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

by Stewart Copeland

  Brad comes into the dressing room and gives us the nod. And we are ready! We mount the stage with the same cavalier attitude as before, but this time we have done some homework. We still have no set list, but Trey can now call out a song title and we have a solid place to start. The audience is enthusiastic and forgives us for not being Phish. They like it! We like it even more! After the first show we are ecstatic. We really slew us! This is going to be a great tour.

  Touring is all different now from when I was a lad. We are using the Phish crew, the Phish sound system, the Phish lights, the Phish trucks, and the Phish tour bus. As an old ex-roadie I’m in awe of the high-tech operation of this crack team. Every day they get this mountain of gear and rigging in and out of these halls and arenas, which is no great miracle—it’s the slickness of the system and the coolness of the detail that is so impressive.

  A touring band lives in a strange bubble. The real world flashes past inconsequentially as we cross the land in our cocoonlike tour bus. Time passes in a different pattern. We have no connection to any of the cities that we pass through. Food and water is brought to us, as are the hotels and concert halls.

  A normal day begins at around three in the afternoon. After an easy shower and breakfast, I grab my overnight bag and slouch down to the bus. It’s like walking into my living room. My book-that-I’m-reading, laptop, and other toys are there already. There are two lounges on the bus, separated by the kitchen, bathroom, and sleeping cabins. Each lounge has a TV and entertainment system. As I settle into my coffee and newspaper, Brad, Les, and Trey drift aboard at their leisure. I’m vaguely aware that the cocoon is moving but it doesn’t mean much.

  Eventually, Brad will tell us that we’re at the gig and the stage is ready for sound check. We amble into the hall, greet the crew, and mount the stage. Everything is working perfectly, just like it did last night. The monitors already sound great, the drums are perfectly set up and tuned, and all we gotta do is play. Which we do just to limber up more than anything. We tweak a few show moments, try a few things, and generally polish our chops.

  At around six o’clock, we break for lunch. This is a meal served backstage for the three of us and our crew of about twenty guys. Rarely better than K rations, this meal is as close as we ever get to roughing it on the road. In fact, this is the part of the day where things go downhill a bit until showtime. After lunch we go check out the dressing room but usually end up back on the bus, watching a movie as we wait. It feels like early afternoon to us but it’s seven o’clock outside.

  In the distance we can hear the support band firing up and that starts my internal countdown. I head back to the dressing room and start my finger exercises. Between ten-minute spurts of paradiddles on a folded towel, I play with my luggage. Rather than haul our suitcases in and out of hotel rooms, the crew brings our stuff to the dressing room, where we hand off our laundry and pull out tomorrow’s clothes, which we stuff into overnight bags, that go back to the bus. There is a giant, wardrobe-sized flight case with drawers full of clean clothes. In one drawer I have a pile of identical black jeans, socks, and T-shirts, which I now don.

  In my youth, bands would put on special stage clothes for the show. Extreme sartorial statements were expected of us. We were supposed to look like normal people cannot look. Since playing drums is extremely hot work, however, I could never wear sequins or plumage, which has always been a disappointment for me. Nowadays bands play in their street clothes and change after the show.

  At nine o’clock, Brad comes in and gives us the nod. Many bands take this moment to form a love circle and chant something, but in Oysterhead we just give each other goofy grins and head for the lights.

  The first few shows are hard work. No matter how fit one gets before the tour, playing in front of an audience burns more fuel. There are times when the frenzy takes hold but the body runs out of gas. An old pro like me knows how to rest while cruising, but the two-hour show is a mountain to climb every night all the same. Every night is an improvement on the last, and every night changes get slicker, the grooves cut deeper, and the surges soar higher.

  After the last hurrah, it’s straight to the shower for me. This is somewhat of a fetish of mine. The combination of hot water and postshow endorphins is like a heroin bath. Body and soul are rarely happier.

  Back in the dressing room, Les and Trey are similarly exhilarated and we enthusiastically applaud ourselves. We are so cool! We really rocked ourselves! We slew us!

