenplay and I wrote the music for the jig we are about to do. Big Bob Baldwin is over there fussing with the lights—he’s the director of this made-for-TV-opera and he’s the one who got me into this. It’s a good thing he’s distracted, because I’ve got a problem with my big gun. Over at the armory it seemed an obvious choice to select the longest-barreled handgun to portray the legendary Jesse James. For the scene where I ride into town blazing away from the saddle, waving the big gun is what being in the movies is all about. But now we’re in the saloon and the shootin’s done. Somehow I have to get the damned eleven-inch barrel back into its holster without looking down. Harder than you’d think. Also at this moment in the movie, I’m bursting into song. Every other part of the action looks cool. My cool hat is pulled down over my weathered brow, my long rustler’s coat is swaying with the motion, and my long arms are magnificently punctuated by the long smoking cannon.

  From the Bob Baldwin archive, all rights reserved © Bob Baldwin

  Then comes the dumb, goofy moment. While the smoke from my fusillade swirls around me I have to look down, squint at the holster, and carefully thread the other end of the gun into its leather cleft. All this may sound like a sweaty Freudian romp, but on film it just looks stupid.

  Johnny has plumped for a more intentionally comedic persona for his operatic singing debut. As a leading director of stage opera (as opposed to this film version) he could probably see my hassle coming. He’s got a little derringer thing that he’s handling dangerously with a sort of comedic menace. Baldwin is back on the set.

  “Right, Jesse…. We’ll just pick up from when you’ve put your gun away then….”

  So here we are again, once more singing something daft into the camera. And I’m thinking the same thing as the last time I was here on the mic: I really should spend more time in my bedroom, channeling singers in the mirror. At least it’s better than shooting band videos in which I’m not the singer. For those I have to twitch sulkily in the background—with no gun in my hand.

  We’ve been having the time of our lives shooting this cowboy opera out here in the built-for-film-production cowboy town of Old Tucson, Arizona. The cast and staff are all Londoners, sweating in the desert sun. The extras and crew are local hard-bitten cowboys from Central Casting, literally.

  In opera, every line of dialogue is sung, which makes it all a little more challenging. The backing tracks that I built over in England are coming out of monitors and the actors/singers have to hit exact cues in the music as they move around the set doing exciting cowboy stuff. My job on the set, when not handling my gun, is to conduct the singing. It’s the best place to be. The sweet spot in the production is what the camera is pointed at. It’s where the lights, scenery, and dressing converge with the talent, and where the magic of movies occurs. Every yard farther from this spot is less and less magical until you get out of the light and the dull boredom of endless waiting sets in.

  Right in front of the camera is where we are Making A Movie; ten yards away, time has slowed to a crawl. The actors get short spurts of activity in the Spot and then return to their trailers to wait for their next moment in the sun. The director, the director of photography—and in this case, the conductor—get to play all day in the Spot. As each singer comes before the camera big Bob sorts out their blocking (physical movement) while I give them their vocal cues. Half the time I do this in full Jesse James attire because I have a shot coming up. My gunslinger belt is cool because my conductor’s baton fits perfectly into one of the bullet loops. Jesse James is one conducting son of a bitch!

  One day my old colleague Andy Summers graciously comes out to play the part of a saloon banjoist. He doesn’t have a lot of dialogue. The big moment is when he is summarily, and rather flippantly, dispatched by your humble servant in the role of Jesse James. I’ve been waiting years for this.

  We already have the shot of me firing the big gun; now we need the shot of the target. Since this is opera, we don’t need to worry if it’s too cliché for the bad guy to shoot the banjo player. Andy is all for it. He’s enjoying the costume party and is intrigued by the little explosive squibs that they’re threading into his jacket. Then he notices that a plastic screen is being erected around him, through which there is just a little hole for the camera to poke through. He’s beginning to put two and two together as he sees the wires leading away from his coat to a box held by the scarfaced explosives tech.

  From the Bob Baldwin archive, all rights reserved
© Bob Baldwin

  “Um…what are the screens for?” he asks softly.

  “For the blood,” I reply gently.

  PART III

  STILL NOT NORMAL

  CHAPTER 15

  OYSTERHEAD

  APRIL 2000

  Y

  ou should be playing your drums,” Les Claypool says to me with that strange voice of his. Although I hardly know the man, I’m already tending to believe his sage pronouncements. “And I’ve got a gig you should play at,” he says. Ten years or so have passed since I last looked at my drums with anything other than reluctance. The Eric Clapton Syndrome has set in. This is when you actually come to fear your instrument. If you touch the sacred staff, miracles are expected of you.

  A promoter in New Orleans has asked Les to put a band together for a show. It’s some kind of annual jam band thing. He’s been talking to Trey Anastasio about it, and between them they have decided to dust me off and drag me back to the stage. We don’t need material or anything, he tells me. This is a show where people want to watch you jam. Really? No laborious arranging and rehearsing of songs?