Yeah, the enemy's coming to the show. And we, you know, it's all going on. We got some more gigs, but when I'm on the phone booking gigs, selling, you know, when we recorded our first single as me on the phone, selling boxes of 25 discs to the record stores around the country. And I just keep it moving, keep it moving, because we didn't have the music. We stuck together, Sting and I stuck together before we ran into Andy for about a year and a half, starving, you know, going nowhere. We had Henry Padavani on guitar, who played with great gusto and charisma, but he only knew four chords that I taught him. And we were playing songs that I wrote. We didn't have Roxanne. We didn't have Message to the Bottle. We didn't have every breath you take or anything. We had these crap songs, which are mostly just baselines with the yelling that I had thrown together so that we could be a punk group. And somehow we stuck together because we just knew that we're in the right company, even though we didn't have those songs, even though we weren't getting or no matter how fast I talked, we were not getting anywhere until one day, we're doing a session because we were known we were actually paying our rent by doing sessions. We were the Hot Rhythm section. And one day we're at a session and in walks this guitarist who's way above armpay grade, triple scale legendary guitarist named Andy Summers. And we have a day doing like almost probably just really actually pretty interesting music for this guy called Mike Howlett and Driving Home. Sting is seething. He's just a man. After a day of actual music, he had reminded him of what he picked up his instrument for and what his life is for. And it's not getting spat at in punk clubs. After a day of music, he was a little delirious. In fact, he even said something to me, which he actually mentioned this in his book. And I remember it like it was yesterday. He's going on about Henry, our guitarist. He's crap. I mean, he's not Stuart. You're a better guitarist than he is. And he carries on with his tirade and I'm going, really? Gosh, really? You know, it does unexpected accolade. Anyhow, little did we know that we were thinking that way about Andy and we did a show with Mike Howlett in Paris. And then we did a, we're playing a gig at the marquee and Andy shows up, jumps on stage, burns down the house. And once again, we're damn. And so Sting and I are, you know, how can we get this guy? And I'm basically humoring him pretending to go along because we're not going to get that guy. You know, there's no way he'll join, even if he does join, he'll join for a week and then quit because, you know, we can't afford him. But little did we know that Andy was also thinking along the same lines. And after that gig at the marquee in London, I ran into him on the tube station at Oxford Street, Tube Station. He pulls me into a cafe, Stuart, Stuart, we need to talk. Come on. And, you know, you in that bass player, I think you've got something, but you need me in the band that I accept. He hates it when I tell that story. It's a little abbreviated there, but that is our Andy. Andy is very direct, very no beating around the bush. That's what made us all rich and famous was that directness of Andy Summers. And okay. And so I told him, you know, we haven't got management. It's me. I'm the management. We haven't got the record company. You see that record? You know, that we made. That's me with a letter set and me on the phone. That that's me. I'm the record company. There's no record company. Oh, the road is yeah, we have road is you. And I was basically kicking the wheels because I, you know, I didn't I didn't know him well enough to know whether he would stick with it. But he insisted and he did stick with it. And as soon as sting and Andy got together, that's when sting could write those songs because they had more harmonic complexity and they could, you know, he, you know, the music was back in our lives. And Andy saved us. Andy discovered us really. And as soon as those two got their heads together and Andy can play the songs that Stings was writing, that's when Roxanne happened and can't stand losing you and so lonely and and the ball started rolling. The creative ball started rolling. What I love

about the diary too though, is it just hammers home the point like anything that's great. The pursuit is like you have to be maniacal about it. You know, you have all those down moment moments like oh, we did this, we did that and it just keeps hammering home like it's just people from the outside like oh, you're so lucky. And you're like, yeah, I didn't feel real lucky there for a long time. But I the music itself to to pivot to this group where I knew that reggae again had enough of a presence in London that it wasn't this complete alien idea of like, wait, what are you guys going to try to do? But I think between, you know, reading the history of your brother being involved in it from a management side, or at least helping you out and then some of the different contracts that you get into, there didn't feel like there was a lot of resistance. It was almost like, okay, you guys can try to do what you want, even though you're not going to be a punk band, like I don't know if I'm misrepresenting that or not. I'm just wondering how they're going to resist

us. Well, there was the there were the there were the the standard music papers who spotted us as charlatans and carpetbags right away. That was a form of resistance. But we're still out there playing and getting shows and doing shows and working our thing, not really getting anywhere until Andy joined. And we then we had a sound of our own, and it started to take off. But the reggae thing happened because of the lack of, you know, even even kids high on glue in those punk clubs, they needed chill sometimes, but there's no such thing as chill punk. It's an oxymoron. And so actually it was Don Lett, the famous London DJ back in the day, who started playing dub, which is very hostile, but chill, chill, hostile, and is dark and menacing and extremely pissed off, which actually suited the punk mood. So all the punk rockers are absorbing this upside down backwards rhythm. And like I say, it was the clash. You were the first skinny white voice to attempt at themselves. So