  As I preen with my friends, the wet heap of my stage gear disappears and my overnight bag is ready to go. On our way out to the bus, we pass the crew who, within an hour of our last note, have cleared the stage and are loading the gear. They are like a Viking gang uttering strange cries as they roll the flight cases into the two Phish tractor-trailers.

  On the bus, dinner is waiting for us. Brad times it just right so that there is a hot meal from a fancy restaurant served up as we slip out of town and on down the road. Strangely, the first thing we want to do is watch the show. After two hours of playing it, we now settle down to watch it on TV. We critique the show (rather generously) and spot places where we can add new tricks. In this way our show becomes more developed every night of the tour.

  In the dead of night we pull into a distant truck stop. Sometimes Trey will pull out his Rollerblades and flash around the parking lot between the braying eighteen-wheelers. An ancient tradition of the road is the distant truck stop. There is a conspiratorial feel, as if we have escaped from the scene of the crime and have outrun the posse. And we are way out here with the other pirates, spending our booty on trinkets offered by the uncomprehending natives.

  Back on the bus things gradually slow down at maybe four o’clock as we finish up a DVD and start to peel off to head for the bunks. We each have our own coffin-shaped cubicle, into which we now climb. With the constant roar of the turbines blocking all sound of continuing revelry in the front and rear lounges, it’s actually pretty easy to fall into a deep sleep.

  At some point, in the pitch blackness of my coffin, my eyes blink open and I am aware that the bus has been still for some time. Easing out of the bunk, I push aside the curtain and gaze into the sunlit front cabin. It could be ten o’clock in the morning. Time for bed. Brad has checked us all into the hotel, my luggage has already gone up to my room, and my key is sitting on the bus counter. As I waft through the lobby, this is when I most feel the disconnection with the normal world. Everyone is so awake and I am so asleep, at the other edge of the wheel. In my room, I black out the curtains, set the alarm for 3:00 P.M., and resume my slumber. The sheets feel great.

  There is an old joke from the film This Is Spinal Tap where the band goes onstage and greets the audience with “Hello, Cleveland!” Only it isn’t Cleveland. Truth is, it might as well be. To us it feels like the same city night after night. We are hardly aware of our passage through space. The stage looks the same every night, and on it we perform our strange little miracle, which grows more complex every night, more involved. As our journeys onstage become more intense, our journey across the land becomes more immaterial.

  For one month we tour down the West Coast, up the heartland and then down the East Coast. Even as we roll down toward Florida on the last leg, we’re still tinkering and noodling with the set, still finding new tricks. Then, in Gainesville, it’s the last show.

  Good-bye Les, Trey, and Brad. Good-bye bus. Good-bye green sparkle drum set. The Green Monster will go home to its storage locker in L.A. while I take up with my maple studio kit.

  It’s amazing how quickly the bubble pops, the minute you walk through the home front door. It’s like walking out into the street after a movie. Whatever you were laughing or crying about is evaporating by the second as the real world rushes back in. The loving embrace of family and friends and the discipline of work become the meaning of life again. But just occasionally, a little flash of memory of a Claypool aphorism or an Anastasio chuckle will cause a tiny smile and a faraway look.


  Sage of the Deep

  CHAPTER 16

  HALL OF FAME

  MARCH 2003

  My old band The Police hasn’t crossed my mind in years.

  S

  ting’s strangely gruff voice is purring down the phone. Congratulations! Our LP is at number one in Germany! And in other news, we’re playing the Hall of Fame. First of all, what LP? We haven’t recorded anything in twenty years. But who needs to record anything these days? The record company just repackaged the same old songs and put it in the stores. Stuff still sells, it seems.

  I like getting calls out of the blue from Sting. We have discovered that we can be good friends—as long as no one mentions music. Nothing is ever as intense as the first time at anything, and Stingo and I experienced a lot of firsts together.

  Second of all, wudda you mean play a show together? You? Andy? Me?

