Police Academy

Andy on the unique chemistry of Sting, Stewart and Summers

“sting could sing over anything so i could go out there”

“As we played gigs in all the shitty little clubs in London, I started to hear that Sting had a fantastic ear: this guy could sing over anything. It turned out that our musical backgrounds were very similar – everything from the Beatles to the blues to classical to Brazilian music. His ears were wide open, so I could start to play chords that the punk bands weren’t playing. For example, I played a Dm11 chord with an Echoplex delay at the beginning of Walking On The Moon, and it was no problem: the singer didn’t say, ‘What the fuck are you playing over there? That’s not rock and roll!’ Sting’s resources matched mine, which meant that I could get out there a bit with the voicings of the chords. I didn’t turn it into jazz; I turned it into something more harmonically interesting rather than the usual major/minor progressions. Stewart found his thing too, as we all did: we all moved into our thing as we rehearsed, until we found the Police sound, although we weren’t looking for one. It just happened through the chemistry of the three of us, and we were able to bring that sound to almost any piece of material.”