Rocks In The Attic #105: The Police - ‘Outlandos d’Armour’ (1978)

As far as debut records go, this has to be one of my favourites. It’s a little bit punk, a little bit reggae, and all wrapped up in a minimalist pop recording. People don’t tend to like The Police because of Sting’s later crimes against music, but I prefer to ignore his faux-bohemian noodlings and concentrate on his work in this band.

They’re just a perfect band: in Sting, you have a bass-playing, pop song-writing vocalist (with an unmistakable, high-register voice that’s very difficult to emulate); in Stewart Copeland, you have a jazz inflected drummer, who’s not scared to try something new (his timing and beat on Roxanne takes it uncharted territory for a pop song); and in Andy Summers, you have a slightly older guitarist (he played on stage with Hendrix, and counted The Animals as one of his former bands!), with a very progressive approach to chord progressions.

Those sort of attributes can sometimes weigh a band down - but probably because they’re all as equally talented, you don’t really hear anything too weighty or self-indulgent. I’ve heard David Fricke from Rolling Stone magazine say that after the assassination of John Lennon, the next big event in pop music to have a global impact on the youth of the day was when The Police split up in the mid-80s. Although they became a watered-down version of themselves on their later albums, you can understand, with this debut, how they made such an impact.

Hit: Roxanne

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