Stewart Copeland - Strange Things Happen - A life with The Police, polo and pygmies

But I have discovered that some humans are merely disguised as robots. Under cover of conformity strange personalities can emerge. I have started to experiment with other uniforms and disguises. My main circle of friends is the polo set of Gloucestershire. It’s only natural that my first attempt at a new mufti would start here. They wear the same clothes that I used to wear in boarding school. Problem is, my career was fueled by a desire to burn down my old school. I get even stranger looks than usual when I show up at the club bar in a blazer, with handkerchief in the pocket. Out on the street, the usual double take is followed by a look of confusion.

The fact is that my dream of lapsing into the countryside in my post-rock star years is not panning out. The flashbulb-popping, tabloid-screaming, chart-topping, crowd-roaring express train of fame may have blazed off over the horizon, but strange adventures still befall me. From dancing the Ndele Banga with the Kamba of Tsavo to elbowing royalty on the polo fields of Cirencester, to sweaty jam sessions in Havana clip joints and black-tie curtain calls at my opera premieres, stuff still keeps on happening to me. Only now that I’m off the train, I can play with these things as they go by.

Here follows a collection of strange tales about the things that can happen as I walk in the constant company of a distantly remembered mythical being. Twenty years ago there was this kid with my face up there on the screen, the whole world got a pretty good look at him, and he still hovers just over my shoulder. He’s mostly invisible after all these years, unseen by passersby, but in some settings, everyone can see him. In fact they see him and not me. And the strangest things happen.

Life and times of a diplo-brat in Beirut:Cowboys and Injuns in the Crusader castles.

Pete Karnif is looking for us. My bass player buddy Greg and I are skulking in the shadows, but it’s time for us to get up there and do it. I’m shaking with fear because I’m twelve years old and I’m about to start getting what I wished for.

There isn’t any stage, just some Selmer amps and my drums in a corner of the ballroom at the American Embassy Beach Club in Beirut, Lebanon.

All of the American, British, French, and other European expatriate kids are crammed into the room. In enclaves like this they have re-created an approximation of the teenage life that they should be living back home. They’re dancing the Twist and the Mashed Potato and the Frug, whatever that is. My brother, Miles, should know. Even though the cool Mediterranean air breezes across the beach into the open room, the atmosphere is hot hot. These Western kids are desperate to be Western. They don’t want to miss any of the teen boom that is happening back in the First World. Ian is lurking

somewhere nearby. He got me into this and is getting a huge kick from it.

At my tender age I don’t have any idea what it means, but I can feel the buzz. Michele Savage is here. And Connie Ridgeway and Colleen Bisharat. All of the yearned-for fifteen-year-old women—so far above my lowly prepubescent but ardent station—are gyrating to Fats Domino right in front of the gear. I push past them to my drums. Pete is plugging in, and his amp is squawking. The hubbub of voices in the room immediately hushes, and all eyes are on us.

Actually, since I’m sitting down at the drums all I can see is the first row of kids, who look like grown-ups to me. Pete counts us in…

“One, two—”

I never hear him finish the count. I have already embarked on the headlong joyride that is my life of drumming. Whatever we rehearsed is gone from my head, but the motor has started. I’m on a pulse and the band is ragged but connected. The kids are dancing to “It’s My Life” and I’m driving it. It’s My Groove. Somewhere in the years ahead I’ll learn how to be exulted and collaborative at the same time. For now though, there is only one thing on the planet, and that is Janet McRoberts dancing in front of me. Her eyes are wide with astonishment. The big girls are moving with seductive intent, and Janet is moving with me. She’s being moved by me.

It was just yesterday that I got my first inkling of what music was going to do to my life. At the shawerma stand on the beach I overheard two of the big girls talking about The Nomads.

“I heard they’ve got a new drummer—you’ll never guess who…”

“Yeah I heard, it’s Ian’s kid brother!”

“Oh I can’t wait to see him—is he as groovy as Ian?”

Well, I’m not even close to being as groovy as Ian. Never will be. I’m a skinny twelve-year-old, and these girls are fifteen. They are talking about a mythical being. They’re already pouring their young imaginations into the chalice of music idolatry. I badly want to drink undeservedly from that cup. My chest is rising with the idea that the subject of their fancy is nerdy little me.

I’ve got my hand on the snare and my foot on the kick. The noise makes me big. It grows me up, like a shortcut to manhood. Primatologists studying gorillas and orangutans have established the connection between male dominance behavior and noise. Well, here I am, the skinny runt of the litter, but as long as I drive the beat, I’m a hairy-assed silverback motherfucker banging tree trunks. I’m swinging through the trees. My voice is a manly roar.

Ian is looking up at the bullet holes that have scratched the otherwise pristine facade of our old home in the hills overlooking Beirut. The city is spread out behind us as we gaze up at the wisteria-clad arches. It’s a beautiful old Levantine building with soaring ceilings, grand stairways, and baronial galleries. Since my

brother and I were last here a half century ago, Lebanon has endured invasion, civil war, occupation, massacre, siege, and pretty much every form of human madness. The neighborhoods where we played have been corroded by warfare, sprayed by automatic rifle fire, plugged by RPGs, or leveled by bombs.

But our old villa Tarazi has just these five bullet holes that we can count. Ian figures that a militia gunman must have stood where he is now standing and just sprayed one blast upward. To get someone’s attention, no doubt.

I’m standing there with a tear in my eye as Ian disappears. In a moment he is hailing us from the front balcony, a giant terrace that wraps around the top of the house. He has climbed up the wisteria vines just outside his old room and sneaked back into the house just like he did when he was a teenager returning from the lam. I’m right up there beside him in a flash. We’re looking out over Beirut, standing right in the spot where my first drums were set forty years ago.

The drums had a faded champagne sparkle finish. Dad had rented them from a store in town, maybe reluctant to buy any more musical instruments. Our home was a graveyard of abandoned music toys. My three older siblings, Miles, Lennie, and Ian, had passed right by our father’s inducements and exhortations to follow him into music; so when I showed interest he was a little wary at first. My mother bought me a snare drum because I wouldn’t leave her alone. It was a white pearl-finished Lefima drum made in Germany, of all places. I’ve never since seen another drum with that brand.

When my rat-tat-tat became a prolonged irritant to the family, my father began to discern the elemental urge that is the signature behavior of a budding musician. I just could not stop. The power of the noise was endlessly thrilling and empowering. When I wasn’t drumming I was air drumming, or worse, I was that kid who drives everyone insane with persistent foot tapping and thigh slapping. It was the nervous twitch from hell.