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An Arresting New Development - Page 6

© Greg Camden

When work was begun on Reggatta de Blanc on February 13, 1979, Sting had recently written no less than three soon-to-be classics: "The Bed's Too Big Without You," "Walking On the Moon," and "Message in a Bottle." But initially the band was not entirely focused. The four weeks of recording time they anticipated needing to record the album was to be broken up into sections, two of which would be separated by yet another low-budget American tour. Before that, though, there had been an interesting development. As the story was told in The Police Files, the band's official newsletter of 1980-1981: A record shop owner in Austin, Texas, had taken a strong liking to "Roxanne" and had kept on and on at the DJ at the local radio station until he played it. Immediately, the station was inundated with phone calls from listeners asking them to play it again. The record climbed up the local charts and other radio stations got to hear of it as a result, causing the single to take off in one region after another. Although it didn't get very high in the main American charts, it nevertheless brought The Police to the attention of a wide audience and paved the way for the success of their next American tour.

When they re-arrived there in March for a 24-date tour, they were delighted to find "Roxanne" climbing on the US singles charts, eventually peaking at #32 in April. Seeing that Miles's strategy was paying off, A&M re-released "Roxanne" that same month and "Can't Stand Losing You" the next. The former (on which the BBC ban had been lifted) quickly rose to #12 in the UK—and pulled the album to #6 (#23 in the US). The band made their debut appearance on the influential "Top of the Pops" on April 25, and it seemed that they had, finally, made it: "Can's Stand Losing You" shot straight up to #2.

It was just at this time, though, that the band needed to use their newly found momentum to really move forward, and so in June they again interrupted their recording of Reggatta de Blanc and embarked on a world tour—this time as headliners. The British leg of the tour culminated August 24 with the band's closing the first day of the annual three-day Reading Rock Festival (future superstar band The Cure being one of the bands on the underbill) to a crowd of 20,000—by far the largest to which they'd been exposed. "I felt like God," Sting would later say, "and I loved it." It was also during this tour that he realized he'd truly arrived on the music scene. "When we did our first big English tour, when Roxanne was #16 in the charts," he told New Music Express in 1981, "I was sitting in my hotel bedroom in Stoke, and they were painting out in the corridor. 'RO-OX-ANNE . . . 'Ere, Bill pass us that yellow paint will you? YOU DON'T HAVE TO SELL YOUR . . .' I thought, Blimey, I've done it! I loved that."

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