I did something that it wasn't even homework. I mean, I've listened to all the music for four decades now. And so I had a lot of work to do when I was at the house. And I was like, I'm going to go through every album, start to finish just chronological order in order. Because I think sometimes with the way music works now, we lose the, there's nothing like being younger and knowing the next note, knowing the next beat of the next song, because you're so used to the actual order. And I think music is lost out a little less. Unless you're a jam band fan, like Orsterhead, nobody knows what's going to happen next, not even the band. I have that's in my notes, because I was in New York and I saw you guys, because we were losing our minds that were like, wait a minute, Stuart's playing with less entry. So I do have that at some point, because I want to get to the comp that I was thinking about. But I did see you guys, I think it was, was it Rosalind? I'd forget. But when I listened to the first two albums, I don't know if it's a production thing, it could be resources, it could be all these things. But I felt like as soon as we're into Zenyatta, there was a denser feel. And I know it was a different studio. I'm wondering if that was a creative thing. I wonder if it was more resources or if I'm just hearing a production value as opposed to the beginning of the police's story to where, okay, these guys are for real and we're putting more into their third

album. Certainly was not a decision. There was a natural evolution. And I never noticed the change. There was an even more dramatic change from the third album to the fourth and fifth albums. We did five albums total. And when we got to the last two albums, we had a new engineer called Hugh Pajum, who had a different recording technique than we liked it. But it's others have commented on how the sound just got bigger and richer. And as you say denser, others argue that the original sound had more raw appeal. It was hungrier. And the lighter albums were richer. And that's just a matter of taste. But it was not a conscious decision. We never made conscious decisions. We must do this or do that. We just, you know, sting and pull out another song and we'd tear it up, chew it up and figure something out. And then when we thought it was cool, we'd record it. In fact, by the way, from after after the first album, all of the tracks that we recorded, the next four albums, the drums went down pretty much 20 minutes after I heard the song for the first time, and Sting and Andy got their heads together and figuring out the chords. I'm kind of listening, tapping my knees. Let's do a take. And I'd play a drum take. Maybe we do maybe three or four with them pretending to play just humoring me to give me something to play to so that we could lay the drums down. In those days, you have to do the drums first. And then everything goes on top of them. And once the drums are down, they're locked. That's it. Whatever I came up with 20 minutes after hearing the song for the first time, that's on the record for the rest of eternity while they get to go back and redo all the bass, the guitar and the vocals, everything. They spend the next month having a wild time cloning and molding this product, this music. But the drums, I'm listening to the drums I did that day. Hope I like them because I'm stuck with them for life. Okay,

so you touched on something. By the way, just

to finish that point, we would go on tour and I'd figure, ah, this is how I should get from the chorus back down into the verse. This is what I should have done on the record. But you know what, the record kind of worked because although what I later discovered to be a better arrangement, that exploratory feel, that feeling of just coming, that inspiration is provided in X factor, which I think kind of worked out.

Yeah, well, I think I think the debate is settled on it working out or not. But you just hit on something though that I really like because whenever I think of like my favorite bands and the evolution of them and the direction and you know, we can be really protective of it, we can think like, oh wait, I don't want them deviating so much. Like what are you guys doing? Well, that's always the balance every band has to figure out either

they stay in the rut and give them what they want, or they lose them by going too far off.

