The Police member who underwent the greatest shock was probably Stewart Copeland. As the band prepared to finish writing the album in February, there were continual, gruesome TV reports of the bombing of Beirut. Stewart Copeland had spent much of his youth there, due to his father's CIA - connected overseas job. "My home town was being bombed. I found out my nanny, who'd raised me, was killed by American supplied bullets. I couldn't write about anything except war and hate. I wanted to kill," he said. Though some of that hurt has filtered through to Synchronicity, much of it was sidetracked into a filmscore he's been writing, for Francis Ford Coppola's Rumble Fish. And there was another film project, directed and shot by Copeland in collaboration with brother Miles. He spent two weeks following a tour by Anti-Nowhere League, Defects, Chron Gen and Chelsea, filming a dozen gigs on one hand-held camera. "I want to invent the 'C' film," was the explanation. Before the 30-minute "So What" goes on general release, he hopes to send it on a tour of British punk gigs with the soundtrack played at full PA volume. "We want to get the audience to react as if it was a band playing. We tried it at The Marquee but didn't get the response we wanted." That was mostly because of not knowing how to best cut the film for effect. He's now re-edited the feature."
It says Stewart Copeland was filming the tour. Now Floyd told me he'd met Stewart Copeland; fairly typically, he described him in less than flowery language. Floyd didn't have much time for the middle classes, full stop. But he never told me the guy was filming them on stage...
I wonder if he knew?
1 comment:
From one dislocated person to another ... superb kiddo , never knew you were this good at prose!
Keep this blog going as you are one of the ones I will miss when the move becomes permanent, we both always look forward to the "after hours" talking bollox with you.
BTW still have that old copy of the Hitchhikers Guide to Europe for your collection...
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