Remembering When The Police Made an Ill-Fated Attempt To Revive the Band in 1986

When rock fans talk about bands that left the stage when they were still on top, they inevitably mention The Police. The trio released their final studio album to massive sales and tons of praise in 1983. And then they went their separate ways, save for a well-regarded 2007-08 tour.

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But that’s not exactly how it all went down. Many forget about an attempt to rev up the band one more time in 1986. Bad luck and longstanding animosities prevented it from taking place.

Gone but Not Quite

Rarely will you find a great band that gets along swimmingly all the time. Some tension between group members can fuel the creative juices. The Police tested this theory to the maximum during their time together. They constantly clashed even as they continuously delivered standout music.

During the making of the Synchronicity album, released in 1983, tempers flared to the point that a band meeting had to be held to see if the three men (Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland) even wanted to bother finishing the record. Luckily, they decided to continue. And they delivered a masterpiece in the process.

Because they didn’t release another album, many who weren’t around at the time might assume that they broke up right after the tour supporting the record. In actuality, no announcement of any sort was made. The band had actually decided to take a few years away from each other to let some of the bad blood dissipate. They intended to return.

Adding Insult to Injury

In the interim, however, Sting recorded the solo album The Dream of the Blue Turtles, released in 1985. The LP offered him the creative freedom he felt he lacked within the confines of the band. The fact that the record was extremely successful also gave him the confidence that he could get along just fine on his own.

Still, The Police came back together and played three prominent concerts in 1986, the last of which was in June of that year. A month later, they booked studio time. Contrasting reports make it difficult to discern the actual purpose of these sessions. It seems likely that band manager Miles Copeland was hoping for a full-fledged return to action for the group. But that just wasn’t meant to be.

Even if the group had wanted to dive back into making a new Police album, an unfortunate incident prevented it. Stewart Copeland fell off a horse and broke his collarbone. The injury prevented him from playing any drums during the time that the band had reserved for creating something new. Things turned increasingly sour from there.

A One-Song “Stand”

With Copeland on the shelf and Sting offering no new material, the band briefly thought about doing a new album full of redone versions of their classic hits. They started this process by diving into “Don’t Stand So Close To Me”, a huge smash off their 1980 album Zenyatta Mondatta.

Since Copeland couldn’t play, it was decided that the band would use programmed drums to make the recording. But Sting and Copeland battled about which synthesizer they’d use to create “Don’t Stand So Close To Me ‘86”, as the new version was called.

The sessions ended with just that one song, which popped up on a Greatest Hits compilation, to show for it at the time. When Sting immediately returned to his solo career, no one could deny that The Police’s recording career was effectively finished.

Photo by Ebet Roberts/Redferns