Monocled Alchemist

Vintage music press reviews

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982 | DESPITE THE Police’s best intentions, Sting’s ‘homecoming’ gigs have never really done the group justice.

Two years ago in Newcastle City Hall at the end of a long and gruelling world tour, Sting’s voice was hoarse to the point of extinction. Last weekend at Gateshead Athletics Stadium, they played their first major live gig for several months and were predictably stiff-limbed for much of the set.

The weather and the attendance didn’t help much either. Grey clouds hung low overhead all day although they managed to refrain from dropping their contents. And while the organisers spoke optimistically of twelve and a half thousand ticket sales, there never seemed to be many more than half that number present.

Whatever the real figure, the stadium looked depressingly empty, offering further evidence that it was the Rolling Stones who mopped up this summer’s rock and roll crowd allocation. There’s a low limit to the number of £8.80 tickets you can buy on the dole.

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

Open air rock shows need a certain amount of nostalgia to make up for the lack of comfort but the 1977-style nostalgia served up by the Lords Of The New Church who opened the show wasn’t the right kind. The impression was of a bunch of first wave punks thrashing around for a formula, having been overtaken by the second, third, fourth and fifth waves.

The Gang Of Four weren’t exactly a laugh a minute either. I actually thought they played a very good set — and their new lady bassist has added a lot more strength to the rhythm section — but their serious intellectual posturings were badly mismatched with this audience.

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

It took the Beat to bring things to life with their own lively brand of 2-Tone nostalgia. They’ve held on to the original spirit of enthusiasm and entertainment with an uncomplicated joy that none of the genuine 2-Tone bands managed to maintain.

You’d have to have a long mac down to your ankles to be able to resist their infectious style and if they’ve not yet been able to top ‘Mirror In The Bathroom’ as their finest moment, they give you a highly enjoyable build-up to it.

U2 took advantage of the day’s upswing to reinforce the numerous claims made on their behalf to be ‘the next big thing’. Currently cooped up in the country getting their third album together, they exploded with a barrage of pent-up energy that no amount of pastoral activity can fulfill.

Bono demonstrated his sudden sense of release quite literally by scaling the PA stack beside the stage and crowning it with a white flag that he’d plucked from the audience, singing ‘Electric Co’ all the while.

“There’s only one flag and that’s a white flag,” he announced with a defiantly peaceful fervour for these aggressive times. There were no real surprises from the band but the final couple of numbers — ‘I Will Follow’ and ‘Out Of Control’ — plus the ‘Celebration’ encore had an irresistible force born of a group chemistry that’s bubbled into the most precious of rock and roll commodities — charisma.

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

The Police have already got their reward for that very quality. Their problem now is to hang on to their status by delicately juggling their trademarks to stop the band members from becoming gross caricatures of themselves.

They had no new songs to offer and the set was similar to the one they toured with at the end of last year, but the addition of the brass trio to their line-up has given them a new impetus live which they haven’t exhausted yet.

There was an air of caution about ‘Message In A Bottle’ and ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ but ‘Walking On The Moon’ managed to blow some of the cobwebs away and Sting started to put a bit more vehemence into ‘Spirits In the Material World’, ‘Hungry For You’ (which he eloquently introduced as being ‘about f**king’) and ‘When The World Is Running Down’.

Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland had limbered into shape by the time ‘Demolition Man’ came along and with the brass section never showing any inhibitions, they got increasingly better from that point.

If ‘Shadows In The Rain’ fell short of its possibilities, ‘Bring On The Night’ benefitted from another turn of the screw — it’s become one of their most adaptable and durable numbers. And the final batch of oldies satisfied the audience, some of whom were a bit dubious of the ‘new fangled stuff’ from ‘Ghost In The Machine’.

But virtually all the stage effects the Police tried were wasted by their failure to have a backdrop behind them which meant that all the smoke blew straight out the back while most of their light show was rendered useless.

