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An Arresting New Development - Page 5

© Greg Camden

On October 20 The Police played their first-ever show in America—at CBGB, the legendary New York punk club. "I'd never been to America—America was a dream for me. The first night I arrived from London, they drove us to the Bowery. The streets were steaming and full of bums. [. . . W]here CBGBs [sic] is, it isn't one of the best streets. I thought, 'Man, this is incredible, it's like Hades!' And the club is even worse. And we go onstage and we tear the place up. We really thought, 'Fuck it, we've got to survive here.'" Being that part of the deal Miles had made with A&M was that the band would pay for its own American tour, the three band members and their entourage of one (Kim Turner, by now the band's co-manager) traveled as cheaply as possible—which included carrying their instruments as hand luggage and sharing cheap hotel rooms and van-driving duties. "We were a tough little unit. We carried the gear, we drove hundreds and hundreds of miles, we slept in the same bed. It was like being at war. We were out there fighting a war[. . . .]" The Police would end up playing 24 shows in 27 days, usually earning about $200 per show and each band member getting a $20 per diem. "After 12 weeks of touring, I brought my wife back ten American dollars. I said, 'That's it.'"

After the tour The Police returned to England (in time to play a November 25 show at the Electric Ballroom in London) and were disappointed to find that Outlandos d'Amour (released in November, along with another single, "So Lonely," which did not chart) was not selling exceptionally well, so they filled out the year by taking yet another supporting spot on a British tour and spending about three weeks in Germany (with Schoener again (at his Laser Theatre) and, prophetically enough, to appear in a TV show called Scene '79) before setting to work on a second album, all the while not knowing that Miles's strategy was paying off: airplay of "Roxanne" was spreading from one American radio station to another.

It is often said that musicians' first albums often end up being their best, because they are comprised of the very cream of the crop of material written by the artist(s) in question during all of the years between when they first began to write songs and when they got a recording contract. This seemingly could have been the case with The Police, especially considering that its primary songwriter—namely, Sting—was 25 and had about a decade of songwriting experience when their debut album was recorded. And, in fact, it was true that some of that album's best material (e.g., "Next to You" and "So Lonely") was culled from the many songs Sting had written long before he'd ever heard of Stewart Copeland. However, the quickly-released follow-up to Outlandos d'Amour would eventually quell all notions of The Police being but the latest victims of the music industry's infamous sophomore jinx.

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