The Police- Synchronicity 40th Anniversary- Sting, Stewart Copeland

Arguably the finest, yet the  final, fifth studio recording by the Anglo-American trio The Police, Synchronicity in 1983 put the cuffs on an arresting recorded legacy left by the band. Synchronicity went to #1 sales on both sides of the Atlantic, sold more than eight million in the US alone, was nominated for five Grammys, and won three. Rolling Stone magazine ranks Synchronicity by The Police at #159 on its list of 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

With 1978’s formative Outlandos d’Amour,  the UK breakthrough Regatta de Blanc,  their 1980 worldwide hit Zenyatta Mondatta,  and the more experimental Ghost in the Machine  the following year, you could debate whether the first four  albums by the Anglo-American band The Police  were significant enough, creatively and commercially, to issue a warrant to book them into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Yet this fact is certain: the 1983 Police album  Synchronicity  guaranteed it. Synchronicity was so massively appealing that millions purchased it, as well as the preceding four Police albums, in numbers great enough to place all five on the 1983 sales chart simultaneously at year’s end! Drummer Stewart Copeland, the sole American, figuratively was the Police commissioner in London in 1977, forming the band at the height of the Punk Rock scene, but like guitarist Andy Summers, the veteran of the force, and chief of Police singer/ bass player/ songwriter Sting, none of them were actually spawned by that minimalist scene. In the long tradition of white musicians copping authentic black music, the reggae influences so prominent on those first two Police albums had been homogenized by the time of Synchronicity‘s  June 1983 release enough that the band was not handcuffed by the musical conventions of either punk or reggae on mega-hits “Every Breath You Take”,”King of Pain”,”Wrapped Around Your Finger”, and the title song. There are a few self-appointed online hacks implying that The Police were no more than two side musicians helping to realize the early songs of singer/songwriter Sting, but if you check their credentials, these clueless Justin-come-latelies never actually saw the band. Cops of Rock Stewart Copeland and  Sting open this Police inquiry with me  In the Studio  for the definitive classic rock interview regarding the making  of  Synchronicity. – Redbeard