And it was it was interesting. Like in the first two, you're going, okay, it's a little raw, then zendata feels like again, that's maybe my just personal opinion of like, okay, there's there's some songs on that that I absolutely love, but I don't feel like they would have fit somewhere else. And I know it goes to the machine, which is actually my favorite, but that may have been an age thing where it was like the first tape I ever bought where it was like I was old enough to go buy a tape. And I was like, I want that one, and I bought it. And so that's my own thing. And I know reading back, you know, some members of the band, maybe not you as much, but I think sting in particular was like, you know, whatever, like we're getting too far away from what we want to do. So then when you get to synchronicity, which I think most people look at you as your masterpiece, you may not feel that way, but I think the public does. Do you go into that going, okay, we are the biggest band in the world, we need to write something as powerful as every breath you take is T in this hair, these these bigger, these bigger leaps vocally, the songwriting on it, because it felt like that's what it was. But you've kind of said in a bit that that's just kind of where we went that it wasn't a conscious decision. No, it was our mindset. Yeah, we are the coolest. We are the hottest. We are the biggest. We kill, we kick

our ass, you know, we'd slew us. And that's the same kind of arrogance that exists within any band, you have to have that self love as a band to get anywhere to stick together. Otherwise, a band will just fly off. So all bands share that band arrogance, we are the coolest. But it was from outside the group, particularly for Zenyana, the third album where the record company put pressure on us. Look, guys, you've done well, you've had a couple hits here, but you want to go to the very tippy top, it's within your grasp. Just give us those hits, guys. That's really important. You do that a little, you know, and they were in the record studio, recording studio with us in Holland. And they're in the studio with us with a head, is that the hit? No, I think that, you know, is that the hits, you know, and so the next album to albums after that, we recorded down in the Caribbean 12 hours flight from the nearest record company. And which actually was even worse, because without the record company, we had only each other ripping each other's throats out and creating our own, we're in paradise, where we successfully created a living hell for ourselves. Okay, I've

watched all the videos, I've done all the YouTube stuff, maybe I haven't watched every single video, but I was watching the rehearsals for the 2007 reunion, and they leave in the YouTube stuff, like you and Sting going at each other. But it seems like I can't tell if the recording of Ghost of Machine is more hostile than synchronicity. But why was it so bad? Like, how do you look back on it now of why this was so bad?

Well, we understand that that tension was what made it happen. And at first, we were co-dependent and Sting had pull out a song and we said, Oh, that's really cool. How about we do this? And he got, Oh gosh, they like my song. Sure, a little faster, no problem, no problem. And, you know, but then after we started getting hits, and he was getting more confirmed as a writer of hits. And, you know, when we first went on our first two albums, Andy and I had recorded albums before, we knew our way around the recordings to you, Sting had not, it was his first recording. And so it didn't take long for Sting to learn all that stuff. It's not rocket science. And so by the third album and going on to the other ones, he now knew not only how to write a hit song, but how to record it, how to arrange it, how, you know, like he wouldn't show up with a couple of chords in a lyric. He'd show up with a fully mastered home demo because we all had recordings stuff at home. And so we would show up with platinum demos. And it was very, it got harder and harder and for him to compromise. And what started out as collaboration began to feel to him more like compromise. I already know how this song should go. It should go like this and the drums should do that and I've conceived this guitar riff because the drums should, that's no fun for me. That's great, whatever your concept was, but here's what I'm going to do. And it wasn't said spoken like that until it got really rough, but it was basically, yeah, that's great. I'm glad you got an idea for the drums, but I'm playing them. This is what I feel. And you know, it's my band too. And so that's what the conflict was. It was, it wasn't ego. It was strictly, how are we going to make this music? And it, we realized in hindsight that at that point, music had a different function in each of our lives. At first, we were codependent and we just needed each other and we found this pocket and it was magic. And we didn't think about what else there could be in life, but this is really cool. But then we started to realize, or didn't realize, but we started to diverge. And I make music for different reasons to sting. And he, you know, for him, it's a beautiful serene place that he can escape to, where the bedlam of the world goes away and he can create something beautiful. For me, it's a celebration. I want to burn down the house. I want to, I want to, I want to explode. That's what music is for for me. And if those two, I different ideas of the purpose of the music, there's going to be a clash. And we realized that that clash was beneficial to the, you know, the end result, the music we made with that tension between sophisticated lyrics, sophisticated harmony and everything. And brutal banging shit from the drummer in the back of the stage kind of made it what it was. We understand that now, but it was not easy at the time. We would get along over dinner, you know, we would kind of loosen up and laugh and so on. But as soon as we got back into the recording room, it's just, what's the matter with you? Why do you think that's a good idea? Are you insane? And by the way, the ideas weren't bad. I mean, sting his ideas for how you use a drum set. He does kind of know and have pretty creative ideas about how the drums that should be used, but fascinating. That's what I do. This is my playground. You play over there and I get to play with my toys. And the times when my urgent, the urgent necessity that I throttle the life out of him were the times when he was right. When he'd come over and I've got this cool thing going, he'd come and he'd say, Hey, Stuart, you know, could you play that hi hat here and then I'd think, actually, that's pretty clever. You shall die. That's what I really had to kill him.

