One Train Later: A Memoir (49 page)

Billy Francis, our tour manager, now waits for me at the front desk while I inspect two or three rooms before he bothers to go to his own room and wait for my "Okay, it'll do"; then he checks me in as Django Reinhardt or occasionally Stephane Grappelli. Obsessed with photography, I document everything endlessly: fire hoses, curtains, maids, limo drivers, fans, front desks, views out the window, tarmac, fire escapes, parking lots, TV screens, roomservice menus, dirty underwear, the sky, corners of buildings, cars, clouds. I cogitate on ways to make photographs in this hell of blandness: trap trouser legs under doorways, knock sand-filled cigarette bins to the ground, attach little rubber sharks to body parts, wrap legs in fire hose, place little toy nuns on naked female bodies-it's a passage through it, another way of dreaming.

Twenty-Five

On December 12, after a three-month rip through the States, we return to Montserrat to begin recording our fifth album. It seems as though Sting is at the North Pole, I am at the South Pole, and Stewart is in the tropics. We are the emotional opposites of when we recorded Outlandos. Arriving to record another album suddenly wipes the glass clear and we stare at one another as if in assessment. In the shocking calm of the studio, without the blanket of touring, the need to make it to the next gig. The mud drops to the bottom of the glass and we eye each other like strangers.

We've changed. Sting, after a year of celebrity highlights-his highprofile court case against Virgin, his movie appearance in Brimstone & Treacle, and endless appearances in the press-is now someone else. It changes you; how could it not? The inevitable corrosion is eating its way through the tenuous threads that have held us together so far. But whatever monster lies beneath the surface goes unremarked.

We strap on the band persona; we still have a goal, still have fire, still have desire, still want a number one record in the United States. We begin tentatively at first, mostly listening to the new batch of songs that Sting has conjured up: "Synchronicity," "King of Pain," "Every Breath You Take." As usual, there is some good material but it needs the Police signature, needs to be toughened, and we get to work. As we wrestle our way into the tracks the energy is sexual, provocative, goading, until we get the right tension that makes it sound like the Police, until it has the push and pull we need before the songs emerge from our hands writhing like wet baby snakes. There is a moment when you know; it arrives and suddenly the track-like a taut stringhas that indefinable thing.

Despite the underlying degradation of the group psyche, we manage to imitate a nice camaraderie and can still enjoy the process of recording, however difficult. We are back in paradise, making an album expected to sell in the millions, living like kings, wealthy, famous-well, why shouldn't we be happy? Sting has split up with Frances, I am now divorced from Kate, Stewart has married Sonja Kristiria but will eventually divorce her, Keith Moore has already taken the path that will lead to Wormwood Scrubs prison, and Miles will divorce Mary Pegg (whom he marries this year), as will Kim Turner his bride. Several people have left us after becoming emotionally distraught, and one is in a psychiatric ward-nice going, boys. But in the all-important quest to make another hit, we pull together and focus on the gold, the new record, and the elusive number one in America.

The term synchronicity was coined by Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, in 1927 after studying what he perceived to be an unusual phenomenon in some of his patients. He subsequently developed a theory of the underlying pattern, the acausal connecting principle, commonly known as coincidence. In the years previous to the Police, following Kate's lead, I spent three years with a Jungian psychotherapist in London by the name of Bonnie Shorter and have since then become immersed in the work of Jung, filling my head with theories about the numinous, the personality archetypes, intuitive extrovert, and the interpretation of dreams. Laid out like a spiritual quest, Jung's path of individuation is seductive.

On the last tour of the United States before we return to Montserrat, I saw Sting reading Memories, Dreams, Reflections-Jung's autobiographyand talked about it. I had never mentioned my sojourn into this realm, but it is a world that is close to my heart, and now it becomes a point of common interest. I would not have connected it to songwriting, but it has seized Sting's imagination and by the time we arrive in Montserrat he has songs that have been inspired by this unlikely source. Another book I have passed on is The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles. From this Sting has extracted the story of three girls making tea in the desert and turned it into a beautiful new song called "Tea in the Sahara."

