“Very horrible”: The album Sting absolutely hated making
Out of the five studio albums that they released as a group, it’s hard to definitively say that there’s a record by The Police that stands out head and shoulders above the rest as their worst effort.
Having started strong with Outlandos d’Amour in 1978, they only went on to capitalise upon the talents that they showcased on this debut record with four more albums that saw them gain not just critical acclaim, but mainstream popularity. However, despite the successes of Regatta de Blanc and Zenyattà Mondatta, they would end up finding themselves hitting a wall when it came to recording their fourth album together.
Ghost in the Machine is far from a terrible album, but this is the point in their catalogue where the cracks began to show in the band’s dynamic. Frontman and bassist Sting was no longer seeing eye to eye with drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers, and neither were the other two members finding much resolve between themselves. Tensions were high, and with the pressure to make another album that matched not only the success of the previous two but also their creativity, things reached a breaking point.
Of course, the album went on to be another success, and while they eventually found themselves breaking up after the release of their fifth album, Synchronicity, this swan song was hailed as the band’s crowning achievement. For a band that only lasted for five albums, their output can be seen as a success on the whole, with very few blips to speak of, but that doesn’t exactly mean that they look back on all of these records fondly, not least Ghost in the Machine.
In an interview with Q Magazine in 1993, Sting brought himself to reflect upon the nightmarish environment in which the band found themselves recording the record, and how things reached an almost unsalvageable point in their relationship, where it became difficult to even finish the record they had started making together. However, it wasn’t just the friction between band members that contributed to this, as they all had plenty of things happening in their personal lives that were souring the mood significantly.
“Things were getting very horrible,” Sting said of the process of making the album. “Very dark. Miserable. Our marriages were breaking up, our marriage was breaking up and yet we had to make another record. Nightmare. Then it hit us that this is how we’re going to have to make our living for the rest of our careers. I started looking for a way out. It was too much of a shock because I said from the beginning the Police will last three albums and well, we did really.”
The fact that they managed to outlast his prediction of surviving for three albums and calling it a day ought to be seen as a triumph in itself, but for them to not only make it through the other side of the creative process for this album and deliver one last hurrah two years later is surely the sign of a band who weren’t willing to give things up without a fight.
