Walking on the Moon

High school isn’t a great experience for most people, and I was no exception. It’s not that I was particularly tortured or anything, at least not more than any other kid. But I was still feeling pain from my parents’ divorce a few years before and was living in a small town thousands of miles away from the friends I’d grown up with, so it wasn’t a great time for me.

One thing that made it more bearable was music. I could slip on my headphones during study hall, and for that hour the rest of the day didn’t matter. The tapes (yes, I mean cassette tapes) I played most were Synchronicity by the Police and Sting’s The Dream of the Blue Turtles. I literally wore out multiple copies of each. Sting could write a tune as catchy as anything else on the radio but his lyrics were a lot smarter, tapping into feelings of isolation and pain with which my teen angst could identify.

I became a die-hard Police fan, buying up every album, single, and soundtrack appearance I could find. My obsession became finding every rare track the band and its individual members released. I spent a lot of money and time buying and rebuying 45s in hopes of finding versions that were as free of fuzz and crackles as possible. (Seriously, the MP3 generation has no idea how easy they have it now.)

But there was a big hole in my life. I had never seen the Police in concert. I was a bit too young in 1984 to catch the Synchronicity tour, and after that Sting shifted firmly into solo mode and showed no interest in a long-term reunion. Though 1986 offered a ray of hope with live dates for Amnesty International and a greatest hits package, the lone single was a remake rather than a new song and the project ended in disaster. It seemed like I’d never have a chance to see my favorite band play live.

Recent events hinted at a change in the air. A couple years ago, Sting toured with a trio and played a lot of the Police’s early material. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and actually played live together (the first time since Sting’s wedding). And as the 30th anniversary of the Police’s first single approached, the surprise announcement came that the band would reunite for a tour.

I was thrilled and dubious at the same time. The feuds between band members were the stuff of legend, and every true fan has seen countless segments of Sting and Stewart throwing things at one another or wrestling each other to the ground. Could these three big egos really put up with one another long enough to tour the world one more time?

Sting insists he just wanted to do something to surprise people. After releasing an album recorded on a lute, where else can you go? The cynical perspective, of course, is that the band members finally gave in to a huge financial offer and decided to cash in. Maybe a big pile of money would be enough reason to put up with one another for a summer and then retire the group once and for all.

I didn’t know quite what to expect when walking into Fenway Park on Sunday night. The huge Best Buy sponsorship banners screamed “sell outs!” and the $40 t-shirts at the souvenir booths backed that up. Was I in store for a mechanical performance from a bunch of geriatric sellouts stealing my money? Was this going to be just a glorified Sting solo show with little more than a hired backing band?

It took only a verse of the show opener, “Message in a Bottle,” to put my fears to rest. Sure, I’m biased because it’s my favorite pop song, but the band’s energy and chemistry was obvious. They weren’t just going through the motions –  they were honestly enjoying themselves.

The Police tore through a couple solid hours of hit after hit, reminding the crowd exactly how good this band was in its prime. And they had some surprises for the die-hards like me, such as a brilliant medley of “Voices inside My Head” and “When the World Is Running Down, You Make the Best of What’s Still Around.” A series of gigantic screens offered a well-filmed performance that caught the band members from a variety of angles and really illustrated how much fun they were having. As the band jammed away, it wasn’t uncommon to see Stewart Copeland with an ear-to-ear grin as he watched the interplay between Sting and Andy Summers.

One of the criticisms I’ve seen about this tour is that the band doesn’t stick to strict performances of their hits as they appear on record. Sure enough, songs like “Roxanne” started out as you’d expect but shifted into a slower, more melodic groove. Critics who try to blame this on Sting’s jazz influence don’t know their history; in fact, one needs only watch 1984′s Synchronicity Concert video to realize that the Police have always altered their arrangements drastically when playing live. In fact, that’s one of the reasons collecting their bootlegs is so much fun: you never hear the same show twice.

I worked in record stores for many years, and I’ve seen more concerts than I can count. It isn’t very often anymore that I can be moved by a show, but Sunday’s performance will be one I always remember. The Police played one last goodbye for the fans. When the three of them took their final bow on stage, with Stewart’s smile as he touched his heart and thanked the crowd, I knew I had seen something special.

I doubt the Police will go back into the studio when this is all over, but maybe they’ll prove me wrong. At the very least there will surely be live DVDs and CDs to document this tour, and I’ll buy every one of them. Because for me they’ll not only take me back to my high school days when my best friend Pete and I would drive around blasting Outlandos d’Amour, they’ll remind me of an unforgettable humid July evening under a full moon in Fenway when the thunderstorms held back long enough for me to realize a dream.