City Varieties, Leeds
Monday 4th November 2025
For some people, such as myself, The Police were part of the soundtrack to our formative lives. They might not have been our very favourite band but their songs were good and some of them captured the usual teenage angst themes such as loneliness, the awkwardness of falling in love and the pain of falling out of it again. Songs at school discos where you’d hope for a snog with the one, which was either the hoped for true love of your life or the one who would take away the burden of male teenage virginity. Neither of which worked out for me, in case you wanted to know, those were different songs and bands.
Sadly, thanks to the passing of decades, all that seems to be remembered is that the band were Sting and two support musicians who seemed to disappear once the lead singer went off to do his own thing. Leaving Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland as mere footnotes in musical history.
Have I said Too Much?
But, despite the lack of ‘in your face’ musical references that spring to mind when you think of Sting’s cast offs, neither of them have been lazy and the audience with Stewart Copeland tour was, along with promoting his own book ‘Have I said too much?’, his chance to reclaim a little of the limelight, tell his own fascinating life story and, perhaps, put the record straight. No drum solos, just him talking, but oh what a story he had to tell.
Starting off with his early life he talked about his childhood as the son of a CIA spy and living in the happy world of Beirut playing games with the children of other spies, including John Philby, the son of certain Kim, or at least he played with him until the friend’s Dad suddenly ‘disappeared’. Days of innocence where he didn’t ask too many questions about his father’s occupation and, when he finally did get an honest answer about the work, Stewart didn’t seem to understand nor care.
He told how he dared to sneak into his older, and cooler, brother’s bedroom and played a drum kit that he was forbidden to touch and from there how the passion grew as he learnt the Middle Eastern style of rhythm and beat structure that would put him in good stead for the career that was to follow.
There were many hilarious and fascinating anecdotes that are far too numerous to detail here, so I suppose you’ll have to buy his book if you want them all. However there were a few worth mentioning as they had the audience in stitches with the revelatory details and his dry comedic, yet intelligent delivery.
Tales of how he tricked Sting (or Stingo as he liked to call him) into quitting his band, Last Exit, in the North East and moving down to London to try and make it big, how he then manipulated Andy Summers into joining the project and how they, thanks to the all-encompassing tsunami that was punk, at first couldn’t be taken seriously.
It was then that Stewart told of his first side project, Klark Kent, his Don’t Care single and how Stingo had his first national TV appearance on Top of the Pops wearing a gorilla mask while Andy wore a Leonid Brezhnev mask. He might have had the first hit but The Police soon started to get noticed and they eclipsed anything he could ever have done on his own.
There was then the interval and after that it focused on the band, and what he did after the break up, reformation and inevitable 2nd break up.
Thanks to there being so much talent in the trio there were inescapable clashed of egos as members tried to enforce their views of what was required and it always seemed to be a case of Stewart and Stingo trying to fight over how a drum piece should be played while Andy sat back and played devil’s advocate. Some of the stories revolving around the tension made me wonder how they managed to stay together as a unit for a long as they did but somehow they battled to get through it all without either of the two protagonists killing the other. It seemed that the bigger Stingo got the more Stewart felt that his own input was eaten away and that made him more belligerent and happy to wind up Stingo. I suppose it must have been fun for Andy to watch from the sidelines but not comfortable to be in the middle of it. Hardly any wonder that the band didn’t last.
Then he recounted, with gusto, his post Police solo career. He might not have controlled the limelight but he has not been a slouch and, while he talked he showed a video clip of a visit to Africa where, for some strange reason, he was put in a cage and surrounded by 12 lions that had deliberately not been fed for a week. They managed to break out of the outer enclosure and made it to his inner cage. Thankfully he managed to keep them at bay by playing the loudest and heaviest drum solo of his life. Funny now but I am sure that, at the time he wouldn’t have needed laxatives for the rest of the day. However it is a lesson to us all, if you ever plan to go to the plains of Africa and want to be safe from lions, take a drum kit with you.
Another event that sticks in my mind is a live musical recreation of the Ben Hur story in London where, along with being the composer, he was quite literally saddled with being the narrator and forced to perform on a horse that was not a natural thespian and decided to make a run for it at the most inappropriate time.
Sadly, due to it being such a short tour, by the time you read this you’ll probably not get the chance to see the show but if he ever does a sequel I recommend that you try and get a ticket for it, you’ll not be disappointed. And, if he doesn’t repeat the experience, there is always the book.
[Please note – cameras were not allowed on the evening therefore all images featured are courtesy of the Stewart Copeland website]
Interviewer: Dani Perry
Interviewee: Stewart Copeland
LINKS
Stewart Copeland – Website | Facebook | YouTube | X | Instagram