Full Transcript for Andy Summers reveals how The Police created their iconic sound against the backdrop of punk London.

How did that evolve through the years? 00:02:35.710 --> 00:02:36.010 For you? 00:02:37.200 --> 00:02:40.189 yeah, well, I was, you know, obviously, as a musician. 00:02:40.189 --> 00:02:54.373 I was involved not only just learning how to play pop songs, but I got in interested in the whole structure of music and harmony and thing, and I finally went to university in Los Angeles and I played classical guitar. 00:02:54.373 --> 00:02:57.128 So I was very pure in my interest. 00:02:57.128 --> 00:03:08.985 So I grew up, you know, came to, you know my growth was, you know, I started out being a complete sort of, uh, jazz wannabe when I was in my teens. 00:03:08.985 --> 00:03:12.052 You know, wes Montgomery and Kenny Burrell and people like that. 00:03:12.052 --> 00:03:22.445 My ear was drawn to that once I got past the sort of initial early stages of simple guitar playing, got into more complex chords and everything. 00:03:22.445 --> 00:03:31.187 And then I had a period of living in California where I went to college and, you know, played classical guitar and so that took me into hollow. 00:03:31.830 --> 00:03:43.090 By the time I got the police I was, you might say, fully loaded, I had a lot of music and I was playing the electric guitar and I had my Telecaster, uh, you know. 00:03:43.090 --> 00:03:48.721 So then I met up with this guy called Sting and he had a very similar musical background to me. 00:03:48.721 --> 00:03:51.306 He also played a bit of classical guitar. 00:03:51.306 --> 00:04:08.568 He was coming out of a jazz rock group called no, that was Stuart Curveder so but we were in the punk scene in London and we had to kind of adapt our rather sophisticated musical taste to play a rock band, be a punk band, and that's sort of where it started. 00:04:08.568 --> 00:04:18.810 And this became the venue what's the right word to say, the vessel, I should say because I could play all this stuff. 00:04:19.079 --> 00:04:32.726 And you know, sting sort of had this book of material because he was definitely a songwriter that he sort of kept hidden, and then he'd bring out this massive book and he would look on page 60 if I go, you could try this, this is an odd one, I wrote, and he would start to bring these things out. 00:04:32.726 --> 00:04:36.463 But, um, I could play everything back to front. 00:04:36.463 --> 00:04:50.101 You know, I was a very good guitarist and suddenly the I think what it was was saying was that all these possibilities, suddenly well, they became possible all these things he wouldn't have been doing suddenly were possible to do. 00:04:50.101 --> 00:04:51.865 And and that's kind of how it started. 00:04:51.865 --> 00:05:15.286 It was, you know, kind of a miraculous meeting where we both had come from sort of more sophisticated background but we were in the rock scene and we had to play rock, and then we started to cut our rather sophisticated sensibilities down to being able to do a rock, and that's where the music of the Police

and the guitar approach came from. 00:05:15.976 --> 00:05:18.415 I have a buddy of mine that plays guitar here in St Louis. 00:05:18.415 --> 00:05:22.326 He wanted me to ask you what was going on with the solo in Driven to Tears. 00:05:22.475 --> 00:05:40.365 It's a short, it's a brief solo, but you know the song's got all in the lyric, has all this anguish in it and it seemed to me that the solo shouldn't be just some standard bluesy lick rock solo but should have these sort of angular notes in it. 00:05:40.365 --> 00:05:56.819 You know it should be comprised of something that was more of a shriek rather than you know the blues yet again, like most rock guitarists, and so I, you know, I mean I literally played flattened fifths and ninths in that solo to give it what I thought was the right atmosphere for the song. 00:05:57.341 --> 00:06:01.877 You know you not only for your music, but you know you're very well known for your photography. 00:06:01.877 --> 00:06:04.603 How did those two art forms influence each other for you? 00:06:06.346 --> 00:06:10.762 well, I like the way that you said influence, um, because that's a subtle thing. 00:06:10.762 --> 00:06:11.324 How does it? 00:06:11.324 --> 00:06:17.389 How does I don't know if it did or it didn't, but I mean you, one has one sensibility as an artist or whatever. 00:06:17.389 --> 00:06:18.774 I mean where it started? 00:06:18.774 --> 00:06:20.305 Obviously I started. 00:06:20.305 --> 00:06:22.797 Well, I started with piano lessons when I was six. 00:06:22.797 --> 00:06:42.733 At 11 I got the guitar and became the complete obsession for the lifetime and around the teenage years 14, 15, 16 I started to go to a cinema in my hometown called the continental, which is almost a joke, and they showed all these european art house films. 