Police Stories #2—Andy Summers: The Sound of Love

Putting together each tribute, I come across more stories than I can possibly tell in a single concert. Thank goodness someone invented the internet so that I have a place to share them. There'll be plenty more tales to tell when we take the stage at SPACE in Evanston on August 7th.

—bandleader William Lindsey Cochran

I get the faint idea that I have a thing for music, an ear for it maybe, but no way in which to express it other than enthusiastic talk and humming the day's idiotic songs—the piano lessons now having faded because of my getting a pair of roller skates.  But shortly after my thirteenth birthday things change when I am given a guitar by my uncle Jim.

My heart almost stops because to me it is complicated and exotic—a fabulous machine.  He passes it to me and I feel a rush of blood as I whisper, "Thank you, Uncle," and carry it into my bedroom as if trying not to drop an egg.  Scratched and dented with a string missing, it isn't much of an instrument, but I love it instantly and sit on the edge of the bed with it cradled in my arms, holding it in the position that I have seen used by guitarists on TV.  I study it and gaze at its dents and scratches, its evidence of a long life, and wonder how many songs have been played on it, where it's been.  It is an immediate bond, and possibly in that moment there is a shift in the universe because this is the moment, the point from which my life unfolds.  I strike the remaining strings, which make a sound like slack elastic.  It's horribly out of tune and I don't know even the simplest chord, but to me it is the sound of love.

—excerpted from Andy Summers' memoir, One Train Later