One Train Later: A Memoir (51 page)

For my shots I place eggs on a piano keyboard, set fire to a telephone, slip beneath the surface of a warm bath, signify time passing with a metronome, and have a lovely Chinese girl in most of the pictures. My favorite idea, under the influence of magical realism, is to stand in a room with a cloud of butterflies around my head. This is a difficult photograph to pull off because you have to buy the butterflies from a farm and they come to you in a box frozen, as if in a coma. My photographer is Duane Michals, who is famous in the art world for his dreamlike sequences. Together we hover over a cardboard box in a cold tenement room in Queens with rancid and peeling wallpaper, trying to get the iced insects to wake up, but it doesn't work. We heat up the room, bring in hair dryers, turn up the radiators, but still nothing works apart from a feeble tremble of the odd wing, as if to say, "Leave me alone, I am having a dream that I am a butterfly." It is sad; I don't know whether I feel more sorry for them or for us. We are sweating with the heat now, and in the end we start tossing them into the air to see if they will get the idea of flight. One or two make fluttering motions and our hearts leap, but it is over quickly and they drop to the floor like stones and our hearts sink. Instead of a morning of fun, it's turning into a morning of death, the great butterfly funeral. Duane places the insects on my shirt and face and makes a few photographs, including one amazing shot in which my eyes are somehow both open and closed at the same time. It appears later in one of his portrait books. We finally decide to leave, but we don't know what to do with the lovely Lepidoptera. Should we dump them in the trash, bury them, donate them, eat them, what? We take them with us in the cab and finally pull over into Central Park, where we leave them in a patch of sunlight, hoping that a miracle of nature will take place.

On June 10, Synchronicity, like the return of a seven-year plague, is released. Our faces and the album cover emerge onto billboards, storefronts, shop windows, and the backs of buses in London. Magazines, newspapers, periodicals, quarterlies--wherever you look, there we are like an infestation you can't avoid. "Go big now" is the strategy at A&M, and the word comes down from el presidents to spare no expense where these boys are concerned. We hit the media like a tsunami.

The press reaction is interesting because the word synchronicity throws them for a moment. It is a word that is not heard much in the rock world, and some people think we have invented it. But it is picked up and rolled around the tongue-"s-i-n-k-r-o-n-c-t-ee," they say-and the word travels around the globe into the malls of the Midwest, the record sections of department stores in Manchester, the mouths of teenage girls as they try to get the word out, the confused minds of mums and dads as they say, "Sin what? Sting- cron-isn't-he?" Students look it up; hamburgers are named after it.

A surge of interviews begins, this time with high-flown responses about Jung, the collective unconscious, the underlying fabric, the acausal connecting principle, the implicate order; in the context of the pop world, it all sounds rather grandiose and overreaching. I try to downplay it slightly and refer it to synchronistic events in the studio, as if throwing them a false scent. Stewart seems embarrassed by it and refers to it as Sting in his German scientist phase, as if he is merely tolerating a whim. (This whim will earn him several million dollars.) I have my own history of interest in Jung but am aware of how this might appear to the hacks. We pretty much get away with it.

We appear in Time and Newsweek, the album is generally regarded a masterpiece, with one or two dissenters who don't buy Sting's lyrics. Synchronicity is a commercial juggernaut that rolls forward, crushing all competition. "Every Breath You Take" is the first single and once again enters the U.K. charts at number one and begins a fast climb on the U.S. Billboard charts. I have the impression that we could record "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and it too would go to number one at this point in our career. One of the side effects of our success is that we are widely imitated, with Police copy bands springing up all over the world.

My guitar style in particular has entered the lexicon. At this seminal point I am probably the most imitated guitarist in the world. Guitar players everywhere are quickly dropping their Led Zeppelin riffs and Hendrix lines to stretch their fingers out for the long reach of the added second chords and offbeat syncopation, the shining minor eleventh of "Walking on the Moon." With our success we have set a new high-water mark, and for a moment the height of cool is to be like the Police, to look like us, to sound like us; anything else is yesterday's news.

