“Fuck him”: The Police song that pissed off Andy Summers
In hindsight, Sting’s pursuit of a solo musical path seems somewhat prophetic. With almost all recollections of the breakdown of The Police pointing towards each member’s strive for greater control, this more often than not fell into Sting’s favour, placing him as the natural leader in an operation that fought hard against any real hierarchical structure. This undeniably reached its peak during the sessions for Synchronicity.
Theoretically, Synchrinicity should have been filled with the bittersweet reflections of a band who made it, hit after hit, against all the odds of a commercially viable rock outfit constantly pelted with the negative criticisms of their peers. Whether the others liked it or not, Sting spearheaded them to new heights, not only leading the way with consistent mainstream success but also reinvention, blending different musical elements in ways that hadn’t infiltrated popular realms before.
Throughout the sessions, however, the dynamics erupted, leading to one particularly tense moment during the recording for ‘Every Breath You Take’ between Sting and Stewart Copeland nearly caused Hugh Padgham to quit the band. This weighty rupture lead them to seek out a certain George Martin in the hopes that he would be able to fix the “screaming bitch fight” that almost caused them all to call it a day.
According to Andy Summers, Martin didn’t actually have to do or say that much, and merely listened to their quibbles as he explained that they “sort of hate each other and don’t want to be together anymore”. After urging them gently to return to the studio, they recorded the song without contention, the entire tiff becoming a lesser important piece of the story behind a song that went on to smash records. Evidently, however, Summers was even less pleased with the second single, ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’.
Sting had written this song as a sort of trilogy piece with ‘Every Breath You Take’ and ‘King of Pain’, channelling his personal experiences into each song in a way that told the story “all about my life”. Inspired by “turning the tables on someone who had been in charge”, ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ was packed with different references to mythology and poetry, with a music video that saw Sting running around a maze-like structure of candles before pushing them all over. Summers hated it.
In the book I Want My MTV, Summers admitted he disagreed with the concept behind the song and the video, and criticised Sting’s part in the music video, evidently feeling it was too over-the-top to be anything close to good. “I never much liked the idea for ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’,” he said. “No, I was kind of pissed off about that one. I’ve never been much of a fan of that song, actually. Sting got to shoot his part last in that video and made a meal of knocking all the candles out. Fuck him.”
Sting couldn’t have disagreed more. In fact, he felt that the arrangements of the scene complemented the song’s atmosphere perfectly, executing his vision exactly as he wanted. Clearly, many facets of the band’s premise had become more extensively about Sting’s solo expression, leading to other members, like Summers, to feel bitterly disentangled from and disenfranchised with the entire idea, even if the songs themselves were more than commercially viable.