  “Yeah, we’ll play ‘Roxanne,’ ‘Message,’ and ‘Every Breath You Take.’ We can rehearse here in New York. It’ll be fun,” he lies seductively.

  HERE WE ARE IN the biggest and strangely darkest room at the S.I.R. rehearsal facility in New York. Andy is fussing with his pedal board. Jeff, Danny, and Dennis, our principal crew (drums, bass, guitars), are circling the war zone with anxious comity. I’m actually in reasonably good shape after my adventures with Oysterhead and The Doors.

  Then planet Sumner arrives. Under a hat, scarf, and greatcoat, suddenly Sting is among us. And look! There are his children! Of which there are many. It’s gloomy in here, and I can’t really make them out, but an atmosphere of early teendom fills the room.

  Immediately Andy and Sting are burrowed down with their interminable faffing over chords and fingering. I completely missed how we got into it but we are now in the classic position B. Position A, rarely experienced, is when we are actually playing music. In position B we discuss. You might think that songs such as these familiar old favorites would roll off the cuff. For me they do, if only we can get through more than four bars without stopping to rethink something. For Andy and Sting there is always some new noodle. But at least we’re not in position C, which is All Hands On Throats!

  We actually do make it down the short set by the end of the day, and then he’s gone. Sting doesn’t do farewells, he just vaporizes. Andy is flushed, replete from a day of his favorite stuff: chords and more chords.

  WE’RE ALL DRESSED UP and sitting around the sparkly table, but is the party rocking? You would think that it would be, with all this rock and roll in the room. On a table over there is AC/DC. Over here is The Clash. Elvis Costello and The Attractions are having some kind of feud at their table(s) over yonder. For a little gravitas, we even have The Righteous Brothers in the house. We are all being inducted into this newly important address: the Hall of Fame.

  But no, the joint is not rocking.

  There is not a punter in the house. Instead of staging such an event at, say, Madison Square Garden, with music fans hanging from the rafters to see such a lineup of bands, we are here at the exclusive Waldorf Astoria banquet hall. No one in this room could give a rat’s ass about music except for the musicians, and even a few of us might be dubious in this regard. It’s all business in here tonight and the aforementioned assets are here to serenade the fat cats who buy and sell us. No matter how glittery we are, these are the people who deliver us unto the world. Tonight we are the dinner and they are the diners. They are the Alpha Insect people, many of whom, by the way, are friends and family. My own kin Miles and Ian are fat cats, although a little rangier than most.

  Not to be too grumpy about it though, they do give us a nice award for our trouble. This Hall of Fame thing is relatively newfangled compared with the Grammies or the Oscars. But it’s a deviously clever idea. Want The Rolling Stones to play your birthday party? Make ’em feel important. “Hall of Fame” has a very official ring to it in America and it’s only surprising how long it took for someone to grab the title and set up his own court of music legitimacy. By the time they get to my generation—artists whose first record came out twenty-five years ago—they already have snared every living artist that I grew up with. I guess when you get a knighthood from the Queen you have to go and do some kneeling. It’s odd that in music, our version is that we go and genuflect for the lawyers.

  So here we are, the three of us standing in the catering hallway that leads to the banquet hall stage. We’re watching a play-on movie roll before we get up there. The little montage on the monitor has our younger selves jumping around in our prime. We were energetic little fuckers, weren’t we? We’re all smiling now as the film finishes and we mount the stage for speeches and three songs.

  Sting speaks for us all with dignity and sagacity, then Andy gets on the mic with his biting wit. The room is waking up. By the time it’s my turn for some honest-to-God blubbering on the mic I figure, Screw it, let’s just go play these songs!

  My job in this band is simple. In fact that’s one of the things I like about Police music—the mix of simple and complex. I get the fun part of that, and I appreciate it even more now after a decade of composing and directing music, which is a different kind of fun. All I have to do here is sit on some simple (though satanically ingenious) rhythms as a platform for the guys at the front of the stage. I’m happy with my meager role as omnipotent power dynamo and übergonzo-throb.