00:06:42.733 --> 00:06:49.937 So I was looking at truffaut and fellini and berg when my head was filled, obsessed with these black and white art house movies. 00:06:49.937 --> 00:07:06.038 So I think that's where the photography came from and as I sort of like jazz and this more sophisticated music, I think those films influenced me hugely and I saw them all the time and you know I'm still watching them now. 00:07:06.038 --> 00:07:09.966 We've got them on DVD or they're on, you know whatever it is on TV. 00:07:09.966 --> 00:07:16.625 So these were big artistic and cultural things that influenced my thinking absolutely. 00:07:17.086 --> 00:07:21.725 I don't know exactly how they merged, but if you want to see the merge you have to come to my show. 00:07:21.725 --> 00:07:24.644 I'm looking forward to it. 00:07:24.644 --> 00:07:27.494 It's so screamingly logical. 00:07:27.494 --> 00:07:30.435 I don't know why it took me so long to think of the idea. 00:07:30.435 --> 00:07:43.144 I've been doing it about two and a half years now to combine the photography with the music on stage, which of course entails a big screen, and I'm playing solo to all this stuff. 00:07:43.144 --> 00:07:55.802 So you know it's a nice sort of culmination of these things I've been doing for so many years and you know I'm quite pleased about it. 00:07:56.004 --> 00:08:04.980 The latest little well, I'm about to go and do it I've got you know, a number of gigs in september around the country, well, including the one you know about. 00:08:04.980 --> 00:08:18.040 Then I just set up to do a big opening in downtown la, at this marvelous new building that's sort of dedicated to the arts, to do the photography and the music. 00:08:18.040 --> 00:08:21.848 Uh, yeah, so so it just keeps going, you know. 00:08:21.848 --> 00:08:29.461 And you know, obviously I don't do that alone, I have to have technical help, but we've got it all worked out. 00:08:29.461 --> 00:08:31.281 It's like an entity. 00:08:31.281 --> 00:08:35.980 So when I say to my guy, okay, we're going to have to, you know, we'll practice a bit before. 00:08:35.980 --> 00:08:46.945 So literally, in practical terms, I'll go to my studio and I'll probably spend two days standing in front of it and remembering it, all kind of what I do with it. 00:08:46.945 --> 00:08:50.330 You know, but it's there, I just have to, you know, pick it up again. 00:08:51.375 --> 00:08:57.224 I saw a little snippet of some of the show, and I liked how you add the humor to it too as well. 00:08:57.244 --> 00:08:59.447 That's yeah, well, it's become. 00:08:59.447 --> 00:09:02.270 You know, obviously I've got the two on the guitar playing. 00:09:02.270 --> 00:09:10.980 I'm playing all these solos, we've got the great images going by, but I also come out and talk quite a lot and as it's gone on I've got looser and looser to it. 00:09:10.980 --> 00:09:14.457 So I'd said to the manager I might as well just start doing standup Now. 00:09:14.457 --> 00:09:16.041 I think we can abandon the rest. 00:09:16.140 --> 00:09:18.784 I didn't know you were a comedian did you? 00:09:19.505 --> 00:09:20.567 No, that was sort of well. 00:09:20.567 --> 00:09:22.590 I always thought I was a pretty funny guy. 00:09:22.590 --> 00:09:29.373 But now you know, you stand on stage with a mic and the audience and you've got to start talking. 00:09:29.373 --> 00:09:30.840 Buddy, you can't be quiet. 00:09:31.442 --> 00:09:32.259 Right you can't go. 00:09:32.340 --> 00:09:35.278 Oh, I'm playing a guitar, see what you've got. 00:09:35.320 --> 00:09:39.318 Yeah, Well, we're looking forward to the show. 00:09:39.318 --> 00:09:44.086 You know, I had to ask you earlier when you were talking about when you first met Sting and Stuart Copeland. 00:09:44.086 --> 00:09:47.514 You were about 10 years difference, weren't you? 00:09:48.416 --> 00:09:50.504 Yeah, they're older than me, I was just a kid. 00:09:51.736 --> 00:09:52.681 How did that play out? 00:09:52.681 --> 00:09:56.846 Because you were I mean, were you more experienced at the time when you met them? 00:09:57.274 --> 00:10:00.264 Yeah, well you know, I played a bit longer. 00:10:00.264 -->

