SIX MONTHS LATER SONJA is squeezed into the backseat of the Zodiac between myself and Mick Jacques, and we are chuckling off down the motorway back to London after a show. We’re a happy band and we have just killed another crowd. After the Curved Air tour wrapped up, Francis and Florian went back to their lives, leaving Sonja and Darryl to consider the value of their band brand. It seemed like a no-brainer for Darryl to bring in the Car Thieves and continue as Curved Air with Sonja, Phil, Mick on guitar, and me on drums.
Who could ever expect that Sonja will one day become my first wife and mother of three of my four sons?
Melody Maker reprint: After a rather sudden and mysterious avalanche of readers’ letters, this one was printed in the “Any Questions?” section. My First Ink, and I scammed it myself.
1977
Fuck!…is that a cop car?”
Paul Mulligan and I are lurking in a cleft in the cityscape, peering up the rainy night street and trying to discern the threat to our endeavor. Stashing our spray cans in our coats we, for the umpteenth time, interrupt our mission and pretend to be normal until we can see that there are no protuberances on the approaching vehicle. We’re still nervous because this is our first crime wave.
We started out with a stencil, but ended up getting more paint on ourselves than the walls. And the logo, THE POLICE, just wasn’t dominating the canvas with enough pride. So we ditched the soggy, dripping cardboard stencil and have been spraying the band name in uneven capitals on suitable walls around London. The word tagging hasn’t yet been invented, but that’s what we’re doing.
The inoffensive car passes on down the street, and we are about to resume our insurrection when a couple of pedestrians come around the corner. Damn. After a reflexive lurch back into the shadows, Paul lights up a smirk.
“Do you think they could give a damn? Fuck ‘em,” he says as he strides out into full lamplight and draws his can. The pedestrians pass by with not a sideward glance. They completely ignore Dalí and Picasso flagrantly spraying on their city walls.
It dawns on us that the shade of night is more of a hindrance than a shield. If we do this in broad daylight, we can see cops from further off. We can certainly see them better than they can see us. Everyone else on the street, whether on foot or in cars seems to be blind to us. We’re invisible! So we get bolder and soon are out at high noon plastering posters and spraying our turf like any male mammals. Paul, eager to invest in show business, lent us £400 to record our first single. We both have high hopes for a return on his gamble.
1978
My first hit record was as an artist who hid behind a mask.The mask reveals the true identity.
I’m never going to make it home. I’m driving through the night and not getting anywhere. Lost somewhere in London, or maybe I’m not even in London anymore. No matter. My ears are glued to the speakers in my car. The music coming out has me transfixed because of course it’s my own. Really, really mine.
After years of home-recording my guitar riffs, today was the first time that I’ve had the chance to professionally record my guitars, bass, and piano over real drums—my drums!
In my car, lost in the night, I’m listening to a thrashing band that hangs together with unholy cohesion.
It’s been a busy day. At the crack of dawn (10:00 A.M. for my kind) I loaded my trusty Gibson SG guitar, Fender Telecaster bass, a tiny little Fender Champ amp, a cheesy drum box, and my real drums into my purple VW and drove down to Surrey Sound Studio. Nigel Gray is the owner and chief engineer. We’re working with state-of-the-art sixteen-track one-inch recording tape.
The first track that we lay down for each of the three songs is the cheesy drum box pattern, as a glorified metronome. This machine was designed to accompany lounge singers who are too cheap to hire a drummer. It has preprogrammed rhythms, of which most are rumbas, sambas, and the like. But it does have “Pop 1” and “Pop 2,” which gives me two serviceable rhythms that I can use.
Then I plug in the SG and work my way down the songs, chugging the rhythm guitar parts in time with the drum box. It’s already sounding amazing compared with my home recordings. Just having someone else to hit the record button for me is a big luxury. But I don’t get too carried away with the guitar yet. Next, Nigel puts up a microphone for me to quickly yodel out a guide vocal track, which helps navigation during the whole process. I have three songs on tape.
Now it’s time for the real recording, starting with the drums, which are the foundation upon which any modern music is built. Very carefully Nigel arranges the microphone tree around my drums and I lay down the beat, with the guide tracks in my earphones. It’s the easiest drum session I’ve ever done, since the guitarist has exactly my sense of rhythm. But drums are still the most demanding aspect of band recording—even if I am the band.
It’s about four o’clock, but I’m just getting started. It’s time to get serious with the guitars. My little Champ amp would never be big enough to play with a band, but for overdubs, with near and distant mics, we can get a big, raging guitar sound. After the slog of all that drumming now I’m in Guitar Hero heaven, and that drummer on the tracks is just the perfect guy…
All of the parts that I’ve been noodling over at home now come to life in full stereo studio sound. There is no greater joy than this. When I’m working at home, engineering my own sessions, I spend most of the time fussing over wires and connections so when I finally strap on my guitar, my head is still engineering. With Nigel at the controls I can spend all day getting deeper and deeper into the pocket. Music is like that. Inspiration and vibe gather momentum. Guitars, bass, piano, even a bit of wild kazoo as fake brass, and I’ve got three tunes thrashing. The band sounds pretty thick when you consider that there are just two guys in the building—and one of them is the engineer.
Tomorrow I’ll do vocals, but now I’ve got the backing tracks going around and around on the cassette player in my car. I don’t ever want to get home.
I CAN’T SEE VERY well out of this mask, but I’m enjoying very much the befuddled amusement on the face of the journalist before me. Most of my experience with interviews has been watching the artists that I have worked for stammering their way through boring responses to standard questions. Now it’s my turn, and I’m doing it a little differently.
I’m wearing a thick rubber mask, a long black coat, and thick gloves. On my way over to the record company press office I have
concocted another bogus persona, life story, and scam. This time I’m an escapee from a government scientific program involving radiation synapse crevulation—I hope you are wearing your lead diapers! Under this mask I’m still glowing…
Everybody wants to talk to the masked man of mystery, but the last thing I want is for anyone to identify me. How do you like that? My first brush with honestly earned fame, and I’m sneaking!
For one thing, my reputation in London right now is suspect, and I don’t want to taint this new brand that is working so well for me. I’m the chief mercenary behind that fake punk band The Police, and while the musicians here generally respect our chops, the rock press has already written us off as not cool. The Police is actually kind of dead in the water right now—which is going to change because Stingo, out of nowhere, has started writing some pretty incredible songs. Andy’s joining the band has really woken him up. There’s this one new song that we should record called “Roxanne.”
So, since I am