Stewart Copeland Got Screwed and I Am Furious on His Behalf. The promised words about the jerk Sting.

When the world is running down/You make the best of what’s still around

Stewart Copeland Got Screwed and I Am Furious on His Behalf.

My favorite smell in the whole world of all time is Tucson after it rains. For years that’s how I would describe it. Now I don’t have the kind of life where people are asking me to describe my favorite smell. I’m not a guest on Stephen Colbert deciding on what the best sandwich is in front of a studio audience (The Number One on a roll from Lenny’s Deli in NYC or the turkey on a baguette from Larchmont Wine & Cheese). But when someone would ask me what I miss about home, I’d say the smell of Tucson after it rains. And that, as they say, would be that.

By the way, we are so getting to Sting this week. I cannot wait.

It has this smell of... freshness and possibility. To me. And that scent would take me right back to a certain place in a certain time in my life. Playing baseball in the desert with my family. Around cacti, and tumbleweeds and these things called goatshead stickers that fall from this bush. Those would hurt like hell if they got into your legs. It was not the best location to play baseball. BUT it was right outside my grandparent’s house, across a wash that would run with water almost to the top after a summer storm. It had what you needed for baseball, namely a large open space. And I’d go out there and clear out enough of the space to have a diamond. Also at that age, I made it an actual diamond shape, not a square turned on its side like it is supposed to be. It was called a baseball diamond, so I assumed that was the shape. And my glove? Man, I had the best glove you could ever want. It was pink. Kind of a terry cloth looking pink. Why? Because it was two pink wash rags cut in a glove pattern with some wadded-up cotton padding stitched into it. I mean this was a full-on custom job and no one else had one like it in the world! Made by my grandma. With that glove on, I could catch any ball at any time at any place. It was a glove with superpowers stitched into that pink washcloth. If I had it now, I have no doubt I would be in the Baseball Hall of Fame and my signature on a baseball would be worth millions.

In 1981 my friend Dale and my friend Jon bought a record and came over to my house to play it. It was “Zenyatta Mondatta” by The Police and it was a record that split my head open. Three dudes making all that noise and it had a depth to it. The drummer seemed other worldly, with his rhythms and his unusual fills, and the singer was talking about all kinds of stuff that I had no idea about but wanted to know more on each topic. I had not heard of James Brown on the T.A.M.I. Show, but it was mentioned and a few trips to Casa Video and I had that video in my hands and I had the genius of a young James Brown slide and glide into my eyes. If you can find it… oh yeah. We can all find it. Here it is.

Please Please Please watch at least the opening. The way he slowly makes his way to the microphone, teasing us the whole way before he finally steps to it and then BLAM. It’s on. Suddenly teenage me starts to think, “Maybe a young Mick Jagger saw this live and got some moves from James.” Another example was a Sting lyric that mentioned a book by Nabakov. And there I am going to the library trying to figure out who this author was and why Sting was singing about him. More than that, though, was the feeling. It felt like a celebration of being in the world and having energy and telling people how you felt. It felt like punk but also like a little bit more musical in some way. And a tight trio.

“When the world is running down/You make the best of what’s still around”

I lose the washcloth mitt as I reach my teen years. I get a real mitt, Ted Williams autograph model from Sears. And I move from Tucson to Santa Ana. But I never stop loving that smell of Tucson after the rain. And years later. I’m talking fifteen or twenty years, I tell someone about the scent and they say, “Oh yeah, the smell of creosote.” And I nod, like you do when someone says something you should already know but you don’t and you don’t want to be seen as dumb. “Yup. Cree-O-Sote.” That’s the smell. And I walk away wanting to investigate that. But I’m thinking the only time I’ve ever heard the word “creosote” was as the name of this amazingly FAT character in a Monty Python comedy movie. His name was Mr. Creosote. And he kept eating until he literally exploded. And it was gross as hell. No way does creosote smell like a fat exploding guy. No way.

At the height of The Police’s popularity, after I spent hard earned money on records and on concert tickets to go see them with Dale and Jon, Sting killed the band. Via Fax. Article in Rolling Stone said he faxed the other two members that he was quitting. The Police was done. And that’s it. Game over. And the next time I saw Sting, was with a bunch of jazz musicians in a very weird music video with him playing a lute. What. The. Fuck. You ruined an amazing band to play smooth jazz on a lute with Branford Marsalis? For years I’d see him plugging a movie on a talk show, talking about yoga, or why he was only wearing muslin fabric now. And he seemed like less of a rock star and more of a pretentious jerk. I suppose there are plenty of examples of both things being true. Hey Mick Jagger! Two mentions today but please don’t think this is about you, Micheal Phillip Jagger.  So Sting sucked. He no longer was a gateway to interesting things and ideas. He was as good to me as your friend’s divorced dad who kept asking if anyone wanted to go check out Fleetwood Mac at the football stadium.

Then, Sting announced that The Police were going to reunite. And play Dodger Stadium. And Dale and Jon and I talked about going. And went. And after this truly terrible band that turned out to be fronted by Sting’s kid, the Foo Fighters played and then The Police. Lights dimmed. Cheers of sixty thousand Gen X kids yearning to sink into this music again – and it was all smooth jazz arrangements of The Police songs. We got played. Again. By fucking Sting.

About a year ago, I finally laid eyes on the creosote plant that I had heard was the smell of Tucson after a rain. Unlike Sting, creosote did not let me down. And right now, I have a bundle of dried creosote hanging in my shower so every morning I get to smell my favorite smell. Every morning. It’s one of the best things ever. I don’t care that it took so long for me to figure it out because it made the treat of having it feel so wonderful. I close my eyes and I’m dropping back on a whiffle ball my Uncle Dave hit to the part of the desert diamond where I’m probably going to have to jump into the tumbleweeds to make the catch and my skinny arm reaches as I leap and the whiffleball drops right into the pocket of my pink washcloth glove. Ahhhhhh…. Tucson after a rain. Downstairs yesterday, knowing I owed it to you to explain why I hate Sting, I open up the morning paper and this is the headline I read:

Sting on his new trio, his old friend Billy Joel and why he’ll never wear spandex

Talk about good timing. Sting is playing at the Wiltern, you see, with a new band, a trio! Of all things. But not The Police. A new trio. And here’s the first paragraph

“Sting sits in a trailer at September’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point with two important questions before him: which songs to perform during that night’s headlining set and which pair of underwear to do it in. “I’m not sure what color to wear,” he says, nodding toward a rainbow of Calvin Klein boxer-briefs arrayed on a countertop.” And then the transcript of the interview starts with this:

When you left the Police —
I never left the Police.

OK?
I didn’t.

When you stepped away from the Police —
I didn’t step away from the Police.

Took a pause from the Police? What would you call it?
I’m not sure what I did. I just made a record — as the others had done — and enjoyed it more than I did being in a band.

One of the ways you framed that shift at the time was that you wanted to broaden your music beyond the limits of a three-piece band.
And here I am again.

He then speaks of his fun tours with Billy Joel and how they would sing each other’s songs and how he’s done a Vegas residency but he’s not Elvis or Tom Jones or a cheesy Vegas residency, he’s special and cool. He’s Sting! I don’t get far enough in to find out what color boxer briefs he chose for the show. I was caught between wishing he would fall into a giant pile of goatshead stickers or explode onstage like the character Mr. Creosote did in Monty Python. That guy sucks. And I want my money back for the Dodger Stadium show.

Creosote and Goatshead. Two plants. One a pain in the ass, the other a wonderful scent.
They both look pretty to start with.
Sting and Stewart Copeland.
Have a great week. Below we’ll end with a writing question I got this week after the pay wall.