When you were broken up, did you know you were broken up? Did you know it was over? Because it seemed like no one knew it for a while. I was surprised.

When we went into the third album, I wasn't so much surprised, but grateful that we made it through the album. The third album, I was surprised that we even got into the studio. We knew we had to because we were on top of the world. It was going up, up, up, up. It would be insane. We have to go, you know, but I think we got maybe two more albums out of Stingo than we deserved because by that time, he knew what he was doing, writing hits. And as he showed, you know, how much 14, 15 grammies later that he does know what he's doing kind of. And I was, I'm glad that we got as many as five albums out of him.

I'm glad you brought up the Oysterhead thing because it was still a little early internet days. I'm post college, you know, still in love with all of this stuff. We're like, wait, those guys are going to get, did you ever call Sting and be like, you should hear this less clay pool guys like a way to get back at

him years later? No, no. It's once again, a different purpose of music. You know, at a police show, the audience has their expectations. They know the song. They know the verse is leading up. We're getting a person in the big hit, the piggyt, the rock sound, or whatever, you know. And there's an expectation and then a delivery. And that's how, you know, tension and then resolution, that's what art is all about. And that's how we achieve the uplift of police pop music. Oysterhead is a jam band, and we don't know where that course is going to be. We don't know when it's going to go up or when it's going to go. Nobody has any idea what's going to happen. And in fact, inevitably, there are some times when we're just making stuff up and, you know, the Oysterhead MO is the, will rehearse a two hour set for about 20 minutes. And the rest of it, we'll see what happens. But inevitably, there are times when it's dead, we're dead in the water. We've worked this riff. We're sick of this. Okay, who's going in the audience? For me, as a pop musician, I'm dying. I'm dying. This can't be happening. I can't believe I'm in front of 20,000 people and we're dead in the water. And then less comes up with something and then trays on it. And then we're on fire again in a surge of excitement from the audience. Now we're raging. That's the same surge as the police gets through a known expectation of that course is coming up now. But it's arrived at by different means, but it's the same exaltation. It's the same surge of energy and joy. And it's just arrived at by different means. So no, I don't think Sting would be an Oysterhead fan. He's a songsmith. He writes songs with a beginning, middle, and end. And that's his craft and his art and what he does. And Oysterhead, we just make this shit up moment by moment is the opposite of his idea of music.

Did it feel though an Oysterhead, at least musically, a bit like Michael Jordan coming down the floor and then being on the dream team and having two Hall of Famers to his side? Because I just think from like an ability, it's not knocking anyone else. But that was like, we couldn't believe it was happening. And yet we got to see it. I

didn't know either of them. I knew less because I'd produced a track for his band Primus. You know, artists have faulty rearview mirrors. We can see the bands who came before us and they're the competition. We want to eat their lunch. But the bands who come after us, my rearview mirror is not so good. But I got a call from this guy called Les Claypool. That interesting. I looked him up and oh yeah, they're cool band. And so I produced this record. And then a little while later he says, hey, look, there's this thing happening. We can form a band. I got this guitarist up in Vermont called Trean Estesio. Big deal. And I call all right, sure fine. Because I knew already that I liked Les and we were, you know, we get along great. So I go to Vermont and I meet this funny redhead with a beard and a cheerful, you know, just this cheerful redhead. And we go up to his barn and start playing. And once again, this is it. Wow, this is amazing. We light each other up. And it was not just your average, you know, jam in A. It just went out to here. It went down to there when, you know, it was, we climbed the, you know, the highest, you know, mountains, we dug the deepest tunnels. You know, we just found a day of making incredible music. And then we played the show, New Orleans. And that's how Oysterhead came together. But I didn't really have much of a sense of it until I got a call from Les saying, dude, we just sold out. I go really? Wow, that's nice. Gosh, my fans are wait a minute. Those are not my fans. My fans have got jobs. They're not sitting over a computer waiting to buy tickets must be that funny little redhead. And sure enough, it was Tre has such a following that those tickets disappeared in a heartbeat. And then a few weeks later, Les calls back, says, tickets are being sold for $2,000. And I'm going, aha, that's my people.

I have two things here as I want to finish up. I was at a, ironically enough, not that long ago, I was at the Primus kind of tool hybrid benefit they had done in Los Angeles. And I was lucky enough through a friend to have some pretty good access to it. And this is not the post-told.