"Being in a band is like living in a submarine."
From the book "I'll Be Watching You: Inside The Police, 1980-83". By Andy Summers
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Omaha, Nebraska, or somewhere like it and I'm bored with sitting in the trailer before sound check. I pick up my Telecaster from a brown-and-tan-checked couch and pit its tiny, unamplified voice against the dying-animal moan that comes from outside - a composite of diesel engines, low voices of big men, and the booming sound of a mic being tested on the stage.
The sky here seems bigger and deeper than in England, the land more massive, more silent as it stretches away from the suburbs of Omaha toward the Pacific in the west and the Atlantic in the east. Grass, dirt, and canvas push through the small, tight walls of the trailer suffusing it with the stink of a noisy, ancient circus. I plug the guitar into a Pignose and smack a fat E chord that distorts and roars around the trailer like a small, angry beast. The gig tonight is outside - open-air - maybe the stars will be out and incandescent in the night sky of Nebraska while we toil and burn below. The crowd is waiting to get in...There must be 30 thousand of 'em pushing against that fence with one crow sitting on it like an old Indian.
In a minute, I'll put down the guitar and pick up a camera. Sting and Stewart are already out there somewhere. I can hear Stewart whacking away at his banjo.My cameras are in that black bag down there...two Nikon FEs and three lenses with 20 rolls of Tri-X. Music - photography? The path through the centre of this experience? Another way of dreaming through the electric bubble of fame - the moth's wing that flames out leaving only the trace of notes, chords, rhythms. Paint with light - trap it in a cluster of silver halide and put it away in a drawer. I stick the end of my guitar out above the crowd and shoot.
The tea-cosy security of the Four Seasons Chicago, snowfilled streets, and the stale memory of the Days Inn somewhere in Texas three years ago, arguments laced with Coors and cigarettes, a girl leaning across a bar slapping someone's face. I drift into sleep with a babble of conversation and a parade of photographs taken during the day with running commentary: That one, that was lucky, no good, no good. c# minor, A major, B seventh, f# minor. Snap snap snap.
Japan and we roar across the countryside with Mount Fuji to the east through a rain-streaked window. I raise the shutter speed and several teenage girls in the next car crowd against the glass door, staring through it at us, covering their excited mouths.
Page [1] [2]
Page [1] [2]
Omaha, Nebraska, or somewhere like it and I'm bored with sitting in the trailer before sound check. I pick up my Telecaster from a brown-and-tan-checked couch and pit its tiny, unamplified voice against the dying-animal moan that comes from outside - a composite of diesel engines, low voices of big men, and the booming sound of a mic being tested on the stage.
The sky here seems bigger and deeper than in England, the land more massive, more silent as it stretches away from the suburbs of Omaha toward the Pacific in the west and the Atlantic in the east. Grass, dirt, and canvas push through the small, tight walls of the trailer suffusing it with the stink of a noisy, ancient circus. I plug the guitar into a Pignose and smack a fat E chord that distorts and roars around the trailer like a small, angry beast. The gig tonight is outside - open-air - maybe the stars will be out and incandescent in the night sky of Nebraska while we toil and burn below. The crowd is waiting to get in...There must be 30 thousand of 'em pushing against that fence with one crow sitting on it like an old Indian.
In a minute, I'll put down the guitar and pick up a camera. Sting and Stewart are already out there somewhere. I can hear Stewart whacking away at his banjo.My cameras are in that black bag down there...two Nikon FEs and three lenses with 20 rolls of Tri-X. Music - photography? The path through the centre of this experience? Another way of dreaming through the electric bubble of fame - the moth's wing that flames out leaving only the trace of notes, chords, rhythms. Paint with light - trap it in a cluster of silver halide and put it away in a drawer. I stick the end of my guitar out above the crowd and shoot.
The tea-cosy security of the Four Seasons Chicago, snowfilled streets, and the stale memory of the Days Inn somewhere in Texas three years ago, arguments laced with Coors and cigarettes, a girl leaning across a bar slapping someone's face. I drift into sleep with a babble of conversation and a parade of photographs taken during the day with running commentary: That one, that was lucky, no good, no good. c# minor, A major, B seventh, f# minor. Snap snap snap.
Japan and we roar across the countryside with Mount Fuji to the east through a rain-streaked window. I raise the shutter speed and several teenage girls in the next car crowd against the glass door, staring through it at us, covering their excited mouths.
Page [1] [2]
I'll Be Watching You: Inside The Police, 1980-83
Hardcover + Box, 27 x 34 cm (10.6 x 13.4 in.), 378 pages
$ 700.00
$ 700.00
The insider: The Police on tour photographed by guitarist Andy Summers. Limited to 1,500 copies, each numbered and signed by the artist.
Sting, recording session, AIR Studios, Montserrat, 1981. (c) Andy Summers