Strange things happen: a life with the Police, polo, and pygmies Read online

  Which would be academic of course if the BBC Radio 1 hadn’t picked up one of my Klark Kent songs, “Don’t Care,” and started playing the hell out of it all over the country, thereby anointing me with a bona fide (though modest) hit single—my first ever. I’m twenty-six and had almost given up hope that real mojo would ever be mine. Curved Air was a good first step out of college, but it was like being the last man to climb aboard the sinking ship. The Police right now is just another scabrous London band, albeit one with a secret nuclear weapon hatching.

  THE BBC TV PRODUCER has that same look of befuddled amusement on his face, but he’s much redder. We’re all in masks. Even Miles, who has identified himself as Melvin Miltoss, my manager. He’s sounding a bit nasal through his pig snout, but he’s trying to reason with the TV people—who swear they have never seen anything like this.

  Top of the Pops is the national television opportunity in the UK. Appearing on this show is an automatic five-point bump in the charts. I figured that bands look cooler than solo performers on TV, so I brought a band to mime along with me, comprised of Sting, Andy, Florian, and Kim Turner. None of us has ever been on TV before, this is the big one, and we’re all in masks.

  Behind his disguise, Miles is unhinged. Released by anonymity and unburdened by his sterling reputation he’s having the time of his life, alternately blubbering, exhorting, and suavely negotiating. The thing is that they have a problem with close-ups of a singer in a rubber mask. The whole show is mimed to playback, but miming behind a mask is pushing it. Miles wheedles them into a compromise, which is for me to wear some kind of camouflage makeup. They escape from our dressing room just as Miles is winding into a sobbing flood of histrionic, clutching gratitude.

  Up on the tiny TV studio stage we’re all clutching guitars that aren’t plugged in, and Florian is checking out the plastic cymbals that they put on his kit. Looking at them, they are not remotely realistic, but the crew assure us that under the lights and through the cameras they look “better” than real ones. The point of them, however, is that they make no sound other than a damp thut.

  With drums it’s hard to pretend that you are playing without making a fearful racket—which makes it hard for the other players to stay in sync with the playback. The television viewer can see if a cymbal is struck, so the drummer pretending to play must actually strike something—and if he actually strikes, thut is better than CLANG!

  Considering the enormity of the show, the stage is tiny. The cameras like us all to be pressed up close to one another so the screen always has multiple players. We each have a little spot marked on the stage beneath our feet. Behind their masks my buddies—even Sting, who is usually so cool—are jigging about in their little spots. Each one must boogie in his own square foot.

  Up front I’m staring into the big camera lens facing, for the first time, the world on national TV. In front of me is a tiny dance floor with twenty or thirty fake groovy teenagers waiting glumly for their cue. They are pushed over to one side while the cameras work out their positions. It’s all business for the moment. I’m just standing there under the intense light. Over there I can see a monitor that is flitting from close-up to wide-angle shots of me in the dumb makeup that they made me wear. In the makeup room it looked like pretty deep camouflage, but on camera you can see right through it.

  “OK…let’s try one…everybody on one please…. PLAYBACK!”

  The crowd directors wave up the fake teenagers who are suddenly whooping with joyous teenage hysteria and dancing like fury as the crazy lights swirl and the cameras are sweeping overhead. After three loud pops my track starts, and I’m dancing around pretending to sing my song. I’m jitterbugging, I’m gyrating and gallivanting. I’m hollering, high-rolling, and Holy Moly! I am ON TV!

  Well actually, not yet. That was just a run-through, a camera rehearsal. The fake teenagers immediately droop off back to the side, and I stand inert once more under the lights while they figure more shit out. This time, I’m soaking wet. It’s not just my first time on TV, it’s also the first time I’ve ever thought of myself as a singer let alone pretended to be one in front of people. I have decades of youthful experience with air guitar, but singing? It feels like cross-dressing.

  Miles sidles over. For years we have both been exhorting artists to be more animated, but he’s coaching me now to calm down. My brother with his pig mask is a reassuring presence. Behind me Andy and Kimbo are goofing off, freed from inhibition by their masks, striking outrageous guitar poses. Sting is biding his time. Just standing there he looks cool, even with the monkey mask.

  “OK, Quiet Please! Everybody on one…thank you…and…Cue Audience!”

  “WROUAGH!” shout the fake teenagers as the crazy lights swirl and the cameras sweep.

  This time I’m trying the stillness-is-movement concept. I’m rigid while singing, with occasional twitches for punctuation. This is still only the second time ever in my life that I have been a singer. First time was ten minutes ago. But this is going to become a pattern. Living and learning right in front of everybody, on TV.

