-The Police- topique

quote:

In 1976, Gordon Sumner, a British ex-school teacher, was playing guitar in a band called Last Exit. Stewart Copeland, a promising young drummer from Virginia, caught a show and approached Sumner, who is better known to the world as Sting. The two began playing together and later recruited Andy Summers of The Soft Machine to complete the trio, forming The Police.

Two years later, The Police released their first album, Outlandos d'Amour, an album marrying jazz and reggae. Not only did the band introduce the hit "Roxanne," still a favorite with fans today, but the album also received critical acclaim. With A&M backing the trio, The Police went on to release seven more albums, including Regatta de Blanc, Ghost In The Machine and their Grammy-winning, multiplatinum No. 1 album,

Synchronicity. Synchronicity propelled The Police into the spotlight, taking them off college radio and into the mainstream. But, for however big the band became, they remained grounded and never sold out. The 1986 Amnesty International benefit concert marked the last time The Police performed live together. There have been rumors over the last decade that Sting, Summers and Copeland would regroup and play again, but to fans' disappointment, no such thing has happened. Even though they haven't played together in more than 10 years, The Police have never officially broken up.
_bron

quote:

Op donderdag 15 april 2004 15:08 schreef Gyan het volgende:
The Police is geweldig. Ik hou vooral van Andy Summer's gitaarsound. Eigenlijk niet veel meer erover te zeggen
nou behalve dat stings nieuwe werk crap is

quote:

Op donderdag 15 april 2004 19:44 schreef OldJeller het volgende:
Roxanne! Put on your headlights! Roxanne..
Ja, leuk.

quote:

Andrew James Summers (originally spelled Somers) was born on December 31, 1942, in Poulton-le-Fylde, Lancashire, England, the second of four children. After the War, his father left the RAF and opened a restaurant in the staid South Coast resort of Bournemouth. Andy had a happy childhood, during which he became increasingly obsessed with playing guitar and piano.
He left school at 17 to work in a music shop and performed in public for the first time at the Blue Note jazz club in Bournemouth, filling in between the headline band's then-traditional two sets. There, he met a musical soulmate called Zoot Money, a Hammond organist, whom he'd first known at school. Their careers were to be interwoven for several years. But in 1961 they had a while to wait before their band of rhythm & blues became commercial. In the meantime, Andy played the Blue Note and earned his living via residencies in the big seafront hotels.

Then, in 1963, when The Beatles were about to burst out of Liverpool, Zoot got a job in London with British blues guru Alexis Korner and Andy decided to go too, in the hope of establishing himself. They soon struck out on their own as Zoot Money's Big Roll Band, starting at The Flamingo, where they replaced Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames as the house band. They regularly chalked up more than 10 gigs a week, often at 400 pounds a time - very good money indeed - although glory somehow eluded them, apart from their one hit single, Big Time Operator. (A Big Roll highlight was playing with James Brown in Paris, the performance featuring Zoot's trousers being pulled down by Eric Burdon, a sensation which, Andy avers, doubled their gig money thereafter.) Struggling to find a niche in the psychedelic market, in 1967, the year of Sgt. Pepper, the Big Roll Band became Dantalion's Chariot, all cosmic philosophising, strobe lights - and some very good music too. But still nobody wanted the records. And that was when the 10-year steady flow of Andy Summers' musical life was broken.

Within 12 months in 1968, the Chariot was brought to an end by a bad car crash in which Andy was injured; he did a stint with avant-gardists Soft Machine, leaving them after a three month tour; he rejoined Zoot in Eric Burdon's Los Angeles-based New Animals and they split up when the singer decided he wanted to be an actor. Deciding this was a moment to pause and reconsider, Andy stepped back to work on his music more formally. With, he says, $5 in his pocket, he married a Californian singer Robin Lane and, for three years, studied classical guitar at Northridge University. He earnt a hand-to-mouth living by giving lessons himself.

Then his marriage broke up and Andy found himself at the lowest ebb of despair he'd ever experienced. He has described a period of weeks when he rarely got out of bed because he just couldn't see the point. But, at length, he shook himself out of it by picking up the electric guitar again. He found he had more determination than ever before: "I'd been through a lot. I'd watched musicians drop away left, right and centre - the carnage was dreadful - but I could play and I had the ego that wanted to succeed. The need to be a supreme musician was the strongest force."

Feeling renewed, he returned to Britain in 1973 and quickly re-established himself as the complete, reliable sideman, renting his skills out successively to Tim Rose (of Morning Dew fame), Neil Sedaka, David Essex, Kevin Coyne, Jon Lord (of Deep Purple, Kevin Ayers (formerly in Soft Machine) and Eberhard Schoener (an avant-garde German composer). He even took the Mike Oldfield role in a live orchestral performance of Tubular Bells at Newcastle City Hall - with Last Exit as the support band. Andy didn't rate them.

A formidable track record. But when, at a party around Christmas 1976, Mike Howlett started chatting him up about Strontium 90, Andy Summers was still unfulfilled, he still wanted more.
born

Hier had Sting zijn arm gebroken vlak voor de start van hun tournee (1982). Een goede vriend van de band (weet zijn naam niet meer ) speelde toen basgitaar ipv Sting.