  Police guitarist Andy Summers — (above) at band’s reunion tour kickoff in Vancouver in May — has just released a 600-page, coffee-table book of black-and-white photos and tour-diary writings titled I’ll Be Watching You: Inside The Police, 1980-1983. (Richard Lam, AP file)
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The Police's 30th anniversary reunion tour has exceeded even guitarist Andy Summers' high expectations.
The British/American New Wave trio of Summers, singer-bassist Sting and drummer Stewart Copeland are touring together for the first time in 23 years and the resulting shows are impressing even the three well-known perfectionists.
"We're just having one knock-out show after another," said Summers, 64, down the line from New York City this week. "We keep thinking we've done the best show we'll ever do and then somehow we do another one that we seem to have upped the ante. We've become very sure of the material and onstage now it's just gotten faster, looser and funnier. There's a lot of humour and antics now. I mean, we're sort of loosening up with it. I think (in) our little mini-universe, we're very sure of where we are now."
The Police reunion trek, which had a slightly shaky start in Vancouver two months ago, is expected to be far and away the No. 1 tour of the year. Summers can't quite believe it himself.
"We've lived with years of, 'When you guys come back it's going to be the biggest thing of all time.' I felt a little paranoid, It's great we're doing it but what if was it all a total illusion and no one would remember us? It was sort of a bit of holding your breath until the day the tickets finally went on sale. But in fact they just went out the door so fast it was not even funny.
"The tour just sort of exploded, so it's actually gone possibly beyond what we hoped. In reality, that seems to be fulfilling the mythology."
In fact, the trio just added dates in Australia and New Zealand in January and February and Summers said there is a possibility of taking a break after that and then resuming again next summer given the demand.
"I know the offers have poured in," said Summers.
The Police arrive in Toronto tomorrow for the first of two back-to-back, sold-out shows at the Air Canada Centre followed by two sold-out shows at Montreal's Bell Centre on Wednesday and Thursday.
Summers said the set list has remained largely unchanged from the launch.
As for the now-infamous critical blog rantings of Copeland that made headlines following the second Vancouver show -- he called Sting "a petulant pansy" and said "Andy is in Idaho" -- all has been forgiven.
"We sort of passed through that and sort of laughed about it in the end. You know, it's an idle moment in your hotel bedroom that went sort of wrong, not because necessarily of Stewart's warped sense of humour, but because the media pick it up and turn it into a negative. That's why we end up hating the media, 'cause it's such bulls--t. It's got nothing to do with reality or the band. It wasn't the greatest move, but anyway, there you go."
In between the Toronto and Montreal shows, Summers will attend the Tuesday night (July 24) opening of the Toronto stop of a touring exhibit of some 38 black-and-white photos culled from his recently released coffee table book, I'll Be Watching You: Inside The Police, 1980-1983 (Taschen).
Summers is happily snapping away again on the reunion trek, even shooting digitally for the first time, but it's a completely different experience from their days as a rising band.
"We're living this sort of isolated experience where we go from the private jet to the heavily draped backstage areas that are prepared for us, to the onstage back, to the private jet, back to the five-star hotel -- and so on and so forth," he said.
"So it's kind of more existential in a way. But we're not having quite the same visceral existence we had before, where we were like driving ourselves, in the gas stations in the middle of Missouri. We're living a different life now. We're like three princes who have to be protected at all cost. We're the three jewels that are making all the money for everyone."
