Synchronicity was the Polices biggest album. Did it kill the band?

In December 1982, the Police flew to the Caribbean to record their fifth album. The executives at A&M Records were excited. A year earlier, the trio had leavened their raw, guitar-driven sound with moody keyboards and skronky saxophone fills for their fourth album, “Ghost in the Machine,” generating hit singles like “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” and “Spirits in the Material World.” Suddenly, they were filling arenas.

But the atmosphere at AIR Studios, on the island of Montserrat, quickly turned sour. Guitarist Andy Summers sniffed at lead singer Sting’s demo of “Every Breath You Take” as cheesy pop, not worthy of a band he still insisted was a guitar trio. Drummer Stewart Copeland bristled when the singer tried to give him orders. And Sting, who had been contemplating going solo, was tired of pretending this was still a democracy: Why were they arguing about whose songs were best? Wasn’t it obvious? Even their typically unflappable producer tried to flee the island at one point.

These were the circumstances under which the Police recorded one of the most popular records of the 20th century. This oral history of “Synchronicity” comes as UMe/Polydor releases an illuminating box set on July 26, featuring a remaster of the 1983 original as well as never-released outtakes, demos and live recordings. Sting was interviewed in person in New York, Copeland and Summers in Los Angeles. Responses have been edited for space and clarity.

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Copeland, a drummer for prog-rockers Curved Air, and Sting, singer and bassist from jazz-rockers Last Exit, connect in 1976 and decide to try to make it in London’s exploding punk scene. Initially, they tap Henry Padovani, a snarling, black-leathered guitarist from Corsica, as the third in their trio.

Copeland: He was the only bona fide punk. Everybody loved Henry. They were suspicious of Sting and put up their shields when I started talking.

Padovani: [Copeland] wanted to put a punk band together, and you just don’t do that. It doesn’t work. You’re either a punk band or you’re not. But trying to sort of dress as punks, act as punks, that sort of cred didn’t work, so the Police was really struggling.

Sting: I like bossa nova. I like, you know, ninth chords and sixths and flat fifths.

Copeland: I learned later that Sting had always had these songs. I don’t know why he never mentioned them. We’re playing my s--- songs. How come he didn’t say, “Dude, I got a better song here”?

Sting: Because Henry couldn’t play the songs I’d written. … For some reason, it was me who was given the job to fire Henry. And it was very difficult. But he was very gentlemanly and was very understanding.

They meet Summers at a recording session.

Copeland: Andy was super cool. Not a gregarious person. We heard Andy playing with that clarity, with this huge vocabulary, with his dynamic charisma on guitar. The music coming out of that instrument lit us up.

Nile Rodgers, super-producer and Chic guitarist: Andy had an amazing tone. He’s a great player. [Rodgers croons a line from “Walking on the Moon.”] The sound of that band is that incredible phasing, flange sound. If you take away that guitar sound, you don’t have the Police.

Kathy Valentine, the Go-Go’s bassist: I saw them at Madam Wong’s on their very first tour. And there was nobody like them. The Police were really different because they were virtuosos. They had this kind of worldliness and sophistication that I didn’t see in any other band. I don’t think of them as fake punks. I looked at punk rock as being very open.

Bill Flanagan, author and former MTV executive: I went to a record store appearance they did [in Boston]. The manager said, “Well, you can each take 10 cassettes,” or something. And they flipped out. They all went for [jazz-fusion band] Return to Forever and Miles Davis. And I remember thinking, wow, that’s interesting. … But then, of course, it made sense. So many of the new wave bands were a little older than you thought they would be. The Clash and the Cars and the Ramones, Talking Heads.

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After the third Police album, “Zenyatta Mondatta,” becomes the first to crack the Billboard Top 10 in the U.S., the bandmates replace their original producer — Nigel Gray, a physician who had started a recording studio as a hobby — for Padgham, who had recorded hits for XTC and Phil Collins, with his reverb-laden “In the Air Tonight.”

Copeland: We never got into a fistfight. ... The reason why we’re screaming at each other is because we both give a s---.

Summers: Great art, great music doesn’t come out of a mellow band. You don’t want mellow. Avoid it. It’s all that tension and creative differences that make it. What is music? I always said it’s the sound of a very tight compromise.