Sting was in a somewhat bellicose mood when he wasn’t filling us in on his Geordie childhood. He introduced Andy Summers as ‘The Sun’s mystery blonde’ and called the Daily Mail ‘nosey bastards’, not to mention lambasting his recent legal opponents.

If it gives him a new cutting edge and pushes the Police forward to their next album in a suitably aggressive spirit then hopefully the money will have been well spent.

But he should start coming to terms with the fact that he’s lost any private life and he’d be unwise to make much of a vendetta out of it with the media. I mean, even the girl that Bono plucked out of the audience to dance with him at the end of U2’s set was called Trudie. (Sounds, 07/08/82)

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

THIS WAS the day Sting returned to fleece his homeland: tickets £8.30, T-shirts £5, programmes £2, hamburgers £1. With a warning on the ticket to buy only inside Me stadium so that you receive only official items at their normal price, there was a suspicion that the whole affair was Sting’s revenge on Tyneside for the years he spent playing in pub jazz-rock bands.

The Lords of The New Church, the first band did nothing to dispel this feeling, with a mercifully short-set filled with spectacularly unoriginal songs and tiresomely familiar poses which should go down a storm on The American stadium circuit.

The Gang of Four began their sat with what was easily the worst sound I’ve ever heard — a howl of feedback and so much trouble that it was impossible to distinguish between Hugo Burnham‘s cymbals and Andy Gill‘s guitar.

The sound men took his off his ear plugs our as The Gang swung into ‘Men In Uniform’ and a glimmer of the power of one of the hardest, most exciting live bands around began to show through.

The Beat play bright, bubbling sunshine music and under the grey Gateshead skies their fizz inevitably felt a bit flat, although their joy and enthusiasm did reach the crowd enough to cause the first real stir of the day.

They deserved their encore, but I was surprised at their literal treatment of their singles — I had expected them to be more adventurous live.

A well supported U2 were welcomed, with energetic bouncing breaking out across the audience. They produced a set of excellent, if traditional rock, characterised by The Edge‘s distinctive guitar and Bono‘s soaring vocals.

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

The Police were totally predictable. Coming on over a tape to ecstatic applause from the half empty stadium, Sting yodelled and changes basses for every other song (did he really need that many — or was it just trying to ward off boredom?), Andy Summers played his heavy metal guitar solos. and Stewart Copeland hit everything in sight but, unfortunately, not in time.

I can’t say that they played badly — they’re much too professional and slick for that — but their many hits were trotted out with a lack of excitement which suggests that their days as a group may be numbered.

The three are too intelligent to carry on with anything as meaningless as the Police has become — Sting will drift into acting, Stewart Copeland will become a film director, and Andy Summers will probably end up playing for the Tygers of Pan Tang.

The audience loved it — but then at £8.30 a time they could hardly afford not to could they? (Record Mirror, 07/08/82)

THE POLICE | U2 | THE BEAT | GANG OF FOUR

Gateshead

BREATHE two, three, Gang of Four. Charge the pace, lead the pack. Gateshead. Lead the pack. Warm ’em up. Three, four. And there goes Jon King on a spurt — running to a burnt out beat. Cinders with no fairy Godmother (not even Sara Lee) to invest metamorphic properties into the set.

When Gill shouts “Let’s regress to our childhoods!”, he means it. The Gang of Four have regressed to a pre-natal state, an incubatory existence that is suffocating in its security.

The funk trappings become a womb-warm enclave of safety/predictability that blankets the tracks in much the same way as the clouds smother the stadium with their cloying, concrete grey.

The workers on stage failed to control the means of production — if they had the workers on the floor would have shown solidarity (and clapped).

The hotch-potch audience seemed more intent on the local ales than on the imported victuals. In fact by the time The Beat came on the stadium seemed to be emptying — at its peak the audience may have reached 9000 which was poor by any standards.

