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Diving back to 1980 this weekend for a concert by one of those defining bands of the late 70s/early 80s
The Police managed to straddle the non-conventional Punk and New Wave audience with the more mainstream Pop Music audience to become of the biggest selling and most popular bands in the world during the 70’s and early 80’s.
A bit of background via Wikipedia:
The Police formed in London in 1977. Within a few months of their first gig, the line-up settled as Sting (lead vocals, bass guitar, primary songwriter), Andy Summers (guitar) and Stewart Copeland (drums, percussion), and remained unchanged for the rest of the band’s history. The Police became globally popular in the late 1970s and early to mid 1980s. Emerging in the British new wave scene, they played a style of rock influenced by punk, reggae, and jazz.
Their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d’Amour, reached No. 6 on the UK Albums Chart on the strength of the singles “Roxanne” and “Can’t Stand Losing You”. Their second album, Reggatta de Blanc (1979), became the first of four consecutive No. 1 studio albums in the UK and Australia; its first two singles, “Message in a Bottle” and “Walking on the Moon”, became their first UK number ones. Their next two albums, Zenyatta Mondatta (1980) and Ghost in the Machine (1981), led to further critical and commercial success with two songs, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” and “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic”, becoming UK number-one singles and Top 5 hits in other countries; the former album was their breakthrough into the US reaching number five on the US Billboard 200.
Their final studio album, Synchronicity (1983), was No. 1 in the UK, Canada, Australia, Italy and the US, selling over 8 million copies in the US. Its lead single, “Every Breath You Take”, became their fifth UK number one, and only US number one. During this time, the band were considered one of the leaders of the Second British Invasion of the US; in 1983 Rolling Stone labelled them “the first British New Wave act to break through in America on a grand scale, and possibly the biggest band in the world”. The Police disbanded in 1986, periodically reuniting for one-off performances before fully reuniting in early 2007 for a world tour that ended in August 2008. They were the world’s highest-earning musicians in 2008, due to their reunion tour, which was the highest-grossing tour of 2007.
This week’s concert was recorded on May 5, 1980 at the completion of their latest tour and in Sting’s hometown of Newcastle. The audience is sold out and the energy is high. And for the next hour or so, you get to hear why they were such a popular band.
