Police Stories #5—Andy, Sting and Stewart: Putting the Message in the Bottle

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

“What was interesting about Sting as a songwriter was he actually had a lot of these songs [already].  He had a whole book full of lyrics.  He had this giant book – a big, thick, hardbound book – with pages that had lyrics all the way through it. He didn’t come into The Police and start writing songs.  He had been writing them for years.  And I think he would just keep going back into this giant book of lyrics and keep pulling them out.”

—Andy Summers from a LouderSound.com interview

“I’d been carrying this guitar riff around in my head for a year.  I used to play it over and over again to my dog in our basement flat in Bayswater, and he would stare at me with that look of hopeless resignation dogs can have when they're waiting for their walk in the park.  Was it that hopeless look that provoked the idea of the island castaway and his bottle?”

—Sting from Lyrics

“This [song] is the first of the rest of The Police [recording] process.  Sting-o would pull out his songs on an ‘as needed’ basis.  So he pulls this [song] out and he starts showing Andy that guitar riff.  And he starts singing, and I’m listening.  After a little while of that, [they] switched on the tape machine and recorded it.  We might have played this at a show or two.  It was pretty much the next few albums where I’d hear the song; twenty minutes later I’m doing The Take which lives forever,…and I’m stuck with forever.”

—Stewart Copeland from a Drumeo interview

“For me, it's still the best song Sting ever came up with and the best Police track.”

—Andy Summers

“The song sounded like a hit the first time we played it.”

—Sting

“One of our best moments in the studio and always great on stage."

—Stewart Copeland