Andy Summers of The Police is about to embark on his The Cracked Lens and A Missing String tour, and he’s here to tell me about it.
He told me about when his love of photography started. He said it was many decades ago between female photographers when the band started around 1979 and as a teenager seeing arthouse films in England. “I loved them, it was actually an education for me.” He said he shot black and white film to start.
I also asked him about what it feels like to be in the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. I got the feeling he’s not a huge fan. “I have no feeling for it at all. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” He said as a band, they got a lot of awards, and this was another one on the list. As far as who he thinks should get in there he replied “I’m not really interested in things like that.” He went on to give more thoughts on the Rock Hall.
I have all the Police albums on vinyl, so I thought I’d ask him which album he’d tell someone to listen to first out of their five. Pretty much without hesitation, he said “The second one, “Zenyatta Mondatta”, yeah.” He said the band was clicking together. “It was the early days, we sorta learned how to play together. We played all the time. The wind of success was really with us early” He went on “That’s where I felt we hadn’t gotten too polished. We hadn’t gotten too bored with being so successful. ” He spoke to the third album and how it was recorded much differently.
“It’s amazing we made five whole albums, to get that far, without really repeating anything.” He said some bands get caught in ruts and repeat themselves on other albums they make.
-Meltdown-