The Police song that Stewart Copeland struggled to play: “I was sick of playing”
There aren’t many songs that Stewart Copeland hasn’t been able to put his unique stamp on. From his work with The Police to his various appearances on albums by legends like Peter Gabriel, Copeland has been known to sit inside a song and work his magic in every way he knows, always showing finesse and showmanship whenever he plays. Although The Police may have covered many genres throughout their career, Copeland was tripped up by one of their more obscure songs.
When the band first started, though, they were already willing to break down traditional rock and roll barriers. Across their debut album Outlandos D’Amour, Copeland was known to play around with the backbeat at every opportunity, playing songs with a punk immediacy on the song ‘Next To You’ while being able to settle into a reggae groove on the song ‘So Lonely’.
Throughout the rest of the group’s career, Sting’s songwriting would continue to push them in different directions, incorporating even more reggae into their sound before settling into world music territory. Regardless of the melodic flourishes that Sting and Andy Summers would put into the song, it was always Copeland who led the charge of the song.
By the time the band reached the album Synchronicity, though, tensions were brewing among the members. Despite their tight musicianship, Sting often became more forthright about how he wanted the drums to sound, which would become a sore point with Copeland, who wanted to play more adventurous grooves.
For Copeland, friction in the studio was nothing new. His instincts leaned toward motion and surprise, favouring rhythmic ideas that felt alive rather than locked in place. When those instincts collided with more rigid expectations, it often left him feeling constrained, even when the song itself was taking shape exactly as intended by someone else.
That tension was heightened by the band’s growing success. With each record carrying more weight, experimentation became harder to justify, and every decision felt more permanent. Copeland was still searching for moments to push against the edges of the song, but the space to do so was shrinking, especially when subtlety and restraint were becoming part of The Police’s evolving identity.
Though Sting’s straight-ahead approach may have worked wonders on ‘Every Breath You Take’, ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ was an entirely different beast to put together. Featuring some of the iciest delayed guitars that Summers would contribute to a Police record, Copeland remembered it being a nightmare trying to get the timing right going into the chorus.
Though Copeland could have played numerous fills to showcase his technique, he felt that every time he played, it sounded too weak, telling Drum Channel, “I didn’t figure out how to get from the verse into the chorus and back down into the verse, and I had this lame way of doing it. I promise you, I have seen that same drum fill analysed to the nth degree online. I was sick of playing the song because the backing track was really boring”.
Regardless of the version recorded that day, Copeland said that he would soon figure out what it took to bring the song together once they went out on tour. While he may have been stuck with the final take they used in the studio that day, he said there’s no way of going back and correcting his mistake.
Then again, the case of ‘Wrapped Around Your Finger’ is far from the first time that Copeland had that problem. According to the drummer, most of the band’s songs had that slapdash delivery, explaining, “All those recordings are the Neanderthal version. That’s the record that goes down in history. That’s the one that’s implanted on people’s minds”. Even if the band were still finding the song in real-time in the studio, Copeland could still work his magic without knowing it.