  In their homes around the nation people are hearing the real deal—a music soundscape entirely created by just one hard-workin’ fool. But they’re watching a fake performance on fake instruments in front of a fake audience. Even the mask—which doesn’t hide anything—is fake. But the ever humble feeling in my heart is real, as I pretend to shout out the lyric into the fake microphone:

  “I am the coolest thing that ever hit town….”

  Copyright © 2009 Janette Beckman

  AUGUST 5, 1978

  A Sounds magazine reprint of one journalist’s impression of the young cipher.

  WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

  Goddamit, I knew I should have worn my Bazooka Joe mask—confronting me across the table in the A&M interrogation room is Klark Kent, who in spite of his biography isn’t a church organist from Wales or a bank clerk from Tyneside, nor even a computer programmer from Brooklyn. What he definitely is: blond, six foot three, American, around twenty-five to thirty years of age (he has too much time perspective to be younger) wearing white projectionist’s gloves, a black greatcoat, and this goddamn Jimmy Carter mask, none of which he removed in the incognito ninety-minute conversation, playing the secret identity trip to the hilt. What you will know about him is that he has a hot single out called “Don’t Care” with “Thrills” and “Office Girls” gracing the B-Side of his green vinyl wonder. First issued on Kryptone Records (get it?), an offshoot of the small independent Faulty Products, it has been snapped up and rush-released for mass purchase by A&M because, according to Mr. Kent, “I threatened to snap Tom Noble’s neck if he didn’t.” After all, you don’t fool around with Superman, do you?

  The possibility of the single becoming a hit is actually pretty good, it has received suitable airplay, and was even Paul Burnett’s pick of the week a while back. “Don’t Care” is an incredibly catchy satire about this guy who knows (not believes, you understand) that he is the greatest thing in the universe, and its main message is not that he doesn’t care, but that everybody is the star of their own life and should act accordingly. Kent also plays all the instruments himself, with such a remarkable ability that it leads us to the main question: who the hell is he really?

  Now there are several possibilities—he could be an extremely famous American superstar trying to find out if he can cut it without the instant status and having a good laugh at the same time, but this Klark sternly denies. The story he would have you believe goes something like this:

  Born of English and American parents, who were archaeologists, he spent many years in Lebanon, where he became involved with a local religious group by the name of the Druze. He says he was accepted by them because of his “high intuitive matrix.” The Druze, he claimed, are particularly interested in the development of emotion and believe that God is a manifestation of art. He will not be more explicit about this religion other than to say his main interest was not the religion itsel
f but their techniques for stimulating creativity in the individual.

  Because of the civil war in Lebanon he was forced to move back to the States, where he worked for a private firm (probably computer electronics or communications) who paid him highly for his skills. He left suddenly in 1976 to come to England, where he felt the change in climate in the music scene, felt cold toward it, and immediately bought a Gibson SG, a Fender bass, a drum kit, and a couple of tape recorders, and within a month he had taught himself to play them, apparently using skills he developed from the Druze.

  Ask why he persists with the masquerade, he tells you, “This is important for personal, creative, and business reasons, not to mention legal ones.” By which I infer that if the American firm knew where he was they would probably sue the ass off him, probably to give back any information he may possess that they don’t want on the loose. Still, becoming a rock star is an unlikely way to hide, isn’t it, so maybe he is just a rich prankster.

  Klark Kent remains an enigma. During the course of conversation the topics included various aspects of art, religion, radio, the social security system, what Britain needs to do to survive, the sinister motive behind the Soviet arms buildup, expansion of human potential, and a thousand other nonmusical topics, and interesting as they are I can’t really go into them here. He’s a very erudite gentleman, he may or may not be a superman, but I’m sure we’re definitely going to be hearing an awful lot more of him.

  —RAB

  CHAPTER 8

  A QUICK HISTORY OF THE POLICE

  1976–78

  As narrated in my film Everyone Stares.

  It’s 1976,

  and this thing called punk rock

  has just raised its ugly head in London.

  Sting, Henry Padovani, and I

  have formed a group called: The Police.

  We cut our hair, put on shades,

  and have adopted the hostile posture of the day.

  It’s a chaotic scene

  so most of our gigs

  are from cancellations by other bands.

  We’re the only guys who know how to hire a truck

  and get to the show.

  Our fee is £30 sterling:

  5 for the truck,

  10 for the PA,

  and a fiver each for the three of us.