As we begin the promotion for Synchronicity it is like the high point of a song that will be heard for a few moments before beginning its final cadence. Videos, MTV interviews, photography sessions, lawyers, accountants, and contracts crowd into my head like a swarm of bees, and the guitar remains my place of refuge, the immutable dialogue between mind, fingers, frets, strings, the history, the still point, the matrix of spirit and love, and the path forward.

Inflated to the breaking point, we begin rehearsals for the great tour. The press now wait for us to self-destruct in public, go out in a fiery display, selfimmolate, but they will be disappointed. Back together after the trials of recording the Synchronicity album, Sting, Stewart, and I once again rebuild some sort of group psyche to tour with to make this album a success. But I feel it is now thin and strained. Sting is more distant, more difficult to talk to, and I begin to hate the feeling that I am a guitarist in someone else's hand.

MTV is in only its second year and picks us as the band to promote all summer long. They organize contests to meet the band, win free tickets, etc. The "Every Breath" video is in constant rotation, and we each do exclusive interviews that are shown over and over again. This is the hummingbird standing still, the solar-flared apogee of our sojourn, and Synchronicity the album and "Every Breath You Take" the single hit like Scud missiles at number one on the Billboard charts. The single will remain in this position for eight weeks and the album for four months, keeping even Michael Jackson at the height of his popularity out of the number one spot. We are ecstatic. We have reached the pinnacle, the last point between earth and space.

We arrive at Comiskey Park, a baseball stadium in Chicago, to begin the tour. MTV is there in force interviewing fans, wandering about the stadium, and filling the screen with our images and the "Every Breath" video. Martha Quinn, an elfinlike Veejay, arrives for a backstage interview that ends with a water-throwing fight between Stewart and Sting. We are now playing in stadiums to capacity audiences of fifty and sixty thousand people a night, and the expectation is at fever pitch. The desire to be near us or see us spreads like an epidemic. Emotions run high, and male and female fans alike break into tears when and if they get anywhere near us. Some have to be carried off. One of our girl fans in London tries to slash her wrists when we don't recognize her with a new cropped hairstyle. She survives, we breathe a sigh of relief, but it feels like a warning. We have become the locus of a huge projection, the recipients of a collective fantasy; the only comparison we can imagine at this point is in fact the Beatles. In the United States the terms celebrity and success are synonymous, and in the eyes of our fans we are seen as everything you would want to be. We are "it." When fans are allowed to get close to us for autographs, even the simple act of signing your name becomes almost impossible with the screaming and the mayhem, and you find yourself talking gently to them as tears stream down their faces. Underneath the desire, things seem fragile. The heat of the fans seems to mirror the hot coal that's burning through the band. Fame is a loaded gun.

In the hotels we have guards at each end of the corridor and we can't leave our rooms. To go into the hotel restaurant is to cause a furor. We are accompanied twenty-four hours a day by large men with bodybuilder physiques: Larry, Ron, Jeff. The cliche of the goldfish bowl is the hyperreal- ity in which we are living. Now we are stamped with the word icon, and the gig at Shea Stadium--ever since the Beatles played there-is a trenchant symbol of rock-and-roll glory.

We play a show in Miami and, despite the place in our head offstage, the show is a power surge as we whip through the show opener, "Synchronicity"on which I play an electric twelve-string on a stand with the Telecaster hanging off my back-and on through the power chords of "Synchronicity II," "Walking in Your Footsteps," selections of our earlier songs, and climaxing with "Every Breath You Take." We return for a blowout encore of "Can't Stand Losing You" and leave the stage with the crowd in a frenzied uproar. The support group is the Animals. The original groups, who seem to do nothing but argue with one another, have got back together for a reunion tour. As they finish their set and come offstage we climb the ramp to go on. As I go up I pass Eric Burdon coming down; we raise an eyebrow at each other.

I get off a plane at Kennedy Airport, and Neil Sedaka gets off right behind me. We look at each other in amazement. "So, it is you," he says as minders surround me and a limo door swings open, "we were wondering." It's a sweet moment and a couple of weeks later he will come to the Shea Stadium concert with his family. The minders start edging me toward the backseat of the limo. I wave at Neil through the darkened glass. He raises a hand to his mouth and as we pull away I hear him murmur, "Oh, my God."

