The Police: Zenyattà Mondatta

Back a few years ago, in another time and life, I had a conversation with my friend, Matt Gorzalski. I remember where we were (Callowhill Road, right near Lake Galena and Peace Valley Park) and that I was driving, though I can’t remember if it was my ’87 Mazda 626 or my ’88 Accord, but I can’t, for the life of me, remember exactly how the conversation went. All I remember is that we were talking about bands we liked and didn’t like – probably more of the latter – and, all of a sudden, there was a brief bit of silence while we gathered our thoughts. Our discussions on music often got pretty intense, so this respite was necessary so that we could attack the other with some well-constructed musical punches. All of a sudden, the radio started playing a Police or Sting song – it might have been a mix CD I made, because even though I didn’t own any Police albums, I did have Sting’s Brand New Day, and liked it quite a bit – and, without missing a beat, Gorzo and I started talking at once.

“I like Sting, but not the Police,” was what I (probably) said.

“What do you think of The Police and Sting?” was what he (probably) asked.

It couldn’t have been executed any more perfect, though I don’t buy that overexaggeration that “No writer could have come up with that!” Sure, the timing was great, but among well-regarded actors and masters of timing, anything’s possible.

And, after long last, I come to my point: I really didn’t like the Police, yet I liked Sting. I don’t get how that’s possible; it’s like liking Mick Jagger’s solo material, but not liking the Rolling Stones. Usually it’s the other way around; someone likes the band, but the solo stuff conjures up very little excitement among the die-hards, and is often regarded with patronizing chuckles and an attitude of “Oh sure, he thinks he’s hot shit without the band that made him what he is!” But Sting was mellow, his music easy-listening while still somewhat clever, but within the Police, his voice screeched over lame reggae rhythms and overcomplicated drumming. White guys can’t play reggae; it’s a fact, no matter how much you try to convince me otherwise. Witness Led Zeppelin’s ‘D’yer Mak’er’, or anything by the Rolling Stones. So why would I like the Police, then? Maybe I had just never heard the right Police albums, or had been so overexposed to their radio hits that I couldn’t even stand to listen to their music without grimacing.

A few years passed by from my initial conversation with Gorzo, and I discovered that I had mysteriously acquired the Police’s entire catalog by way of the Message In A Box box set. I don’t know how it got there, except that I must have grabbed it when my dad and I did a hard drive swap; he got the music on my external hard drive, and I got his. There’s still a bunch of stuff I have yet to get through, and it’s been about five years. So one day, I was going through my iTunes list, and I saw this box set in my library and decided to give it a spin. But first I was going to have to separate it into the albums; what’s the point in having it divided awkwardly among four discs if you have their entire collection anyway?

One of the first albums I listened to was not Regatta de Blanc, an album that my dad had given me for my birthday a few years ago and thus already had, but was Zenyattà Mondatta. The title alone confused and intrigued me; it was exotic sounding, yet a little silly. What did it mean? What language was it? Couldn’t they have come up with something better? I later discovered, through the power of Wikipedia (so it must be true!), that the title is Sanskrit for “Top of the World”, which the Police undoubtedly were by the time this album was recorded (summer 1980); its more direct English interpretation is less punchy and wouldn’t have guaranteed the most curious casual Police fan a purchase – plus, it just sounds arrogant, so ultimately the right decisions were made.

But we’re not here to talk about the title or the cover art, for crying out loud! What about the music? Of course there’s the two smash hit singles: ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’, about a lustful female student crushing over her hot English teacher (in unrelated news, Sting used to be an English teacher; life imitating art?), and ‘De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da’, an initially stupid sounding song about how the simplest words can be the most expressive. (That has always been my motto; why confuse the audience with Brobdingnagian collocations when just the basics will do?) If the listener hasn’t become sick of these two songs and can soldier on through the first four minutes of the album, then the reward is absolutely worthwhile. Zenyattà has some of the Police’s most accomplished power pop/rock playing on it, balancing weightier issues (‘Driven To Tears’ deals with world poverty, and Stewart Copeland’s ‘Bombs Away’ is a lightweight yet harsh attack of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan) against well-worn lyrical themes from the pen of Sting.

The beauty of Sting is that his songs all have catchy hooks and memorable melodies. I can remember how all of the songs go on this album by just looking at the titles. Even the instrumentals – ‘Voices In My Head’, which still has some ethereal, albeit minimal, vocals, and Andy Summers’ ‘Behind My Camel’, a song that Sting hated so much that he refused to play bass on it … though it won a Grammy for best instrumental – are engaging enough to have made a significant impression, and if someone were to walk up to me and ask me to hum a line from each of the songs, I’d probably be able to. (Please don’t do that, though. Just take my word for it.) The reason for the instrumentals is reportedly because the Police were under pressure to get their third album recorded before they went out on tour. This might explain why some of the lyrics are a little unpolished and unfocused, and the music is a little hurried and rushed, but that certainly doesn’t detract from the performances. This sense of urgency adds a lot to the music, and the rough-around-the-edges sound to most of the songs is refreshing at a time when pop music was becoming more and more precise, and every note was labored over with annoying attention to detail.

There’s a lot of Andy Summers all over this album, with some wonderful, arpeggiated guitar lines, and Stewart Copeland’s drums are as inventive and awe-inspiring as ever, though some of his performances are a little more restrained than on their first two albums. (The follow-up, Ghost In The Machine, saw a return to form for Copeland, though Synchronicity might as well have had a drum machine doing all the parts.) Sting, too, isn’t as annoying with his vocal arrangements, and I think a lot of people forget that he was also a bass player; his lines and melodies are nice and chunky while balancing a fine line between complicated and simple. But the musical abilities of the Police should never have been put into question, and I apologize for basically wasting your time with that paragraph.

Zenyattà has been called a transitional album by critics and fans alike, and I couldn’t agree more. The first two albums were so deeply rooted in platinum blonde, white-boy reggae that it made repeated listenings taxing; the last two albums were more polished and mainstream, with a clear-cut focus on creating the Perfect Pop Song (and who can say they didn’t succeed? Witness ‘Spirits In The Material World’, ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, ‘King Of Pain’, ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’, and ‘Every Breath You Take’). But Zenyattà is so varied and diverse, going from songs of bitterness and anger about the state of the world, to light throwaways about canaries in a coalmine, to eccentric half-instrumentals with strange warblings and chantings. It’s not pretty all the time, but while the Police would go on to mega-stardom over the next few years, they wouldn’t be this spontaneous in the studio again, and that, my friends, is a crime.

Essential listening: Don’t Stand So Close To Me, Driven To Tears, When The World Is Coming Down You Make The Best Of What’s Still Around, Canary In A Coalmine … ahh shit, they’re all essential