  With 400 quid from my buddy Paul,

  we recorded our first single

  and sell it ourselves, by the box,

  to record stores around the country.

  I am president of Illegal Records

  and chief salesperson.

  Sting has his doubts.

  He gets a buzz from the energy of the scene,

  but pretty much hates the music,

  including ours.

  So Andy shows up,

  with his harmonic sophistication,

  and Sting starts writing these big songs.

  A sound of our own is beginning to hatch.

  Problem is,

  the cognoscenti are onto us.

  Hungry professionals

  They know that we’re just carpetbaggers.

  I have a dark past with the long-hair group, Curved Air,

  and Andy Summers has consorted for years

  with the enemy generation.

  We are unloved.

  But something strange is happening.

  A mysterious, masked American has turned up in London

  with a couple songs

  that got him a modest hit on the English charts.

  He goes under the name of Klark Kent,

  but no one knows who he is.

  He plays all of the instruments,

  writes, sings, and produces the songs.

  So, since no one can think of anyone else

  who could do all that,

  they are starting to point the finger at me.

  Well, it’s the first time I’ve ever been blamed for a hit of any kind,

  and I’m all for it.

  This is the big time.

  At last.

  But it never would have happened like this

  for that known charlatan,

  The Police drummer,

  so the lesson is clear.

  The Police needs to regain its virginity,

  to shed the leprous scab of its wretched history,

  to shake loose the chains and sally forth

  to the promised land of America,

  where people are kind of anticipating

  something new out of England.

  We’ve been together for two years.

  Arriving in New York City

  with our gear as hand luggage,

  we’re ready to start all over from scratch.

  My brothers, Ian and Miles, have hatched a scheme

  where they are connecting up a string of clubs across America

  where un-hippie, rebellious youth

  can be part of a brand-new scene.

  It’s 1978, and the hippie thing is way old.

  Everybody’s looking at this New Wave,

  which actually is mainly characterized by a new hairdo.

  Short hair is the dividing line.

  So Ian finds a club in every city

  where we can play to the fifty or hundred kids

  who have heard of this new thing.

  And Miles makes sure the radio guys are there.

  Out on the road,

  it’s the three of us in a van

  with my childhood chum Kim Turner at the wheel.

  But things are picking up pretty quickly.

  There’s a buzz about the band.

  Shows are filling up,

  The clubs are getting bigger.

  Best thing about that is, roadies!

  Man, I am sick of carrying

  those fucking drums around!

  It also means that our sound is better,

  and we can play fresher.

  We’re getting pretty good.

  Something about the way Andy hits those chords

  and the way Sting pumps that bass

  just lights me right up.

  And in the winter of 1978,

  just as America is beginning to notice us,

  and with pretty much the first spare change

  I have in my pocket,

  I got this Super 8 movie camera….

  Copyright © 2009 Peter Baylis

  CHAPTER 9

  POLICE RULE

  1979–84

  The Police took up only eight of my fifty-seven years, and those years went by fast. They were big years, and they left a mark; but the really important things happened outside of band life.

  R

  e-entry into the civilian world after band life took a long time. From the day I left college I had never lived in the real world that most people inhabit. Musicians live apart from society, maybe because of our vaguely shamanistic role in life. Office hours are our weekends, and we work while society plays. Saturdays and Sundays are a problem for us because on these days we have to share everything with the civilians, who, since they are crowding the parks and boulevards, are not at their stations making our world function. On Monday everything is ours. Thank God it’s Monday! On Sundays we can’t bitch at our managers and there is no laundry service at the hotel. The populace is loose on the streets! The starving musician merely turns up his collar against the world and shuns the light, but the wealthy shaman can build a fortress.

  I certainly needed one. When the first money hit, after buying an inexhaustible supply of jet black jeans, I claimed a nice little house on a quiet London street. The sidewalk in front of it immediately became a sacred grove for young fans who, when school got out, would congregate on the neighbor’s stoop singing Police songs. They would oooh and aaahh at the tiniest signs of life coming from my house. Inside I was a charging bull who was feeling intimidated by a bunch of girls. I wished I were still in our Ottoman fortress above Beirut. I’d snarl at the congregants ferociously as I came and went.

  It
may have been inconvenient, but this was what I had come for. Notoriety is an odd by-product of music but essential. The music transports the musician himself first of all but bewitching others is really what it’s about. Music is an amplifier of one’s self. If it doesn’t capture attention, then the magic is sterile. So being stared at is part of the deal, and at first it was just fine to create a stir just by existing.