\u201cNo, it wasn\u2019t a photo of my bandmate.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then a mischievous grin spreads across his face and he says; \u201cI wrote \u2018F*** Off You C***,\u2019 across the four tom-toms in Sharpie\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ah, right. Glad we cleared that up. Myth busted.<\/p>\n
He chuckles at the memory before insisting that the salty message \u201cwasn\u2019t aimed at the person downstage right\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was addressed to me,\u201d he clarifies. \u201cA personal provocation. There was an idle moment in the sound check when they were noodling over the guitar sound, and I was just sitting there…\u201d<\/p>\n
Almost as an afterthought, he adds; \u201cI thought it was rather poetic. I\u2019ve still got the Sharpie\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stewart Copeland wrote ‘a personal provocation’ on his toms.<\/p>\n
Copeland is a natural raconteur, playing up his verbose tendencies with good humour and a roguish energy and appearance that belies his 73 years. <\/p>\n
This will all serve him well when he brings his speaking tour Have I Said Too Much? to Auckland and Wellington in January.<\/p>\n
\u201cI may not be banging my drums, but I will be banging on,\u201d he jokes about the show, which is half his rock and roll stories and half audience Q&A.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my favourite part,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cPeople ask you the shit that they really want to hear about. It\u2019s unexpected.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show marks the first time he\u2019s been to Aotearoa since The Police\u2019s world reunion tour in 2008.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw Rage Against the Machine play the night before we did,\u201d he says, revealing both excellent taste and that the three-piece must have been out and about amongst the crowd at that year\u2019s Big Day Out music festival.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe got haka-ed at the airport, which was memorable.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know, the haka works for me,\u201d he continues. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see clips of it on Instagram or something like that, I always choke up. I always get a lump. <\/p>\n
\u201cParticularly when I see white people doing it because it shows respect for the indigenous culture that was already in New Zealand when they got there. <\/p>\n
\u201cSeeing that relationship with the pre-existing culture feels good. It\u2019s inspiring. It\u2019s something that really impresses me about New Zealand culture. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever I see the women\u2019s rugby team, or a woman in parliament doing the haka and they\u2019re getting into it, it chokes me up every time.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I see clips of it on Instagram or something like that, I always choke up,” Copeland says of watching the haka. <\/p>\n
As a drummer, Copeland stands tall in the pantheon of all-time greats. His energetic, endlessly inventive grooves fused the syncopated polyrhythms of the Middle East, where he grew up, with the off-beat swing and space of reggae and dub, recontextualising them into a Western pop rock format. <\/p>\n
The result powered The Police to more than 75 million album sales off the back of hits like Roxanne, Don\u2019t Stand So Close to Me and Every Breath You Take.<\/p>\n
As influential as his unique style is, his approach was also the source of friction between him and the band\u2019s songwriter Sting. <\/p>\n
As a drummer, Copeland hated his grooves to be set in stone. He wanted freedom within a song to mix things up and react. Much to the chagrin of his bandmate. <\/p>\n
\u201cMany, many tears have been shed on that very point,\u201d he cheerfully admits.<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin The Police, there were two of us with entirely different agendas. I want to bang my drums and be inspired by raging guitar. That interaction, that mud fight, that\u2019s what I play music for. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not about the song. It\u2019s about the band. Within The Police, there was another member who saw himself as a \u2018songwriter\u2019. <\/p>\n
\u201cIn fact, he was quite a prodigious, important songwriter. The composer of one of the biggest songs of all time. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a person for whom the song is boss, and the band is there to serve the song. My attitude conflicts with this idea. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy humble opinion is that although songs are very valuable \u2014 and we would have got nowhere without good songs \u2014 the songs are there to serve the band. The songs are there to make the band look cool. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not banging drums to make some song sound meaningful. I never listened to the words. I couldn\u2019t give a s*** what a song meant. F*** the song!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Police lead singer Sting, guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland performing in Auckland, 2008.<\/p>\n
He laughs at his own rant, before saying that through band therapy he and Sting were able to stop \u201cscreaming at each other\u201d and learn to appreciate that the source of their creative clashing was, \u201cgood, honest, artistic reasons\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe approach music differently. We\u2019re on different missions, seeking to achieve different goals. When we were young, that conflict was our secret sauce. In fact, it was a big ingredient of our success.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knew where the short and curlies were,\u201d he chuckles at one point. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe could do much more damage with words than we could wrestling.\u201d <\/p>\n
I\u2019m a little surprised by the affection that emanates from Copeland when discussing The Police and their combative personal relationships given he and guitarist Andy Summers are currently suing Sting over claims they are owed \u201cmillions in lost royalties\u201d, the one topic that\u2019s off limits in our interview. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were living the dream. Achieving everything that we ever could have possibly imagined and more. And yet there was a strange sense of disquiet.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was a pervading anxiety about it all. You could describe it as social vertigo,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur persona became exaggerated. All three of us were strangely uncomfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n
He pauses for a moment, the one time during our interview where he goes quiet. Then Stewart Copeland says; \u201cI enjoy looking back on it much more than I did living it\u201d.<\/p>\n
Stewart Copeland performs Have I Said Too Much? The Police, Hollywood and Other Adventures at Wellington\u2019s Opera House on January 20, and Auckland\u2019s Bruce Mason Centre on January 21. Visit birdsrobe.com for tickets<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cNo, it wasn\u2019t a photo of my bandmate.\u201d Then a mischievous grin spreads across his face and he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73016,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[95,57436,57443,13243,156,57439,5420,293,57440,111,139,69,90,675,57441,1527,57438,6934,57437,57442,6642,223,61,208,11744],"class_list":["post-73015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-and","tag-copeland","tag-drum","tag-drummer","tag-entertainment","tag-headlinegrabbing","tag-hes","tag-his","tag-karl","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-on","tag-police","tag-puschmann","tag-return","tag-stages","tag-stewart","tag-sting","tag-swapped","tag-tells","tag-the","tag-to","tag-tour","tag-upcoming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73015\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}