Most of the new songs have a dark psychological undercurrent. I have one song I think I might get on the record, but I don't know-it is difficult to get anything past Sting these days. It is a psycho rendition in seven/four called "Mother." More Captain Beefheart than the Police, but Sting actually loves this song and it makes it onto the album (though, of course, I have to sing it myself). I have a small amount of anxiety about my mum's hearing this for the first time and I warn her about it, but when she does hear it she laughs her head off, thinking it a hoot.

In the studio the tension is so high that you can hear it twanging like an out-of-tune piano. As a group we seem to swing between high emotional intensity and sophomoric fraternity with frightening ease, almost like a group version of bipolar disorder. The best result is that when "it" happens, we can play with an empathy that is hard to imagine achieving with other people. But making albums is a brutal affair: you are forced to stand down, moodily let go of an idea, play someone else's idea, watch all your cherished licks go out of the window-often accompanied by boos and jeers. It's painful because none of us likes being told what to do or being controlled in any way. In truth, we are like children locked in a house with big shiny machines and a handful of explosives. But from the pain comes the growth-and that, we tell ourselves or one another after having just trashed some musical effort, is what it is all about.

As if underscoring our current mental state, we record in three separate rooms: Stewart up in the dining room of the house with miles of cable and earphones, Sting in the control room, and me alone in the actual studio. All this is for what the engineer calls perfect separation, and with this album we get it, although not quite in the way intended-a weird symbol of where and what we've become.

In the long hours of the studio there is a tendency to fall into a group mind that is kindergarten in level. One of its manifestations is a nasty habit called "taking someone to the party." Some poor soul will fall asleep from the sheer grueling effort of it all, and during naptime he will be covered in old cigarette butts, matchsticks, chocolate wrappers, and other bits of garbage. Tam Fairgrieve, my roadie, manages to pass out on the couch in front of the monitors after dinner one night and descends into a snoring sleep. We are all sniggering away at him and keep yelling his name, but like Rip Van Winkle, he does not wake up. We begin turning the music up louder and louder, to no avail, and as a last resort shove a microphone under his face and run it through the speakers, cranking it up and adding reverb, bass, treble, and phasing effects until we are beside ourselves with this jape and the very wall of the room is quaking. Finally, when we think the building is going to blow apart with the sonic bomb we have built, Tam wakes ttp with a startled grunt and a bug-eyed stare to ask what the fuck is going on, which puts us all on the floor. We have recorded the whole thing and eventually use the snoring to signify the Loch Ness monster on "Synchronicity II."

A few nights later we are sitting around, listening to a track we have recorded earlier in the day. I start fiddling around with a piece of silver paper from a chocolate bar. I begin sticking it in my left ear, scratching away at something and pushing it farther and farther into the canal until suddenly I can't feel the paper in my fingers anymore and realize it has disappeared right into my ear. I don't panic at first but try to work it out. No luck. I become a little bit frightened and ask Danny and Tam if they can see anything. They can see it but can't get it. This is now an interesting event, more interesting than the track we have been listening to. I lie on the floor with my left ear pointing upward; everyone crowds around, excitedly suggesting various methods to retrieve the foreign object, including my standing on my head, banging me on the side of the head, pinching my nostrils together and blowing hard, jumping up and down, and administering the Heimlich maneuver, which almost makes me throw up. Then Tam bends a guitar string into a viciouslooking hook and tries to fish it out. Nothing works and I am starting to freak out, as it is beginning to feel very large inside my head.

Someone remembers that the island has an ear, throat, and nose medicaltraining facility, and by a stroke of synchronicity there is an American specialist on the island. Phone calls are quickly made and I am bundled into a jeep and rushed across the island to the medical staff bungalows. Luckily, he is in and is just about to retire for the night but grasps the situation instantly, tells me to lie on the bed, and opens a little leather bag full of long silver tweezers. Picking his device like a connoisseur, he leans over me and with a deft twist removes the invader to a small round of applause and a huge sigh of relief from me. "Aah, Cadbury's," he says.

