It’s one of the biggest tours of the year, but apparently some of the kinks have yet to be worked out. The Police finished two nights in Vancouver on Wednesday, and Billboard reports the next day drummer Stewart Copeland wrote a surprisingly frank follow-up on his website, detailing a whole variety of missed cues, false starts, and general screwups:
Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit, and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of rock. Never Mind. Next song is going to be great… But it isn’t.
They go on to swap a verse and chorus of “Synchronicity,” miss the opening to “Message In A Bottle,” and make a “twelve-tone hodgepodge” out of “Don’t Stand So Close To Me.” This is of course after Copeland trips getting on stage and then hits the opening gong at the wrong time. The post is actually highly entertaining, like some sort of slapstick sitcom or an episode of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” and it’s kind of nice to know even mega-superstars have bad days. In true sitcom style, everything works out in the end, as the threesome “fall into each other’s arms laughing hysterically.” Phew – you never know if Sting’s about to pull out his Dune laser gun and start mowing people down.
