The concert Sting said The Police could never improve on: “Everything is just diminishing returns”
“I made the decision on stage that, ok, this is it, this is where this thing stops, right now,” Sting once said.
There are many different ways to approach the question, “What was the peak of your career?”. For someone like Sting, those moments are probably ten a penny. The Police had their share of ups and downs, but they were also one of the biggest English rock bands in history, with a string of hits that rivalled some of the biggest names in the business.
Much like many of their peers, their peak was filled with immense friction, and the story of their inevitable breakup is one of the most well-known in music lore. In fact, there were a number of things that led to their eventual breakup in 1984 at the height of their fame, and along with base-level disagreements, Sting couldn’t shake the fact that he felt like an adult among children.
He’d later say that he believed you couldn’t be mature in a band, and that The Police were a “teenage gig”, a realisation that made him want to pursue his own path as a solo artist. Feeling stagnated in the group, Sting also grew frustrated with the fact that he couldn’t explore other sonic territories, his simmering frustration growing into a more explosive resentment that made it impossible to go on.
That said, some of his best and most career-defining moments happened in the group. As he once fondly recalled, “I think we achieved an amazing amount of stuff in the short time we were together. Very unique, but I just wanted a broader palette because I was song-driven and not necessarily band-driven.”
On the face of it, The Police were at the top of their game in the early 1980s. The Synchronicity tour was one of the highest-grossing of the entire decade and one of the most iconic in rock history, as well as being one of the most hyped and highly anticipated of all time. There was a lot of pomposity around the whole thing, especially as the band had to really push the boat out to actually pull it off, which led to even more strain behind the scenes.
Up out there, though, they pulled out all the stops. Drummer Stewart Copeland, and probably the rest of them, too, had never known anxiety like it, but also realised that this was the tour where The Police really fought tooth and nail and earned a place in history as a result. Specifically, it was their show at Shea Stadium that opened their eyes to how monumental ‘Policemania’ had become, becoming the show that every single one of them knew they would never, ever improve upon.
“Playing Shea Stadium was big because, even though I’m a septic tank, The Police is an English band and I’m a Londoner – an American Londoner – so it felt like conquering America,” said Copeland, a sentiment Sting echoed when he once reflected on that show in particular being the peak of their entire reign.
“I realised that you can’t get better than this, you can’t climb a mountain higher than this,” he said. “This is Everest. I made the decision on stage that ok, this is it, this is where this thing stops, right now.”
Elsewhere, Sting elaborated further, admitting that it was the night that he also decided he was going to leave the band. “I decided to leave The Police the night of Shea Stadium,” he said. “It was the apotheosis of bigness, a huge amount of people and exposure, and I thought, after this, everything is just diminishing returns. I spoke with the other guys and I said it’ll get boring [if we keep doing this], and they agreed.”
Strange, some might think, to have experienced the high point of your entire career and immediately make the choice to put an end to it. However, Sting’s decision to stick a pin in it had less to do with his desire to step away and more with his wishes to keep something good while it was still that – good. Even if The Police’s version of the word looked starkly different when the lights went off at the end of the day.