After lobster, mango chicken, and chocolate cake one night, I wander over to the bookshelf sagging under the weight of the usual vacation island fodderthrillers, murder mysteries, holidays in Tuscany, etc.-and I pull out a book on the flora and fauna of the Caribbean and start studying it. Looking at the exotic watercolors returns me to my childhood-plants, birds, the natural world-and a wave of nostalgia passes through me. It seems like so long ago-how did I get so far from it? I decide to learn the names of the indigenous species, become one with this island habitat, ground in the earth.

But being cooped up in the studio tends to bring out perversity, and we continue playing tricks on one another, trying to fuck each other up. Sometimes these antics work and add more edge to the playing. But one afternoon in the torpor of the Caribbean heat, the ionized air of the studio, and the effects of simple boredom, we reach a point where we are paralyzed, unable to move forward. It is a moment of deep tension when we hate being together and are right on the edge of breaking up. Pain fills the room and we look at one another and would like to be anywhere else but here. Making this album has become the supreme ordeal. We need a mentor, someone to slash the Gordian knot, point the way forward, save the sinking ship. And then like a ray of light, it comes to me. The owner of the studio is on the island, the producer of the Beatles, George Martin-what about him? Suddenly it seems like a great idea, a way out of the black funk with the ultimate producer. It's either that, or this, our fifth album, is going to die halfway through-and then what? I get assigned the task of chatting him up. He lives in a beautiful old house a couple of miles away across the island, and I decide to walk there and compose my request on the way.

I start out toward his house with the burning white ellipse of sun on my unprotected scalp. Through squinty eyes and the afternoon haze, I can just make out the outline of his place, the house of hope. I pass by passion fruit, banana trees, lime trees, bougainvillea and oleander, my head swimming with hazy thoughts: the transformation of adverse conditions into the path of awakening; pain being a component of happiness; Kate and Layla, England, George Martin, the Beatles. I can't believe I'm doing this-the first time I heard "She Loves You" would I have ever thought that I would end up hoofing it across a tropical island under the beating sun to get the producer of the Fab Four? This is like Jesus-yeah, I'm like Jesus on the road to Calvary-or is it Paul on the road to Damascus? Regard all phenomena as dreams ... hibiscus ... bamboo ... royal palm ... guava ... ginger on the road to nowhere ... maybe a miracle will happen ... pelican ... parrot ... parakeet ... this is the fucking end, I knew this would happen sooner or later, but this is it, this is fucking "it" . . . those bastards ... unless Georgie boy pulls it out of the hat, we're, like, sitting on a volcano ... actually we are sitting on a volcano, ha-ha ... the volcano that will destroy this island ... if only he knew that I was coming to him now, but maybe he does know ... Michael Henchard ... The Mayor of Casterbridge ... Lyme Regis ... this is a tragedy ... no, a fuckup ... two parakeets, flamingo flower ...

Part of me realizes that this is a moment to let go, pull back, take the long view. Thich Nhat Hanh says, "What will it matter three hundred years from now?" I hope that the next half hour goes well.

Feeling knackered and with a mild case of sunstroke, I arrive at Olveston House and rattle the mosquito screen on the front door. The maid comes out. "Yaa?" she asks. I raise my sunglasses and croak, "Is George Martin here?" "Mzzr. Martin, dere's a man f'you," she yells out. George appears in the gloom of the hallway like a pale white ghost. "Hey, come on in," he says. "Cup of tea?" We go out to the back of the house and sit on the veranda, and over tea he asks me if we are enjoying the studio and how we are getting on. I take a deep breath and tell him that the studio is fine, very nice actually, but that in fact we are going through a period of internal friction-basically we are at one another's throats. Can he help, would he like to take over, guide us through the process, do some of the old Martin magic? We could be a great team. "Hmmmm," says George, "I'm sorry to hear that you are having a bad time of it, but why don't you just try and sort it out yourselves. I'm sure you can do it." And he gives me some sage advice about carrying on and pulling through this tough stretch: "It's typical group stuff-seen it all before. We're English-'nother cup of Darjeeling?"