00:10:06.067 I was a very good musician, you know, I got to a pretty sophisticated stage with guitar playing and all that. 00:10:06.067 --> 00:10:07.980 Stuart was 22. 00:10:07.980 --> 00:10:13.942 And he was a fierce guy, fierce guy, fierce on the drums, but you know, he hadn't played that much. 00:10:14.014 --> 00:10:16.201 Sting was much more parallel to me. 00:10:16.201 --> 00:10:17.726 He, uh was. 00:10:17.726 --> 00:10:19.552 He was actually in a jazz rock band. 00:10:19.552 --> 00:10:21.238 He wasn't playing pop music at all. 00:10:21.238 --> 00:10:26.196 He'd written these songs that were sort of secretly hidden away, but he was really. 00:10:26.196 --> 00:10:28.380 He was a jazz rock bass player. 00:10:28.380 --> 00:10:30.866 He was in a band called last exit I just remembered the name. 00:10:30.866 --> 00:10:35.758 Finally, um, so it was sort of likely but unlikely. 00:10:35.758 --> 00:10:39.548 But as sting and I got to know one another, we found that we had so much in common. 00:10:39.548 --> 00:10:44.767 He, he, he wasn't really a rocker, he was, uh, he'd grow. 00:10:44.767 --> 00:11:00.677 You know, he was a jazz guy and um, but he had this great voice and this just gradually emerged and stuart was going along with it, watching these other two guys who could talk about chords and harmony all day long, to his relentless boredom and um. 00:11:00.677 --> 00:11:08.437 But you know, of course that was, that was the magical meeting and uh, together we were able to do all this stuff. 00:11:08.837 --> 00:11:16.620 You know, it was quite amazing really, uh well you know, you've played so many big venues um what is it? 00:11:16.620 --> 00:11:22.514 About the wiley, an intimate setting like the wiley theater versus the big settings. 00:11:22.514 --> 00:11:23.740 What is it that you like? 00:11:23.799 --> 00:11:24.683 about. 00:11:24.683 --> 00:11:27.514 Well, obviously they're just basically physical characteristics. 00:11:27.514 --> 00:11:34.448 I mean, maybe the show could get bigger, but uh, the sort of smaller, medium-sized boutique theaters. 00:11:34.448 --> 00:11:38.323 You know it's like you're really going to the movies because it's all about the screen. 00:11:38.323 --> 00:11:41.951 Obviously I'm playing on the soundtrack but you're looking at the screen. 00:11:41.951 --> 00:11:46.166 So if you try and do it in a 20 000 seat stadium, brother, ain't gonna work. 00:11:46.166 --> 00:12:01.408 And you know something that's been very nice for me and I was just talking about it to somebody else doing this touring, doing this show, I've got to see all these absolutely beautiful theaters all over the US gorgeous, you know. 00:12:01.408 --> 00:12:06.375 I think with the police we must have just jumped straight past them, because I've never seen these places before. 00:12:06.375 --> 00:12:09.820 Most of them are from the 20s and 30s. 00:12:09.820 --> 00:12:16.268 They're kind of boutique theaters and they're very nice loads of red, velvet and gold and all. 00:12:16.268 --> 00:12:23.711 And they're the right size for me to communicate with the audience instead of like trying to feel steady I can't wait to see the show. 00:12:23.773 --> 00:12:27.182 You know what's one thing a fan has said to you throughout your career? 00:12:27.182 --> 00:12:35.240 That's really stayed with you I'll keep practicing with you, I'll keep practicing. 00:12:35.260 --> 00:12:43.121 Nobody has ever told you that there's a wide vocabulary of things, some of which we can't even talk about on air, so we won't go there. 00:12:43.121 --> 00:12:48.381 But I think if they came backstage which is not normal I don't think they'd come back to like slag me off. 00:12:48.381 --> 00:12:50.486 They would come with compliments. 00:12:51.275 --> 00:12:51.498 Right? 00:12:51.498 --> 00:12:52.466 Well, you know what? 00:12:52.466 --> 00:12:54.017 What I want to thank you for your time today. 00:12:54.017 --> 00:12:54.860 I can't wait to see. 00:12:54.860 --> 00:13:14.168 You'll be at the wiley theater in edwardsville and that is, I believe, september 25th that sounds right, yeah, yeah september, the 25th, but I really appreciate your time, andy, it's a pleasure for me, and I've got one last question to ask you yeah, yeah the house is on fire. 00:13:14.168 --> 00:13:15.558 Which guitar are you grabbing? 00:13:15.759 --> 00:13:19.711 yeah, the telecaster that's the one I I would. 00:13:19.711 --> 00:13:22.298 I would never part with it because I think it was. 00:13:22.298 --> 00:13:28.216 It's just sort of a symbol of that whole success, so I'm never gonna keep. 00:13:28.216 --> 00:13:29.639 Yeah, people want to buy it off me. 00:13:29.639 --> 00:13:31.823 I, I hate that. 00:13:32.465 --> 00:13:33.447 Andy, thank you so much. 00:13:33.447 --> 00:13:34.349 I appreciate you. 00:13:34.349 --> 00:13:41.259 It's been an honor and a pleasure and much success on the rest of this tour for you, and can't wait to see it. 00:13:41.359 --> 00:13:42.441 Yeah, I'll see you there. 00:13:43.102 --> 00:13:43.563 All right brother. 00:13:43.703 --> 00:13:53.644 Thank you, take care, thank you, we'll see you next time.