Twenty-Seven

BRIDGEHAMPTON, AUGUST 18, 1983

I flick the television back on. MTV pulses across the room in cartoon color. They are talking about us, the show tonight, the expected turnout-what songs will we play, will there be songs from the new album? Music television: this is a new concept that is already turning music into a visual rather than an aural medium. I don't like it, but even at this early stage it is attracting a large audience. They have chosen us as the band of the year; despite some reticence, we realize that if you can't beat them, join them. We are all over it. My face comes on the screen and I snort in disgust and suddenly become bored with watching me, Martha Quinn, Stewart, Sting, me, Martha Stewart, Sting Quinn, Martha Quinn, me, and decide to get up. Other people are now moving about the place, and suddenly it makes me feel better-we are still a family of sorts and the sound check is at three.

My suitcase is lying on the floor by the fireplace with everything spread out around it. As usual, I haven't bothered with any drawers or closets, as they just seem to confuse the issue, my philosophy being that if I am living out of a suitcase, to hell with the drawers. I stare at the contents-what to wear today? As we never seem to go anywhere without cameras going off like fireflies, a look of some sort is always a consideration. I sort through the pile: pink T-shirt-no, worn it three times, stinks; white shirt-no, too formal for a sound check; blue striped pants, green shirt-too gay; black suit-no, it's not a fucking funeral. Fuck, what? Everything is filthy. Okay, I am going for this yellow shirt and the green and white jacket, maybe some aviator shades-a faux Miles Davis look....

I wander into the dining room, to a table loaded like the Last Supper, a late-morning pre-sound check brunch. The owner of this mansion and our very gracious host is a man by the name of Lenny Riggio. We are constantly treated to banquet-size breakfasts, dinners, and late-night suppers. Helicopters and limousines are also at our disposal. He loves our band and tells us one night that he is buying up a faded old chain called Barnes & Noble and that he is going to transform it. It seems like a daunting task, as this particular store chain now seems to be on the way out, but we nod and make encouraging sounds. Various members of our entourage are gathered around the table, filling their lunch plates. As I appear like a forlorn ghost with no one realizing that I've been up for hours, the usual sardonic comments come my way: "My God, it's alive-look what the cat dragged in, anybody seen the lead guitar," etc. Sting and Trudie come into the room from the garden out by the pool. They are a beautiful couple with a glimmering physicality. Together they form an appealing symbiosis; I like Trudie; she fits in well with the group and seems to add another dimension to Sting's more contained personality, like wine and champagne. But at this inflated point in our career, it feels as if Sting has already broken away, and I know there are machinations taking place in his head-murmurings about getting off now and breaking up the band are an obvious clue. Although I do not dwell on it, I can feel a shift taking place, an idea of the future Sting being worked on.

In the early days together Sting was withdrawn, introverted. Although he could cut loose onstage and perform, I often wondered how natural it was for him. Obviously he is gifted with musical talent, but the performance aspect-although he pulled it off brilliantlyseemed like a strain, something that had to be done. He had the voice, and the songs had to be sung. In Germany Eberhard remarked that he was like a child-so quiet, so .... and then Eberhard would look off into the distance with a puzzled look on his face. But as time went on and the heat got turned up, Sting became more vocal and started flexing his persona, confidently trying on the coat of celebrity. The film of Quadrophenia exponentially increased his emerging star power, and maybe in a sense that was the early death knell of the band. Amazingly enough., he didn't immediately take off and start a solo career, because the band itself was becoming a megasuccess and maybe there was a sense of loyalty, although he made remarks to the press to the contrary. To have walked out then would have been foolish-you don't walk away from that kind of power unless you don't have the stomach for it.

With success, forming new personal agendas becomes possible and ultimately has to be played out. After a few years and unparalleled success together, the fragile democracy has become a dictatorship, and Sting's agenda-his natural proclivity to do it alone-has begun to manifest itself with a kind of grumpiness around the band, an irritability at being in this situation. But with the machine roaring along, it probably has seemed impossible to jump off. The band was almighty, and Stewart and I could not be factored out, because people liked the idea of the group. All three personalities were taken up by the public in the same way the Beatles were in their time. It was too powerful to discard easily.