But who cares about the crowd? When Roger and Wakeling take to stage, they push the pressure so high that the clouds disperse and the Gateshead stadium wraps up in a Wizard of Oz whirlwind and lands in the West Indies with a thud and a toast.

New tracks spun around the stadium at breakneck speed, ‘Ackee 1, 2, 3’, a searing, calypso dance of strength: The Beat bring ‘Unity Ina Community’ to Gateshead. The Beat lose the tongue, rock the mike, shuffle your feet and move your mind. There were cries for ‘Stand Down Margaret’ — a call that was answered with venom.

‘Get A Job’ could have been the theme for this most depressed of areas. The lack of crowd, the thousands that couldn’t afford the tenner to get in, The Beat shouted the message to them. “That likkle woman by the name of Margaret” should listen to this hottest of toasts.

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

It was sad in the light of the performance to see The Beat playing second steppers to U2. It was a shock to see the usual musical hierarchy so inverted — musically it was a gross mistake as The Beat easily outshone Bono’s Emerald Express.

Cleanliness is next to Godliness (and Bono obviously feels very close to God). The pomp and ceremony of U2’s pseudo-religious/rock filled the arena. Through the echoing love psalm ‘Gloria’ to an overdrawn over-played ‘An Cat Dubh’, U2 wowed the crowd. ‘I Will Follow’ led the audience into their own promised land — but Bono had better watch his step because he’s walking on thin water.

Throughout the set we were treated to Bono’s own brand of Christian peace politics: “The only flag I believe in is a white one,” “Give peace a chance” and an authentic “God bless you.”

Bono’s friendly and mutually returned gifts of peace and love were in sharp contrast to the rantings of an enraged Sting. The Police had arrived —the return of the prodigal son. This boy is a Local Hero. Local enough to waffle on freely about his childhood. Local enough to be one of The Boys. Star enough to kid the crowd into believing him. Amongst family and friends Sting showed us a tantrum — and gave all of us a lesson in propaganda, and how to use a gig as an organ for your own personal rantings. “For the avid readers of The Sun that are here —tonight’s mystery blonde is Andy Summers!” “The Daily Mail— the nosy bastards!”.

Sting wasn’t a Brendan Foster on this running track—more a bad boy Steve Ovett. Two, three, four . . . keep your head above water, keep the Press machine churning.

When Sting says: “I’m singing this in French, because it’s about er . . . how can I say it . . . er . . . FUCKING . !” you are shocked into laughter. Sting, whatever the Press would have you believe, is about as controversial as Page Three. They have christened and wet the head of their new Jagger. Let’s talk mega-star and gossip column.

Think of a Police single, times it by two, add a figure between nine and 15,000 and the Police played it (and the audience sung it). The word for the crowd to move in came with an SOS and a bottle. The spell continued with ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ and ‘Spirits . . ‘

The Police | Gig Review | Gateshead International Stadium 1982

But live, the Police depend not upon the individual strength/genius of their singles but upon the strength of their sound. The totality of their lumbering dubbing and the fluidity of their delivery coupled with the back chat from archangel Sting leads to a spoon-fed adulation from the devoted.

The Police sound the depths of familiarity with such aplomb that the overkill of Summers guitar is unnoticed by the less discerning ‘pop’ fan. In places the excess is of Stones-ian proportions. At other times the most subtle, simple, beautiful flashes of purity shine through — Sting almost whispering over a faded echo of ‘The Bed’s Too Big’ or a rousing ‘Invisible Sun’ that showed that all the light had come from the stage not the sky.

Before we left tired and blinded (by the spot lights) we were treated to a couple of encores and a couple of those rants. ‘Don’t Stand So Close To Me’ was preceded by some angst ridden sloganeering: “Body Mist Stinks!”, “The legal process stinks!”

The crowd loved it. The Press loved it. Sting’s bank manager loved it. The rain had held out. The audience had held out. Sting had held out. The Police had weathered operation Country man. (NME, 07/08/82)