Sonicbond Publishing [Publication date 12.04.24]

Forming when punk was starting to become a force, The Police – drummer Stuart Copeland, vocalist/bassist Sting and guitarist Andy Summers – released five albums between 1978 and 1983, coupled with a succession of hit singles, including ‘Message In A Bottle’, ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’. The Police split in 1986, with Sting going on to massive solo success, and a reunion tour in the 2000′s broke box office records and remains the finale of the band.

This is second book for Sonicbond Publishing by Peter Braidis, having penned the enjoyable book on Asia published in 2020. He certainly loves the band and music he writes about, covering the early days of the Police when Henry Padovani was briefly the band’s guitarist before Andy Summers joined in 1977.

You knew a band like the Police were onto a good thing back in 1978 as their debut album, ‘Outlandos D’Amour’, which featured three hit singles in ‘Roxanne’, ‘So Lonely’ (with its chorus ‘Feeling Sue Lawley’ a classic mondegreen!) and ‘Can’t Stand Losing You’. They went on to clock up five number one singles in the UK and all bar their debut album, topped the UK album charts. Their final album ‘Synchronicity’ was their biggest seller overall, including topping the album charts in the UK, US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Spain. The album went eight times platinum in the US.

No new interviews but plenty of historic interviews with the band are used throughout the book. Interesting too that the compilations, box sets and live albums are given a decent write up.

A caption on the first photo in the book says ‘nobody can ever replicate the Police’. The author is bang on there, as they were a unique trio who produced many a memorable song, and were never easy to pigeonhole musically straddling rock, pop, reggae, pop rock, punk and new wave with ease.

An interesting read for the casual fan and like any book in the ‘Every album, every song’ series bound to provoke debate amongst fans over the author’s views on each album and songs. For me though it always takes you off to listen to the music described within the pages and reconnect with it, or in many cases listening to it for the first time.

Review by Jason Ritchie

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