In this extract from a new book inspired by his old diaries, the Police drummer looks back at December 1976, explaining how he tracked down Sting and dived into the punk scene
y brother Ian threw the best parties. After our show in Leicester and a two-hour drive, when we get back to slumbering Mayfair in the dead of night we can hear the revelry from blocks away. Sonja and I run up the stairs to the penthouse apartment and find bedlam swinging from the chandeliers. Ian has excelled himself. His natural engaging effervescence, instinct for the perfect music and rousing party shaman-ship has lit up a crowd of the strangest-looking kids leaping around our gothic manse.
Three days before our Mayfair bacchanalia Steve Jones had said “fuck” on national TV and the tabloids had erupted with glorious fury. The tide shifted and the next wave began to roll in. This time I’d be surfing on the front of the wave rather than swirling in the hippy suds on the back side. By the end of 1976 London was really lit up. Everyone could feel that cultural history was being made. Miles and I quickly saw an opportunity.
I was all excited to get his phone number from Phil Sutcliffe, the journalist who had taken me to the Last Exit show. Instead of sharing my excitement, though, Phil was immediately suspicious. My mistake was to start by gushing about the cool stuff happening in London. Stuff called punk. The temperature dropped 30 degrees. Anyone with a slot in the Old Order of the music business – which was any professional – regarded punks as barbarians at the gate.
Sting had a very northern suspicion of “the Big Time” and my do-it-yourself scheme appealed to his work ethic. We were not selling out to The Man! By the time he realised who we were selling out to it was too late. The frog was boiled. He said he had been thinking of making a break for the big smoke. He took my number and said he would call me.