HENRY PADOVANI AND THE POLICE
HELLO JANUARY 1977 GOODBYE AUGUST 1977
It started with punk, nappies and jazz-rock: love songs and professionalism showed the exit door.
I was born in Corsica and didn’t speak much English but I was really into rock’n’roll so I came to London in December 1976. One of the first people I met was Stewart Copeland, who was playing drums in the progressive band Curved Air, who were splitting up. I was asked to join a band called London and phoned Stewart to tell him. He said, “What? Don’t you want to join my new band? ” I said, “You haven’t asked me.” He said, “I’m asking you now.” Sting had moved to London from Newcastle, and we invited him to try out on bass at Stewart’s squat in Mayfair. He turned up with his baby in a cot and was wearing dungarees; we were looking mean in leathers and shades. We started to play and everything was cool – and then the baby woke up. I offered to feed him, and after that Sting and I became instant friends. We weren’t punks, but Stewart realised there was something going on and we had to jump on it. He wrote a ‘punk’ song called Fall Out, which we spent three weeks learning before recording it at Pathways studios in February. Sting didn’t have a say in it, really, he was into jazz-rock. The single cost us £180, which we borrowed from my friend Paul Mulligan, but it got really bad reviews. Mick Jagger said in the NME it was a terrible song. Sting’s wife, Frances Tomelty, was putting pressure on him; they were living with the baby in one room in Kensington. So when there was an opportunity for Sting and Stewart to play gigs with Mike Howlett in Strontium 90, it meant we had some money for The Police. The guitarist in the group was Andy Summers, who was about 10 years older than us, and a bit boring, but a very good musician with lots of contacts, so he started playing with us. Sting saw no future in punk and was going to leave to play on a cruise ship with his old jazz-rock band Last Exit, but when Andy joined things changed. Sting would play us songs like Don’t Give Up Your Daytime Job, and Stewart would be like, “Jesus Christ, you should be writing something more like, ‘Kill the fucking boss!’” Sting had Roxanne and Stewart would go, “Jesus, another love song!” But Andy really liked them, so though that changed the power balance in the band, Stewart managed to keep Andy and Sting. Andy and I were very different – I was out every night, I knew everyone on the punk scene, City Limits voted me ‘Ligger of the Year’! I ended up having a huge altercation with him in France at the [second] Mont de Marsan festival [on August 5, 1977]. While he was practising his scales in the dressing room, I was looking around for an amplifier to play, I was a bit more street level than him. I managed to get a Marshall and he couldn’t find anything so we had a terrible row. A week later we did a session with John Cale producing. He really liked me but he didn’t like Andy and there was another big argument over who should play the guitar solo. Cale said, “Look, Henry, leave this band, they’re a bunch of idiots.” We had a meeting to discuss our future and Andy brought to the table some gigs in Germany, which he’d only do if I didn’t go. I knew Sting’s problems and I cared about him, so I said, “Look, go without me.” I went back to Corsica and then on my return immediately joined Wayne County & The Electric Chairs, which was great fun, and the start of a long musical career for me, with The Flying Padovanis and others. When The Police did make it big [in 1979], I was just really happy for them. To this day, Sting and Stewart are like my brothers. They both played on my last album, A Croire Que C’Etait Pour La Vie, which kind of started off the Police’s 2007 reunion, so it is really good that the circle was completed. Pat Gilbert
Henry Padovani’s new album, I Love Today, is out via Repertoire on July 1.