Police reunion opens Grammy Awards
Showing a punkish verve that echoed back to 1978, the Police opened the Grammy Awards on Sunday with a reunion that advertised an upcoming tour.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are the Police and we’re back!” Sting shouted at the beginning.
Wearing a punk-short haircut and displaying biceps that most 55-year-olds would kill for, Sting sang the rock trio’s first hit, “Roxanne.” He even managed to make the high notes during the reggae-tinged story about a prostitute.
Drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers joined him onstage, the gray-haired Copeland grinning throughout the song.
The Police were scheduled to announce a reunion tour on Monday.
The band was among the most commercially successful of rock’s “new wave” in the late 1970s, with hits like “Message in a Bottle” and “Every Little Thing She Does is Magic.” The brooding song of romantic obsession “Every Breath You Take” was its biggest.
The group splintered amid ego problems following its 1983 career peak, the album “Synchronicity.”
Sting moved on to a successful solo career after the breakup but has faced the same problems many aging rockers have in trying to draw attention to new work. Copeland and Summers both maintained active, if low-key, solo careers.
They reunited in 2003 in New York for a three-song set when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but otherwise hadn’t performed in public in more than two decades.
On the Grammys, the Police performed to an audience filled with musicians who were crawling around in diapers during its heyday. Comic Jamie Foxx noted the changing times.
“There was a little confusion,” he said. “When they said the Police were opening up the Grammys, Snoop left.”
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