Can’t Stand Losing You: Andy Summers Survives the Police

Andy Summers went from stadium tours as the lead guitarist of the Police to headlining at the Baked Potato, an intimate jazz club in Los Angeles. He had the chops for both and enough left over from the former style of gigs to enjoy the latter. Jazz listeners always knew Summers was the coolest member of the Police and that judgment is vindicated by Andy Grieve’s Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police (trailer here) which opens this Friday in New York.

Although Stand is based on Summers’ memoir One Train Later and features his confessional narration, it never has time to touch on his jazz work. For blindingly obvious reasons, Grieve’s film is mostly concerned with Summers’ tenure in the Police and his relationship with the other two band members, particularly Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting. However, Summers’ early scuffling years will be surprisingly interesting to those who do not already kno them chapter-and-verse. He nearly caught on with a number of bands in the late 1960s and early 1970, even serving a stint in Eric Burdon’s The Animals, but he never managed to break out big.

Summers was about to chuck it in when he found himself playing a couple of one-offs with Sumner and Stewart Copeland. The two were trying to make a go of it with a pseudo-punk ensemble called the Police. Summers was not sure he had the right feel for the new style of music, but when he and Copeland happened to arrive for a meet-up on the same subway train, he took it as a sign (hence the title of Summers’ book). You basically know the trajectory the band took from there, but casual fans might have forgotten some of the details and diehards will enjoy reliving them from Summers’ viewpoint.

To his credit, Sting (as we must refer to him now) was reasonably cooperative with the film, even though he does come across as a bit of a prima donna. Clearly, he had no objections when the press focused in on him at an early stage. He just as obviously had one foot out the door for quite a while, yet he still tried to impose his my-way-or-the-highway will on the band. At least, that is how it looks from the candid archival footage. Perhaps most damning, it is decidedly not cool to see him act like a jerkweed to Martha Quinn in an MTV interview.

Yet, Summers oral history is just as hard on himself as it is on Sting (so apparently Copeland must have the patience of a saint). It would be fair to say he let the rock star thing sabotage his personal life. However, his third act was rather redemptive, in ways Grieve might have spent more time exploring. Instead, he essentially concentrates on their 2007 reunion (thanks to tour footage directed by Lauren Lazin) and a special exhibition of Summers’ photography, mounted in conjunction with Taschen’s publication of I’ll Be Watching You: Inside the Police 1980-83.

If you lived through the 1980s, Stand brings a lot of it back—and maybe delivers a little closure. It must be conceded their music still holds up pretty well, as does Summers’ jazz work, such as the Monk tribute album Green Chinmeys. He certainly emerges from the film as a relatively down-to-earth figure, as well as a survivor of considerable chaos. Highly recommended for fans of the Police and 1980s music in general, Can’t Stand Losing You opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the Village East and the AMC Empire.

Sting’s Last Ship

Capital—malign it all you want, but you’ll miss it when its gone. The Wallsend Shipyard is a case in point. After decades of strikes and work stoppages, work stopped there for good. Maybe the workers were supposed to inherit control of all means of production, but they just wound up unemployed. Sting still remembers when there were laboring jobs to be found in the northern British city and the massive ships that towered over his boyhood home. The former Police frontman’s childhood memories have inspired his forthcoming Broadway book musical, which he performs as a special concert preview in Sting: The Last Ship (promo here), debuting on most PBS outlets this Friday as part of the current season of Great Performances.

Since hundred dollar-plus Broadway tickets are intended for the proletariat, Last Ship is naturally centered around the shipyard, focusing on the angst caused by its imminent closure. To keep the men’s spirits up, the parish priest inspires them to “occupy” the shipyard and build themselves one last ship. Cool, then what?

As a concert presentation, there is no acting per se in the Last Ship performed last year at the Public Theater. However, prospective cast member Jimmy Nails is on-hand to spell Sting on the vocals. A fixture of British television and recording charts, Nails’ casting is probably considered something of a coup on the other side of the Atlantic. He certainly understands the working class theatricality of Sting’s tunes.  However, the greater hook for American audiences will be back-up singer Jo Lawry, who is featured in 20 Feet from Stardom, the consensus favorite to win best documentary at this year’s Oscars. In fact, she has a lovely duet with Sting on “Practical Arrangement.”

The music itself definitely has that book musical vibe, but the Northumbrian musicians give it a distinctive Celtic-ish twist. The title tune has the right overture quality to it, yet it sounds vaguely familiar. Likewise, “Shipyard” is an effective role call for the cast of characters, including the overtly Marxist union rep (and also includes another brief but appealing solo spotlight for Lawry).  Similarly, “Dead Man’s Boots” establishes much of the show’s driving conflict, poignantly addressing the emerging generational divide.

In contrast, “Sky Hooks and Tartan Paint” is a bit of a novelty number in terms of lyrics (albeit a jaunty one), but Kathyn Tickell’s violin solo is the real deal.  Arguably, the concert’s highpoint also goes for laughs. The Rockabilly “Jock the Singing Welder” finally lets Sting unleash his strutting inner rockstar. It is catchy as all get out and loaded with attitude.

There is a reason why fans will probably latch on to “Jock.” Frankly, many of us would rather remember Sting as the shirtless villain in Dune kicking Kyle MacLachlan’s butt than as the sensitive memory play-book musical composer. Still, there is no denying his affection and empathy for the rough diamonds of his formative years.

Time passes on though, which is probably why audience shots are relatively few and far between. Let’s just say it is an older looking crowd than you would have seen in the Police’s CBGB heyday.  Regardless, it is still worth hearing Sting in an intimate setting with musicians of the caliber of Tickell and Lawry.  Recommended for those who enjoy a good labor chantey, The Last Ship premieres on PBS’s Great Performances this Friday night (2/21).

A Tale of Two Singers in Cuba

Bloggers United for Cuban Liberty are launching a new campaign aimed at Police front-man Sting. In the 1980’s he was all about lecturing audiences on human rights, but for their reunion tour, the Police have accepted an invitation to play Havana this December. So much for the spirit of not playing Sun City. Evidently, Sting is not aware of, or has chosen to ignore, the wholesale rounding up and torturing of independent journalists and librarians, the invisible ones, practiced by Castro’s enforcers. BUCL’s campaign intends to raise that awareness of Cuba’s prisoners of conscience during the Miami leg of their tour. Learn how to support here.

Sting’s apparent ignorance of rampant human rights abuses is being contrasted with jazz singer Youman Wilder’s recent defiance of Cuban censors. During a performance in Cuba, Wilder departed from the state-approved set list, singing thematically charged songs like “We Shall Overcome” and “Freedom is At Your Door.” According to information forwarded to Babalu Blog:

“Mr. Wilder was woken up at 3 am and told to leave the country under heavy Cuban Militia.

Also Mr. Wilder was threatened with death and told he would be taken to a local jail.

Wilder was deported out of the country under a Cuban mandate that saw him and his group as enemies of The Revolution.

Also what was not said is that Wilder at Jose Marti International Airport, while being escorted out of the country by armed military sang “We Shall Overcome” as vacationers from The UK, Canada, and France looked on.”

Now that was quite a show. Actually though, I’m not ready to canonize Wilder yet. He did after all agree to play Cuba in the first place, and his past interviews have included some of the usual knee-jerk, brain-on-auto-pilot attacks on Pres. Bush and Fox News one expects from the celebrity left. However, he deserves real credit for figuring out the lay of the land once he arrived in Cuba, and for standing up to Castro’s thugs and censors. It’s a good lesson for Sting when he performs for the real King of Pain.