The Police - Outlandos d'Amour
On November 2, 1978, "Outlandos d'Amour", the debut album by the band "The Police", was released.
The story of one of the most revolutionary and successful power trios in the history of popular music begins in late 1976, when London was ablaze with the punk revolution. American drummer Stewart Copeland, who had returned to Britain after the breakup of the progressive rock band "Curved Air", realized that the winds of change were changing and sought to form a lean, fast, and punchy band that would fit the new era. During an earlier tour of northern England, he had been exposed to the local jazz-fusion band Last Exit from Newcastle, and had made a name for himself with their charismatic lead singer and bass player, a former primary school teacher named Gordon Sumner, who earned the nickname Sting because of the black and yellow striped sweater he wore that reminded his friends of a bee. In January 1977, immediately after Sting moved to London, the two teamed up with young Corsican guitarist Henry Padovani and formed the first incarnation of the band "The Police", a name chosen by Copeland out of a desire to create a catchy, authoritative and defiant brand that would fit well into the London club scene. As early as February 1977, the trio entered Pathway Studios in London and recorded their independent debut single "Fall Out" on a tiny budget of £150, which was released on the independent label Illegal Records, founded by the brother of the band's drummer, the astute manager Miles Copeland.
The musical turning point that transformed the band from an immature punk band into a virtuoso music machine occurred in May 1977, when "Gong" bassist Mike Howlett invited Sting and Copland to participate in a one-off project in Paris under the name Strontium 90. They were joined by an experienced 34-year-old British guitarist named Andy Summers, who was a decade older than his new friends and had a rich resume that included playing with "Zoot Money's Big Roll Band", "Soft Machine", Eric Burdon and Kevin Ayers. The musical chemistry between Summers, Sting and Copland was immediate and electric, and Summers immediately realized that the combination of Sting's high voice and melodic bass playing with Copland's rhythmic and explosive drumming held enormous potential that only needed a guitarist with a wide harmonic vocabulary. After a brief period in which the band performed as a quartet, in August 1977 Padovani left the band, and Summers became the trio's sole guitarist, giving the band its distinctive sound based on airy intervals, complex jazz chords, and echo and flanger effects that replaced the usual walls of distortion of the era.
The road to their debut album was strewn with financial difficulties and a struggle to survive against the British music press, which was suspicious of three overly skilled musicians trying to ride the punk wave. In early 1978, penniless and in desperate need of money for rent and equipment, the three accepted an offer to appear in a television commercial for Wrigley's chewing gum directed by Tony Scott, brother of director Ridley Scott, on the one condition that they dye their hair platinum blonde. The commercial itself was shelved and never aired, but the bleached hair overnight became the trio's iconic trademark. With no record company to back them, Miles Copeland convinced brothers Chris Gray and Nigel Gray, who had set up a 16-track recording studio in the attic of an old dairy in the town of Leatherhead, Surrey, called Surrey Sound Studios, to allow the band to record on credit during off-hours for a total budget of just £1,500. The album was recorded in sections between January and September 1978, with Nigel Gray serving as sound engineer and helping to shape the record's dry, sharp, and intimate sound. The band originally considered calling the album "Police Brutality", but after Miles Copeland heard the romantic and commercial potential of the new songs, he came up with the name "Outlandos d'Amour", a garbled French term meaning outlaws or love commandos.
(Photo: A&M Records)
The album opens with a bang with "Next to You", a punk adrenaline bomb in which the band proves that they can play faster and more aggressively than any other London punk band, but with breathtaking precision and a cutting slide guitar solo by Summers in the middle of the song. It is immediately followed by the stylistic turn that defined the band's revolution with "So Lonely", a track in which Sting takes the chord skeleton of Bob Marley's classic "No Woman, No Cry" and brilliantly merges it between verses with a hypnotic and spacious reggae rhythm and an explosive rock chorus, with Summers contributing a melodic and electric guitar solo that became one of the album's highlights.
The third song on the album is also the moment when the band's history changed forever. "Roxanne" was born in October 1977 in Paris, when the band was staying in a cheap hotel on Georges Le Jacques Street near the city's red-light district, and Sting drew inspiration from the image of street prostitutes and hence Cyrano de Bergerac's lover from an old theater poster that hung in the hotel lobby. The song was originally written as a slow bossa nova, but Copland suggested changing the rhythm to a broken and bouncy tango-reggae. At the beginning of the recording in the studio, Sting accidentally sat down on the piano keyboard that was standing in the room and burst out laughing, and the band decided to leave the dissonant chord and laughter at the beginning of the final recording. When Miles Copeland first heard the song, he realized he had a huge hit on his hands, and quickly signed the band to A&M Records. Although the single was initially banned from airing on the BBC due to its charged subject matter, it gained tremendous momentum on radio stations in the United States in the spring of 1979 and catapulted the entire album to the top of the world charts.
The first side continues with the funkier, darker side of the trio with "Hole in My Life", built around a meandering bass line by Sting, virtuoso cymbal and rimshot work by Copeland, and floating chords by Summers, and closes the first side with "Peanuts", a joint song by Sting and Copeland that combines cynical humor and sharp transitions between light reggae and rhythmic rock outbursts. The second side opens with the other huge hit "Can't Stand Losing You", which became the band's first single to enter the British charts despite a public outcry over the original single's cover, which showed Copeland standing on a melting block of ice with a noose around his neck, following the direct lyrics dealing with the suicide threats of a heartbroken teenager.
The uncompromising energy continues on the fast and melodic "Truth Hits Everybody", where Copland's dizzying drumming meets Summers' shimmering guitar lines, and continues into the generational anthem "Born in the 50's", where Sting considers the coming-of-age experience of a generation born in the shadow of World War II and found its voice in the rock and punk revolution of the late 1970s. Towards the end, the band presents the comedic and theatrical experiment "Be My Girl - Sally", which combines a short pop song by Sting with a surreal and humorous monologue written and recited by Summers about a lonely man who purchases an inflatable sex doll, accompanied by a British music hall-style piano. The album closes with "Masoko Tanga", a nearly six-minute psychedelic and hypnotic reggae-punk jam in which Sting improvises meaningless syllables over a sweeping Afro-Caribbean groove, which demonstrates the artistic freedom and absolute technical mastery of the three musicians.
The iconic album cover, shot by renowned punk and new wave photographer Janette Beckman and designed with the colorful logo on a black background, immortalized the three band members in their rough street look just before they became the biggest superstars on the planet. Although "Outlandos d'Amour" received mixed reviews upon its release in November 1978 from critics who found it difficult to digest the combination of supreme musical professionalism and punk aesthetics, the band's uncompromising American tour in a rented van and their legendary performances at New York's CBGB club turned the tide. The album climbed to number six on the British charts and number twenty-three on the American Billboard charts, reaching platinum status and establishing a new formula for modern rock of the 1980s, in which just three musicians sounded like a full orchestra and forever changed the face of world pop and rock.
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