Becalmed and fetus-like in one corner of a large bed I lie, a brushstroke in a sea of white. The sound of waves washing sand shatters my dream and I am awake.
My left eye describes a tiny upward curve - vision enters and with a spectacularly feeble punch I extinguish the Donald Duck alarm. A faint sliver of memory pierces my befogged brain and it slowly comes back - December, Montserrat 1982. Police Album Number Five.
I examine my arms for mosquito bites - good. Last night's spraying with Off seems to have worked. The vicious Dracula mosquitos of Montserrat have been repelled at last - may they die in their coffins.
I consider my placement in the bed - curved into a corner. A vast expanse of white seems to radiate out from my body, a sleeper unconsciously structuring his bed space; the effect is quite musical. I realize that I am going off the deep end, while growing into a confirmed minimalist - how to say the most with the least; less is more - it always was a favorite Police studio motto. But what about the virtues of chaos, the pillars of density, and what does any of this have to do with rock 'n' roll and mass acceptance in the marketplace? I swing one leg over the bed and hit the shower.
I emerge from the bathroom with a radiant mind and a wholesome body. I look outside - the day is simply aching with good vibes. I feel like Zeus. I bash around in the kitchen for a few minutes in an attempt to orchestrate a cup of coffee - the usual early morning conspiracy of inanimate objects defeats me and I decide to go snorkeling.
Moments later I am poised on the edge of a fat rock - resplendent in snorkel and fish god persona. I survey the dark and mysterious sea slopping over my left flipper. My mother's voice echoes faintly from the corridors of childhood - "Don't get out of your depth dear." My body describes a glorious arc - my teeth flash in the sunlight and I disappear beneath the surface of the glistening Caribbean.
The surface recedes darkly behind me. Aquatic flora and fauna grow large in my mask and I start reviewing the events on the new album so far, and my involvement in it.
Sting, as always, has come in with a bunch of simply deluxe songs. I have my usual weirdo stuff and then some, and Stewart, who in the last few months has mastered the Appalachian banjo, has come up with some songs that are pure "Copelandia." The trick this year, as it has been every other year, is somehow to weave our various disparate musical attitudes, tastes and emotions into some sort of coherent fabric that a) the group will buy and, b) the public will buy, hopefully. So, how goes it?
We seem to have passed the early ritual grunting and are now about halfway around the track (no pun intended). Unusually for us, this year we have taken the time (six weeks instead of four) to actually rehearse the songs. This is giving us the chance to record the songs in more than one version and to get more familiar with the material than is our usual bent. The one point we all agree on is that to succeed, music must be invested with a cliff-hanging quality - living and dying at the same time. It is imperative, now more than ever, that we push the edge in our music, keep the risk content high and avoid caricaturing our earlier work.
I swim on. There is a flounder to my right. When we are in the studio the atmosphere is often one of children locked in a small house with big shiny machines and a handful of explosives - inevitably overtones of a perverse nature creep into the proceedings. Ironically enough, this tends to add to, rather than detract from, the dynamics of the playing situation. As a group, we seem to swing between high emotional intensity and sophomoric fraternity with frightening ease. The result, at its best, is that when "it" happens, we can play together with an empathy that is hard to imagine achieving with other people. At its worst, we can beat a song into an early grave. Generally speaking, making albums is a brutal affair - there is a huge amount of pain involved - personal dignity is slashed and all one's cherished licks go out the window. But out of the pain comes growth, and in the end that's what it's all about. This is foolish - I am getting heavy whilst still underwater. I must reach the surface before I drown.
I plop into the sunlight like a dying fish and grab a lungful of air through my soggy snorkel. The glaring tropic sun beats down on my puny musician's chest and I offer a prayer of thanks to the Almighty.
It is inevitable that in looking back over one's work with the or a group that one would sometimes tend to see each album in terms of "what bits I did," rather than the work as a whole. Okay! So what bits did I do so far? Well, this year my favorite bit to date is the final emergence on tape of the "wobbling cloud," something I've been doing live for a while but didn't really have recorded. The basic technique consists of playing through an echoplex with echo volume set to about three-quarter maximum and a volume pedal with a compressor; the movement of the chord position between swells and the choice of harmonies are crucial. Wearing a long-sleeved shirt is also helpful as the right arm can pivot as a long-handled brush on the strings above the twelfth fret - sea island cotton produces a pleasing tone. The effect is that of a shuddering, trembling cloud of sound which teeters on the brink of collapse at every second. The "cloud" may be heard on a very beautiful song that Sting wrote for the new album called "Tea In the Sahara," which he distilled from a wonderful novel by Paul Bowles called The Sheltering Sky (The Ecco Press, 18 West 30th Street, New York, NY 10001).
Once this album hits the marketplace, the questions will inevitably be raised as to whether or not we have changed our style. Some people will say that the new album is vastly different from anything we have done before. Others will insist that we are repeating ourselves. I can only say that, for me, making music always seems to be a matter of walking out into the dark and finding your way by instinct - it's not really a verbal process. If it were, what would be the point of flogging yourself to death over an instrument for years on end? Stylistic change is governed by the voice that sneaks through the music, the instruments and the songs. After a new album has been finished and the interviewers (God bless 'em) form a line a mile long, well of course it becomes necessary to put together some sort of verbal justification for shifting another million units.
The truth is that the studio is a jungle where all decisions bow to the power of the moment. And it is these moments, above all, that one strives and yearn for - the split seconds of something higher that makes all the stress, hype and absurdity worthwhile. True style is not forced, it unfolds. To repeat - there is no progress in art. Our fifth album is our first album.
I roll over and look out to sea - the weather is uncertain - the future of the group is uncertain - and I am out of my depth. I grip the ocean firmly between my teeth and with a powerful thrust of my flippers, head toward dry land and another day in the studio.
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