  Several times during our turn we hit the spot, which is where we land when we know, the three of us, that we are on it, we own it, we command it. We like to scare all the other talent. As ever, there are some bumps and grinds, but that’s where real music comes from. We push out to the edge, beyond the safety zone. For a couple of moments there is a glimpse of the band that we used to be when we conquered the world, when we played every night together and when we were thirty.

  “Message in a Bottle” and “Roxanne” are a breeze. These really are good songs and fun to play. Even the fat cats are lit up in front of us. This feels sort of like a show! And then we break out our biggest hit, “Every Breath You Take.” Suddenly it’s all very jaunty as the stage fills with what looks like the cast of American Idol. There are now several singers clustered around Sting, all crooning away on his sick song. I gather these are all the more recent and upcoming talents and they’ve been hoisted up to our stage by the bosses for exchange of manna. Then we get to the end of the song and everybody is cheering. The fat cats are lumbering to their feet with the warmhearted glow of vultures applauding a dead zebra.

  It’s a very low stage, and after a nice bow from the three of us and our new friends, we can walk right off the front of the lip into the crowd. I have to push through the loving, teeming throng to get to my family. The girls grab on to me for dear life. They have had no idea of this aspect of their nerdy dad. Whatever they may have thought of the show, this part does not suit them. Who are all these people trying to devour Daddy? He’s not your daddy! He’s our daddy! They’re only little, and they’re terrified. The boys are older, but they’ve never seen this, either. I think it’s even possible…am I imagining it? My hypercool sons…are their heads perceptibly an inch farther back on their shoulders? OK, now even I’m impressed. That show had to be some kind of incredible to impress these young Copelands.

  After leaving the stage, we are each swallowed up by the crowd. Who knows whatever happened to my bandmates? But I’m here now, deeper into the evening, and I’m chuckling about something with Topper, Paul, and Nick. I’m hanging out with The Clash, which for me is waaaaay cool.

  CHAPTER 17

  LA NOTTE DELLA TARANTA

  AUGUST 2003

  In the summer of 2003 my world music explorations land me a real live one. I find myself on a stage with twenty raging brigands locked in a strange ritual with forty thousand whirling tribespeople surrounding us, dancing and singing with frenzied abandon.

  T

  he entire city square, and all of the boulevards leading into it, are jammed with singing, dancing revelers. Forty thousand people annually congregate on La No
tte della Taranta [Night of the Tarantula] here in Melpignano, on the southern tip of Italy. Next to the ancient monastery a giant stage is erected, and the city streets swell with people dancing to the music of the twenty-piece orchestra. The evening is lit by torches, bonfires, bouzoukis, bagpipes, accordions, guitars, drums, and tambourines. Everybody is clapping and yelling. La Notte della Taranta originates in an ancient dance festival of Dionysian origins (very old) in southern Italy that celebrates the ecstatic purging of the body that is achieved by wild singing and dancing to throbbing rhythms. The songs, which are specific to this event, have been passed down through centuries. The music, known as the pizzica (a close relative of the tarantella) is flamboyantly rhythmic, with soaring melodies driven by raging drums. In the lost valley of Salento the humble tambourine has evolved into a family of instruments, including some that are monstrous.

  Photograph by Davide Gazzotti / DG-PHOTO.IT

  The result is an extremely robust form of folk music. The young studs of the region impress the girls with their tambourines rather than with guitars.

  The local legend is that the pizzica dance was the best remedy for the bite of the tarantula. Strange pagan rituals whisper of women dancing in a venom-induced hallucinogenic frenzy. In recent centuries the pagan songs have been Christianized, but they still retain a ritualistic Dionysian flavor.

  Along for the ride with this crew is me on drums, hanging on for dear life and surfing the surge of energy that this music creates.

  Lit up by the joy of this local event I have joined with the city of Melpignano to take the show on the road around Italy and Greece.