Sting: If we had had more in common … we would have been together the same way the E Street Band were together. We have completely different backgrounds. Andy’s from Bournemouth, in the south of England. That’s a genteel part of the world. I’m from Newcastle. Stewart was brought up in Beirut with the CIA. His dad was one of the founding members of the OSS. So it’s a false family, really.

Miles Copeland, Stewart’s brother and manager of the Police: Stewart knew that Sting’s songs made the Police. That it was really more about Sting than any of the other two. So there was the intellectual Stewart, who understood 100 percent the reality then. Then there was the emotional Stewart. … The Police was his — nobody [else] had anything to do with it, it was all him. It was totally irrational.

Summers: I like the second album, “Reggatta de Blanc,” because I thought that’s where we were still raw. There was so much energy in the tracks. I felt that’s where we really became the Police. By the third, there’s all sorts of politics and pressure. By the fourth album, this is getting difficult, you know? And the fifth album, it’s almost impossible for us to come together.

Sting: I think it was in 1981, I played the Secret Policeman’s Other Ball in London for Amnesty [International]. And I sang “Message in a Bottle” on my own and “Roxanne” on my own, with guitar. And I thought, I can do this on my own. And I enjoyed doing it on my own. And so that just gave me the idea. I didn’t act on it for another three years.

Copeland: Sometime during “Zenyatta” was when I got the feeling that he was feeling that way. By the way, I was saying that in my secret diaries in 1978.

Kathy Schenker, former A&M vice president and Sting’s former longtime manager: I think a little bit of him felt an obligation to Stewart, for really plucking him out of obscurity. And the money was appealing. And the other thing was an uncertainty. I mean, he’s always liked risk. He’s always been drawn to challenging himself. But that was really an unknown. And there were very few other major members of a group that were going off on their own and making it.

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After some unaccustomed time off between albums — Sting starred in a movie, Summers recorded with a side-project combo — the Police reunited in Monserrat for “Synchronicity.” Sting brought a set of new songs inspired by Hungarian journalist Arthur Koestler’s writings on paranormal phenomena.

Padgham: We started trying to record and, after about a week, if not 10 days, we did not have one backing track. If somebody had come down to the studio and said, “Play a song,” there wasn’t anything to play.

Sting: A band starts off, and no one’s roles are clearly defined. In this case, it was Stewart’s band, and he was the drummer, and Andy was the great guitarist, but the currency of the band was songs. … So that creates a lot of tension, because every song that comes onto the table has to go through the process. So they would write as much as I was writing, but they weren’t … they weren’t good enough, frankly.

Padgham: The deal was that Andy and Stewart had to have a song of theirs on the album.

Sting: So we get “Mother.”

Copeland: He and Hugh Padgham have said, “It was hard telling Andy and Stewart that their songs were crap.” And Sting said, “It’s like telling somebody their girlfriend’s ugly.” Well, just for the record, those ugly girlfriends of mine, rejected by the band in Monserrat, got me a Golden Globe nomination and a Grammy nomination as the score for “Rumble Fish.” … I regret that I didn’t support Andy more. But then again. Sting’s right about one thing. He’s wrong that the other songs were crap. Except for “Mother.”

Summers: You know, f--- Sting. That’s all I can tell you. I was listening to Captain Beefheart, and that’s what I wanted to do, something like that. During that period I wrote songs that were better than his. But he would take the upper whip hand because he was a singer and go, “Well, I’m not doing anything.”

Padgham: Sometimes I was just so depressed working with them. I remember going out to the studio and ringing up my manager and saying, “I don’t know if I can handle this.”

Copeland: “Synchronicity” was the one where it really got to the point where we felt, we’re not going to succeed here. And I could be wrong. I mean, my bruised feelings told me, my analysis was: They hate me. They want me out.

