8/10/2023 0 Comments Shitty wasted song john“From there it went to WBCN in Boston and this disc jockey called Oedipus started to play it in heavy rotation. “Originally it was picked up by a radio station in Texas,” Summers recalls. It was only when The Police began playing dates in America that Roxanne gained traction. Roxanne’s progress was further hampered when the band were unable to promote it properly due to their involvement at the time with experimental composer Eberhard Schoener they’d already committed to recording and performing with Schoener’s Laser Theatre in Germany, and backed him on his Flashback album. “It was a real song with a real, felt lyric, and they wouldn’t play it on the grounds that it was about a prostitute.” “There was no talk about fucking in it, it wasn’t a smutty song in any sense of the word,” Sting bristled later that year. A&M’s valiant attempts to turn that into an advantage – hoisting up posters for the single emblazoned with ‘Banned by the BBC’ – didn’t have the desired effect either. Its cause wasn’t helped by the fact that the BBC refused to allow it onto their playlist due to the subject matter. It didn’t become a hit at first, but a few people noticed it, and I think it was John Pidgeon who wrote a great review of the song.”ĭespite positive press, Roxanne flopped when it was released in April ’78. He took it to A&M, and they wanted to release it. “We were a bit embarrassed about Roxanne,” admits Summers, “because this was the raging punk scene, where everything was at furious speed. The band decided to keep it in.Ī regular visitor to the studio was Miles Copeland, Stewart’s elder brother. At the beginning of the song, Sting fell backwards onto the piano and started to laugh. The ad hoc nature of the sessions bled into Roxanne itself. In January 1978 The Police hired Surrey Studios in Leatherhead and set about recording their debut album. It became their first major international hit, although its passage was anything but smooth. Centred on Copeland’s rhythm and the insistent skank of Summers’s guitar, the song drew its charm from a buoyant chorus and the sweet rasp of Sting’s dirty-choirboy voice. ![]() Roxanne eventually turned The Police from motley hopefuls – a jazz-loving ex-schoolteacher plus two renegades from the world of prog rock – into unlikely superstars. “We started playing around with it,” says Summers, “and came up with something where I was able to play four-in-the-bar, Stewart put that slight reggae thing on, and Sting changed where he put the bass beats. It was drummer Stewart Copeland who suggested changing it to a tango.
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