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Drummer Stewart Copeland recalls what went through his mind the first time he laid eyes on future Police bandmate Sting playing in a Newcastle bar.
"Well, the first time I saw him, there was a golden ray of light coming down, illuminating him," says Copeland, 53, down the line from L.A.'s Groove Attic studios recently where he was working on music for a film trailer library.
"I could spot him a mile off. 'That is my meal ticket.' The band sucked, but, man, that bass player. And guess what? He can sing a bit too."
Turns out Copeland's instincts were spot on.
Some 30 years after that first Sting sighting, he arrives in Toronto today for tomorrow night's Canadian premiere of his documentary Everyone Stares: The Police Inside Out, which closes out North By Northeast's film festival with a 9 p.m. screening at the Royal Cinema.
Copeland boiled down about 50 hours of footage that he shot of the frenzied rise of The Police -- part of England's New Wave scene before they became the No. 1 band in the world for a time. He used an 8mm camera, shooting over an 8-year period starting in the late '70s and ending in the mid-'80s.
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"The rock 'n' roll bands crossing the lands feel like pirates, and the rock 'n' roll version of rape and pillage is shopping," he says, explaining why he picked up a camera in the first place.
"It was already a wild ride and I wanted to scrape it off and stuff it into my suitcase -- the experience."
Copeland, an American who grew up in the Middle East as the son of a CIA agent, says British bandmates Sting and guitarist Andy Summers were never bothered by his filming, since they were "surrounded by cameras all the time ... and we were all camera freaks, as a matter of fact."
He says current computer technology is what prompted him to finally edit down the footage that he previously had kept under wraps in shoe boxes.
"One thing led to another. It was just a little toy movie. It was a little thing for me to show to Andy and Sting and friends and so on, a little home movie. But somebody persuaded me, just on a whim, to send it over to Sundance. When they picked it up, then suddenly my little toy escaped from the playpen and became a monster."
As for whether he left out any "sensitive" footage purposely out of the film -- i.e. band shouting matches or groupie encounters -- Copeland says there will be some extras on the DVD version coming out in mid-September, just not of that.
"There's maybe a couple of shots where Andy goes off on a rant using extremely foul language, which in the context is really funny and totally harmless, but why cause a fuss? Because there's plenty of stuff where he's really amusing without that scene. If we ever had a shouting match, I just wasn't in the mood to pick up a camera. We were pretty clean living, too. We thought that we were wild rock 'n' rollers living on the edge, on the dark side, but in fact, I now realize that we were boy scouts compared to Led Zeppelin."
Copeland, now on his second marriage and father to seven children, says Summers loves the finished documentary, but Sting has yet to see it despite the drummer having rushed over both an early rough cut and the completed version.
At that point, Sting told Copeland, 'No, I actually haven't seen the movie and probably won't,'" says Copeland. " 'Cause it turns out he has a phobia. He hasn't seen himself on the screen in years."
These days Copeland makes his living in a variety of ways: As a film music composer, drumming with Oysterhead with Les Claypool (Primus) and Trey Anastasio (Phish), with an Italian ensemble called Orchestralli, and in England he was recently a judge on a reality talent show called Just The Two Of Us which pairs established pop stars with non-singing celebrities.
The Police breaking up was the best thing in the world for all of them, says Copeland. "I started a whole new career that enabled me to play with orchestras and make all different kinds of music with film and so on, which would never had been possible in the context of The Police. 'Cause The Police was this huge gilded cage which just ate up our lives."
How about a reunion? 'I don't think so'
Drummer Stewart Copeland says no one should hold their breath for a Police reunion.
"I don't think so," he tells the Sun. "For my part the film (his Police documentary) has completely dotted the i's, crossed the t's, has completely wrapped up The Police experience. There's no further unfinished business regarding The Police for me."
When The Police split in 1985 at the height of their popularity it was because Sting, the group's main songwriter, wanted to maintain his artistic vision in the recording studio without any input from drummer Copeland or guitarist Andy Summers. He subsequently pursued a solo career very successfully.
"I always felt like The Police never quite paid off," says Copeland.
"And we were going up, up, up, up. And since we never saw the other side of the parable, we never started to go down. Every album sold more than the one previous. Every tour was a bigger tour than the last one. So I always felt like we were still heading up."
Copeland says until now he had always been interested in a Police reunion, as was Summers, but Sting was always the holdout.
"Oh yeah, I love playing with The Police. We played at the Hall of Fame thing and it was a blast. They're incredible players, and not only are they great players but for me, they're particularly great, because I grew up with those guys. Half of my concept of how music is supposed to be played I learned from those two guys."
The buzz has always been that Copeland and Sting weren't getting along toward the end of the band's time together, but the drummer disputes that.
"We actually got along really well, but there was an artistic clash. Recording the Police was hell in the last couple of albums. When we were on tour and we were playing shows, we got along great."
Now, the trio speak regularly to one another and are able to separate their friendship from the difficult musicmaking toward the end of The Police.
"At the time, I wasn't quite so sanguine about it," says Copeland. "We didn't discuss it quite so dispassionately."