Summers: It reached a point where we thought, f---, we needed somebody else to come. And we need a producer, and George Martin, the owner of AIR, was on the island at the time. We’ll just get George Martin. We’re big enough. He’ll come to produce us. The studio is on a hill. And then there’s this valley. And then George was over on the other side. So I get the job. Walking through the f---ing jungle, fighting off everything in the way until I got to George Martin’s house. The maid opens the door, and he’s very much like an admiral. A well-spoken English chap. So I have a cup of tea, telling him we’re having a really hard time of it. Can’t get along. Would you come and produce? “I think it’s going to be all right.” Reassuring me. And this is coming from on high — the producer of the Beatles. “I think when you go back, it’s all going to work out.” So I trudge all the way back into the studio, get back there, and they’re still there. And for some reason, there’d been a sort of a shift. Suddenly, we were very polite to one another and we were very nice. And that’s the way the rest of the record went on.

Padgham: My recollection is that Miles was summoned to the island for a meeting, and we actually had a meeting around the swimming pool. And I think it sort of ended up with a vote: Do we carry on making this album, or do we stop?

Copeland: Well, we all listened to Miles. And if Miles came down, I guess it brought us down to earth and brought us each out of our silo and to not be grumbling to ourselves about the injustices of the world and of the band, but having to actually … so what’s the next song?

Sting recorded multitrack demos of his ideas, in which he provided all the instrumentals and vocals, and presented them to the group. They included a keyboard ballad called “Every Breath You Take,” the driving title track and “O My God,” a song he first recorded almost a decade earlier with his previous band, Last Exit.

Sting: I had a little Casio keyboard that only played a single note. That’s what I played on “Spirits in the Material World.” That melody is me on a Casio that cost $25. And then I got a Prophet-6 [synthesizer]. It has all these string sounds. … I got a Synclavier after that. That was state of the art in a sequencer. And I loved that. I mean, that song “Walking in Your Footsteps” was me having fun sequencing. So the songs weren’t created in the band. They were created outside.

Jeff Ayeroff, former A&M Records senior vice president: I actually was in the studio when “Every Breath You Take” was recorded, and Sting does his vocal for it. I heard it on a demo, and it was like, “Okay, that’s going to be the first single.”

Padgham: Stewart was very anti-“Every Breath You Take” because Stewart wanted to play his style of drumming on it and Sting didn’t. You know Sting wanted it more like the demo, which was, like, very, very simple.

Copeland: But that’s not what actually happened. Eventually I totally bought into the notion of: It’s not a drum-set track, it’s a hypnotic rhythm track. There are timpani, there are drum overdubs, there’s a gong drum, there’s cymbal swells. There’s all kinds of cool.

Summers: What I remember is the demo. … Up and down the f---ing keyboard, and f---ing the absolute antithesis of what the Police were. We were a guitar trio. That was it. I didn’t think it was great. And Sting and Stewart could not agree on it at all. Where’s the kick drum and the bass going to be? You know, there was just no consensus at all. Finally, we had lunch one day and Sting says, “Go on. Go make it your own.” We came back in the afternoon, and I played the chords. Everybody stood up in the control room. Cheered. That was it.

Flanagan: “Every Breath You Take” is like “Hey Jude.” It’s just an undeniable song that’s bigger than anything they could ever do, anything they could ever do afterward.

Copeland: [“King of Pain”] is probably my favorite song on the record. I love the lyric. It’s so poignant, and it’s so honest and so Sting. I love that song. That is one of my favorite songs that he ever wrote. I didn’t do anything special with that at all. Just put a backbeat on it.

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Ayeroff, wanting to upgrade the band’s promotional tools, hires musicians-turned-video producers Kevin Godley and Lol Creme and shows them a black-and-white film of jazzman Lester Young for inspiration.

Ayeroff: In England, they were like a pop band. For us, the Police was an important band, not a pop band. I wanted to basically get away from that kind of dismissible video — which I think colored their seriousness and didn’t have any gravitas — and try and do something that has some gravitas. And MTV was the pipeline to every kid in America.

Godley: They wanted something that was very classic and went in the complete opposite direction of what you might imagine a typical music video was at that period of time … all glossy and bright colors and fast-cutting and everything. We didn’t want that.

Ayeroff: A friend of mine, Leslie Libman, showed me a film called “Jammin’ the Blues” by Gjon Mili. He was a famous photographer, and it was a video from the ’30s or ’40s.

