“Who needs a band”: Stewart Copeland on the most contentious song by The Police
Hugh Pagham didn’t want to mirror Nigel Gray’s Zenyatta Mondatta, nor did he care much for the environment it fostered. The Police barely worked well under such immense pressures, so for Ghost in the Machine, he came up with a system: each member would work from separate studios to maintain creative flow and give the album a more “live” feel.
Ghost in the Machine marked several firsts for the band, notably their heavy use of saxophone and keyboards, but also the siloes that came with each member going off and using their own equipment. Something that started as a guaranteed conduit for greater productivity soon created distinctive realms of creativity, resulting in various clashing ideas and demo tracks.
Sting had brought in Jean Roussel to collaborate on ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, and together they crafted a polished, piano-driven version with a refined sound. However, this version was so complete that it left little room for the rest of the band to contribute meaningfully. While other members had been sharing demo tracks as starting points for the band to develop, Sting’s version felt more like a finished song, implying he needed the band only to back him up.
Andy Summers later recalled feeling “disappointed” with the overall direction of Ghost in the Machine due to this dynamic and feeling like the rest of the band had taken a backseat to make room for Sting’s domineering approach. The moment he presented them with ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’, it was clear he had created the song to make it appear like it could be a hit on its own without much tweaking.
However, the rest of the band pushed for wider collaboration and insisted on reworking the song as a group. This caused some tension, undeniably laying the groundwork for what would later become the frustrations that plagued Synchronicity. “[Sting] had been up at this studio in Montreal where he and [Jean Roussel] had created a demo where if he could have just dropped it, it would have been a hit right there,” Stewart Copeland later reflected. “Who needs a band, who needs anything… this is a hit! Right off the bat!” He said, mimicking Sting. “And of course, we wanted to turn it into a band track.”
Sting wrote the song a few years prior in 1977, which meant that by the time he created the demo, he had a good idea of how he wanted it to sound. Infusing it with new-wave and reggae sensibilities, he worked alongside Roussel to create a version that reflected exactly how he wanted it to sound in his mind. He was so happy with the demo that, despite the group adding various additional parts, they ended up using the demo as a backing track on the official version.
“It sounded like a number one song to me,” Sting told The Independent. Recalling the tensions that played out afterwards, he continued: “I took it to the band, who were reticent, still thinking it was soft. I was saying, ‘But listen, it’s a hit.’ We tried to do it from scratch as the Police, but it didn’t have the same energy as the demo. After a degree of hair-pulling and torturing on my part, I got the band to play over the top of my demo.”
Listening to the song now, it’s interesting to notice the contrasts—while the backing track sounds polished, Sting’s vocals come across as raw and unfiltered. However, this contrast complements The Police’s signature reggae-inspired sound, with swirling guitar tones and a catchy melody creating an energetic yet contemplative mix of notes. As a result, the song feels more like the product of a well-formed early vision, one with instant commercial appeal, rather than the result of a full-band collaboration.