Sting: I love the black-and-white. I thought it was very classy. I thought we all look great. We made it at Charlie Chaplin’s soundstage and on the A&M lot. Trudie [Styler, his future wife] visited. It was the first time she had come to America. She met Herb Alpert and went weak at the knees. Still the most handsome man in the universe. We stayed at the Chateau Marmont. That was great. It was great to be with Trudie at that time. She protected me.

Released on June 17, 1983, “Synchronicity” knocks Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” off the top of the charts by the end of July and spends 17 weeks at No. 1. The tour opens to more than 40,000 people at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, and opening acts for the 105 shows around the world included R.E.M., Talking Heads, James Brown, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts and Thompson Twins. It was one of the top-grossing tours of the 1980s — and the end of the Police.

Tessa Niles, backup singer: Just the sound of the crowd and the cheering was unlike anything I’d heard. The sound onstage was so loud and so extraordinary. From three guys. Three guys. It was insane. I became aware as time went on that there were tensions and frictions, but onstage it didn’t seem to do anything other than fuel the gigs. They were just incredible every night, and there was never any sense that they were pissed off with each other. And maybe they just worked it out onstage.

Alannah Currie, Thompson Twins: The standout one for me was at the L.A. raceway — 50,000 people in the audience, so the biggest we had ever played. The band had a big argument at sound check, and I think there was even a bit of a punch-up between Stewart and Sting. A lot of tension and shouting and swearing. Being the support band, we just lay low and tried to keep out of their way. But then I was standing at the side of the stage when they went on to play that night. It was a perfect warm summer evening, and they were incredible. Really tight. Perfect timing. Sublime drumming, and Sting’s vocals were incredible. The three women who were doing backing vocals had extraordinary voices that just soared. They were dressed head to toe in soft black fabric that blew in the breeze. It was magical. One of the best gigs I witnessed. And I wasn’t even a Police fan.

Summers: It was almost like the height of the rock era. No one had ever done this kind of s--- where we played Shea Stadium, the second band since the Beatles to play it. I mean, it was sort of a glorious moment.

Sting: I think after Shea Stadium, I said, “I think we should stop now.” And my memory of the meeting was that everybody agreed. Or that maybe they were just so sick of me by that point.

Schenker: From the moment Sting said, “I want to start my own band, and I’m going to leave,” I knew it was over and there was no talking him [out of] it, which, believe me, lots of people tried.

Sonja Kristina, Curved Air singer and Copeland’s first wife: It felt like this was the end. There was no sort of feeling that they were going to get together again next year or whatever. They were sort of stopping at the top of their game. There’s the creative spark between Stewart and Sting. And it couldn’t spark anymore with the way that it was.

Sting: We’re very, very connected emotionally, but we can’t work together. And it’s as much my fault as it’s his. But we do love each other. And I have utmost respect for him as a musician, as a mind and energy. I love him, but I can’t work with him.

Copeland: Music has a different function in our lives. We make it for different reasons. And the biggest difference which causes the most problems is that a songwriter quite reasonably feels that the reason for a band is to support the song. Now, I’m a drummer. I bang s---. I don’t listen to the lyrics. The song is in service of the group. … And by the way, this cognition of the problem has arrived 40 years later. He just thought I was being an a--hole. I just thought he was being a d---. And we didn’t understand the fundamental purpose of our lives as musicians were diametrically opposed.

Sting: I haven’t completely processed it. I’m grateful for it. I have all of this [gestures around his home] because of that band. And my late career was launched on the success of the Police, the momentum that the Police [gave me, for which] I’m so incredibly grateful.

Summers: The thing about the band is it broke up too quickly. We were the best band. I don’t think anybody can compete with us. And we were way bigger than anybody like the Talking Heads. But because it got broken up early, for whatever reasons, way ahead of its time, it hasn’t assumed the proportions maybe it should have in terms of legend or whatever.

Sting: The pain that we caused each other didn’t match the joy of making music. You know, it almost wasn’t worth it. But of course, it was. I haven’t figured out what the equation is, but I don’t think there was any other way.

Geoff Edgers is writing a book about the Police for Hachette Books, to be published in 2026.

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